GOVERNMENT ON DRUGS

The Ontario government should scrap its plan to compel welfare recipients to
take drug tests and get treatment.

The government, led by Community and Social Services Minister and
Nepean-Carleton MPP John Baird, said yesterday it's holding a "consultation"
on mandatory testing and treatment of welfare recipients. The government
will meet with various organizations over the next few weeks, then come up
with a final policy.

In a statement, the government said: "Individuals who refuse treatment or
who won't take tests on request will be ineligible for a welfare cheque."

What's this supposed to accomplish? Give us some weird sense of satisfaction
that we're cutting drug addicts off subsistence welfare payments? This will
be progress -- having addicts hungry on the streets?

Is there really a big problem here?

Mr. Baird's spokesman, Dan Miles, says the ministry and police involved in
drug investigations estimate that between three and 10 per cent of people on
assistance are on drugs. If the government has sound demographic evidence
about this, it should be sharing it with the public. But it does not seem
likely that illegal drug use could be such a big problem with a group of
people on such low incomes.

The odd thing is that there is general support across the province for much
of the tightening up of the welfare system that has gone on in the past few
years. At one time there were far too many people on assistance in Ontario.
The government's chopping of benefits, coupled with a hot economy encouraged
by a pro-business government, has reduced welfare rolls dramatically.
People support zero-tolerance for those who cheat the system.

And the government keeps making progress. Just a couple of days ago, Mr.
Baird announced that 12 people an hour are moving off welfare in Ontario.
In October alone, 16,173 people stopped relying on welfare. Since 1995 the
government figures 565,690 people have gone off welfare, a positive
turnaround of a fairly desperate situation a few years ago. Why would we
cloud those falling numbers, such a good-news story, by launching a
misguided crackdown on welfare recipients suspected of using drugs?

Even if you were to accept that welfare recipients taking drugs is a problem
in need of the province's urgent attention, how do you attend to it? Under
this policy, a man who refuses to take a test or treatment loses his
payments. Then his wife and children do what?

Mr. Baird and his government would be acting more constructively if they
supported services for people with addictions.

In central Ottawa, for example, the Sisters of Charity are operating a
26-bed detoxification centre that treated 4,200 people last year, people
with serious alcohol and drug problems. The centre does, at times, run out
of beds and would like to expand slightly. Why not support that kind of
public program, rather than dreaming up a scheme for cracking down on
welfare drug addicts?

The kind of tough initiative announced yesterday does this government no
favours. It only feeds the public suspicion that the government, at times,
simply likes to be mean-spirited. In announcing the initiative, the
government cited the results of drug-treatment programs in half a dozen U.S.
states. The U.S. drug war has been seriously flawed: Ontario needs to look
at the entire picture, in context, before importing American drug policies.

This action also raises serious questions about where the Ontario government
is placing its priorities. In our city, there are two pressing public needs:
the redevelopment of several crumbling hospital complexes at a cost of
hundreds of millions of dollars; and the growing frustration over the
absence of proper classrooms, in overcrowded schools.

Government is about making hard decisions and setting priorities. Chasing
welfare recipients to see if they're on drugs shouldn't be high on that
list.