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‘Raise the Rates!’
by John Clarke / June 2005 issue of Socialist Action
TORONTO—On May 12, a crowd of over 400 poor people and supporters
took the fight for decent income right to the doorstep of the Ontario
Liberal politician most responsible for imposing hunger on our communities,
Minister of Social Services Sandra Pupatello.
The Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP), joined by Ontario
Common Front organizations and supporters from Hamilton, Port Hope, Guelph,
Kitchener, Belleville, Ottawa, Peterborough and Kingston, marched to the
Ministry building in downtown Toronto to demand that the $250 a month special
diet supplement be given to all 760,000 welfare and disability recipients
in Ontario without their having to jump through bureaucratic hoops.
Right now people can access the previously little known supplement
only by finding a medical practitioner ready to state the obvious—that the pittance
provided by the Liberal Dalton McGuinty provincial government does not
allow people to pay rent and eat properly at the same time.
Despite the fact that many of those who came out to march were
people present with families who had not taken part in demonstrations
before, they joined us in taking over the streets. No one was the slightest bit intimidated
by the massive array of police power on hand.
Later, the many poor people who had come in from out of town, and
who have huge trouble accessing medical practitioners in their own
communities, attended an OCAP special diet clinic in Regent Park. There, a
team of nurse-practitioners assessed 140 people (many of them young kids)
for the supplement. They were given the forms and prescriptions necessary
to receive the extra income that will enable them to eat decently.
For a long time, OCAP and others have challenged the obscene
transfer of wealth from the poorest to richest that has taken place in
Ontario under the Tories and, now, their Liberal replacements. With the drive to win the food supplement,
however, we have found the means to take back some of the precious income
of which the poor have been robbed.
Very close to a thousand people have accessed the supplement through
our clinics and we are only beginning to organize this struggle. There are
many
ways to help out. OCAP: 416-925-6939, www.ocap.ca,
ocap@tao.ca. Or send cheques to
Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, 10 Britain St., Toronto, Ont. M5A 1R6.
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