LITERACY TO BE MANDATORY TO GET WELFARE

Ontario Tories Create First Policy Of Its Kind In Canada

TORONTO - Ontario welfare recipients will have to pass math and literacy
tests or take remedial courses to avoid having their benefits cut off, the
province announced yesterday.

The province's Conservative government said the policy is the first of its
kind in Canada and will help knock down a key barrier to claimants getting
a job.

John Baird, the Minister of Community and Social Services, said making
literacy programs obligatory is an important part of the government's
social assistance reforms. Welfare reform was promised by the Tories almost
two years ago in the 1999 election.

"Participation is not an expectation, it's a requirement. The people of
Ontario are offering a hand up, not a handout," Mr. Baird said.

"If a welfare recipient can't pass a basic language and math test, they
will be offered help. If they refuse help, they will have made themselves
ineligible for welfare in Ontario.

"Sitting at home and doing nothing is no longer an option," he said.

Advocates for the poor agreed literacy is an important requirement for
finding work. But they said anyone on welfare who lacked basic reading,
writing and math skills would jump at the chance to receive help but that
existing literacy programs have long waiting lists.

Making the program mandatory means claimants could be disqualified after
missing a test or course for a legitimate reason, said Sally Colquhoun, a
lawyer with the Kinna-Aweya legal aid clinic in Thunder Bay, Ont.

"It results in people being cut off so [the Conservatives] can trumpet
their statistics [on the numbers cut from the welfare rolls]," said Ms.
Colquhoun.

The Minister also said yesterday that the province is moving ahead with its
plan to screen welfare recipients for drug and alcohol problems and force
them to get counselling if they are found to be addicted. The ministry will
invest up to $10-million a year for three years to provide rehabilitation,
the Minister said.

In response to his announcement, Anne Cavoukian, the province's Information
and Privacy Commissioner, offered her sharpest critique yet of the policy.

"The mandatory nature of this program threatens the very concept of privacy
- -- and will not be as effective as voluntary participation," she said in a
statement.

"Meaningful consent necessitates being free from any type of coercion or
duress."

A host of other critics have suggested the plan would violate
constitutional rights. Mr. Baird insisted drug testing and treatment is legal.

Government officials say several American jurisdictions, including Oregon,
Maryland, Nevada and North Carolina, have already integrated substance
abuse treatment into their welfare systems.

But, last July, the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled that substance abusers
are "handicapped" and "entitled to the protection of the [Human Rights] Code."

Chris Higgins, an addictions specialist who runs the province's Federation
of Community Mental Health and Addiction Programs, says most addicts cannot
be forced to get clean.

Treatment on a voluntary basis gets much better results, Mr. Higgins said.

The government would do better putting the money it would spend forcing the
belligerent to get sober on reducing waiting lists for those who do want
help, he said.

Just as helpful would be money to pay for job training and caretaking for
the children of those on welfare.

"Simply not being addicted does not automatically result in employment,"
said Mr. Higgins.

The latest rules on who is eligible for welfare in Ontario will be phased
in beginning next year. Three to five towns and cities, to be determined in
the coming months, will test the strategy before it is expanded across the
province over the following four years.

Those who will be responsible for enforcing the measures are already
pledging to defy the order.

"We're not going to do this government's dirty work," said Brian O'Keefe of
CUPE Ontario, the union that represents the province's 5,000 welfare
caseworkers.

"We don't think it's part of our mandate to violate people's human rights
and to stereotype the poor."