The change to PWD [person with disability] announced in the Budget has set off a firestorm.

The change would seem to be about fairness, not about livability.

Al least I hope it is not about the cost of living in the lower mainland. If the premier, the finance minister and the Liberal caucus think that a $77.00 increase in PWD reflects the cost of living in the lower mainland the citizens of BC are in deep, deep trouble given how out of touch with economic reality that would be. .

The majority of those on PWD do not receive either a bus pass or the transportation subsidy.

The change included in the budget means that everyone on PWD will receive the same number of dollars, eliminating the current ‘some are more equal than others’ imbalance.

The government does deserve to have its knuckles rapped for failing to give adequate notice of the change to those receiving the transportation allowance.

I budget and manage my finances based on receiving the transportation allowance in April.

ONE month before this major part of my financial budgeting and planning is due the government sinks my budget with [Oh, sweet irony] their budget.

I would have preferred, given the lack of warning, to receive the usual transportation allowance in April and not to receive the $77.00 [or part thereof] until the difference between the allowance and $77 per month had balanced.

That would have protected my current budget and financial plan and allowed sufficient time to adjust future budgets and finances to reflect receiving $77 per month instead of a lump sum.

Still, using fairness as your measure, this change gives everyone receiving PWD the same number of dollars.

If you use the ability to live on PWD in the lower mainland as the measuring stick to evaluate the $77 increase …..

Last year in Mission a number of those on PWD did a survey/analysis using information from themselves and others living on PWD. Crunching the numbers they concluded [and communicated the results to BC Housing] that at a minimum a $250 rent subsidy was needed and that without such a subsidy those on PWD faced a significant risk of becoming homeless.

For me personally: after my shelter costs [rent, Insurance, bank fees etc] were paid, I have $41 to spend on food and other survival needs for the month of March.

My television became an Object d’ Art years ago to save the cost of cable.

Internet, phone, food are all unaffordable luxuries.

I am not without skills and am seeking employment to increase my cash flow – and life span as my diabetes makes the inability to afford a proper diet a major health issue, a life shortening health issue. Adding to the difficulty [impossibility?] of properly managing my diabetes is my inability to find a family doctor.

Still, while the physical consequences of diabetes have imposed physical realities I must deal with, the fact that I do not have –cannot afford – either phone or internet makes communication the biggest, perhaps insurmountable barrier to employment.

The inability to communicate in a timely fashion affects not just finding a job but access to services and other opportunities. If I want to survive a health crisis I had better be sure to have it in public because if I have on at home I might as well bend over and kiss my – posterior – goodbye.

PWD rates are, in the lower mainland, are at best barely livable and for some teeter on being [literally] unlivable.

Irony of Ironies

Earlier tonight [March 4, 2016] in acknowledgement [after 18 + months] that I was not going to get it reformatted into more bite-sized chunks anytime soon, I posted all of the nearly 11,000 words of The Beast on www.jameswbreckenridge.ca.

It addresses the budget and financial REALITY of the BC and Federal governments and what the consequences, the effects, of that REALITY are.

So I am well aware that an increase of the size required to raise the PWD rate to a livable level in the lower mainland would require taking dollars from healthcare or education [the only two budget areas large enough} or raising taxes.

In light of the reality of BC’s finances, if I want to be able to afford luxuries such as a healthy diet for a diabetic or a phone or **gasp** internet ……I cannot afford to sit around waiting for an increase the government does not have the funds for but must find employment.