AMENDMENTS TO SOCIAL ASSISTANCE ACT DRACONIAN
NDP leader Todd Hardy says the changes the Yukon government wants to make to the Social Assistance Act are draconian, regressive and poorly timed.
"Changing the appeal process and forcing clients to apply monthly for social assistance will make it tougher on people in dire straights to get a helping hand from government to provide for themselves and their families," Hardy says.
"If these changes come into effect as proposed, the government will be the Grinch this holiday season by making life significantly tougher for many of the poorest people in the Yukon."
The members of the Yukon Anti-Poverty Coalition consider the proposed changes so disturbing they plan to seek a meeting with the minister of Health and Social Services.
"I fully support the Anti-Poverty Coalition’s views," Hardy says. "And I strongly urge the minister to reconsider the changes he wants to make before he brings this flawed bill forward for second reading."
Bill 55 eliminates two social assistance appeal committees and replaces them with a three-person review committee that will be open to manipulation by the minister and the director of the social services branch. Both the chair and vice-chair of this committee will be appointed by the minister.
"I do not understand why the minister wants to change the process," adds the NDP leader. "I also want him to explain why people receiving social assistance need to reapply each month. That seems totally unnecessary to me."
Before making these kinds of changes, the government should develop and implement a poverty strategy, as the NDP caucus has asked it to do for years. Several provinces have such strategies.
"Once again, this government is showing its true colors – it wants to make the process of applying for social assistance as difficult as it can," Hardy says. "It will say it wants to reduce fraud. But we all know just about everyone who asks for social assistance does so because they are in desperate need."