I have acknowledged that it was mental illness that led me here. I have no words that would express just how thankful I am that I had started on the road to mental health and had built up a support system that helps me through the rough patches. If I had to depend on the so called ‘assistance’ system for help I shudder to consider how badly I would be doing or how ill I would have been driven to be. While the pettiness and stupidity of having to RE-register and RE-file may be driving my crazy; it currently remains just the craziness of any (semi)sane person coping with insane demands.

Far too many others are not so lucky. When you close mental institutions, facilities and programs the people do not cease to exist. Transferring them onto welfare may sound as if you are not abandoning them, it may permit the government to claim they were being cared for, but that is not reality. I have found what could only be termed ‘disgraceful numbers’ of the mentally ill trapped at the mercy of the system without any of the help they really need or driven onto the streets as homeless.

Some of those addicts that so many look down upon, were created by the Liberal policies. They are those in need of Mental Health aid abandoned by society. To escape the demons in their heads they turn to self-medication, for they have been denied any other help. The Liberals can claim what they want, their actions have denied these people adequate aid and in leaving them alone and without help the Liberals must accept responsibility for their homelessness, self-medication and addictions.

Some of the abandoned end up in the ‘care’ of the justice system, lacking the mental health help they so badly need, their illness plays itself out in their acting out and leads to incarceration. I suspect it would be far cheaper to provide mental health care as opposed to jailing them. I know it would definitely be more productive in providing help to these lost souls and far more ‘just’.

Some drop into the ranks of the homeless and onto the streets. They struggle to survive, day to day, but without the mental health resources they need they are condemned to continue this day to day struggle for survival without any chance of recovery and getting out of the ranks of the homeless and back into life.

Some live a twilight life. They exist in the system; shelter of some type, food enough and minimum basic needs met. They exist; they live, but are denied life.

We are our brothers’ keeper.

You may have noticed my use of the term welfare. Partly this is because I always found the trend to rename things just to make them sound better annoying, very annoying. A Sanitary Engineer is still a garbage man (woman). And ‘social assistance’ is still welfare. I concede the point that welfare as a label has its own baggage. Still any baggage would, over time, be transferred to the label ‘social assistance’. My real objection is that this term is truly misleading. Using ‘assistance’ implies that the system seeks to and does provide assistance (v. & n. 1. Help 2. NAmer: the act of helping). Based on my experiences and observations, applying the word assistance to the way the system currently functions is akin to saying that a guillotine is of assistance in curing a headache. Using the term assistance is of useful value to the ideologues of the current government since the word assistance carries with it the impression of helping. Applying the term assistance to the program suggests that the program is about helping people. Laughable. I question that even a group of ideologues , such as comprise the current government, could set out to design a system to assist people and end up with a system that hinders and raises obstacles as well as the current system. Or maybe I am hasty in ruling out incompetence.

The Liberal party has consistently excelled at the use of misleading labeling. When they first took office they enacted ‘tax reform’ and ‘lower taxes’, this being the labels they applied to their fiscal programs. Of course as part of lowering the tax rates fees and service charges rose or came into being. As a result of these ‘tax reforms’ and ‘lower taxes’ the working poor and middle class were out of pocket additional $$$, which flowed into the pockets of the wealthy. But labeling the changes what they truly were ‘Assistance to the Rich and Powerful’ (the rich got assistance by transferring their burden onto the poorest taxpayers) would have made it impossible to sell to the public. And politics and ideology is about selling and has nothing to do with truth.

So the public has to decide what it wants the system to Be or Do. If the purpose is merely to salve the publics conscience by convincing themselves they are rendering assistance to those in need, it can be left alone. The current government has demonstrated its ability to say things that sound good and apply misleading labels to soothe the public into inaction. It could be renamed “Guilty Feeling Relief System”, shortened to Relief System so as to sound like it is to provide relief to those in need – almost as good as the current use of assistance to suggest the system provides help.

In the event that the public decides that the system should in fact be of help and not full of hindrances, changes are needed. No just to the system but to other programs that can an impact in providing help. Mental health, education, training, transportation, treatment centers – and numerous other programs that impact on helping those in need. The system itself needs to be overhaul so as to provide less hindrance more assistance. Posting the definition of assist/assistance in plain view of those in charge and the workers would serve as a reminder of what the Purpose is. Perhaps the biggest change of all is in the attitudes of the public. Throw out the derogatory labels. These are people who need our help, we want to help them, NO we will help them.

We Can make the system render ‘Assistance’.