Minister defends welfare system for women - 2006

If Mr. Richmond spent less time defending his welfare system and more time listening to the front line workers and consumers of his services, that would be a step in the right direction towards "doing more". Instead, he chooses to berate the front line workers and consumers of his service while spewing the company line of "fair, caring and sustainable system". Just because you say it over and over again, Mr. Richmond, it doesn't mean it is true.

First, he says that the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives is wrong. Their serious academic research is dismissed as being out of date and their professional integrity is questioned while they are accused of misrepresentation. Then, the staff lawyers at BC Public Interest Advocacy Centre are wrong, as Mr.Richmond assures us he was a step ahead of them in making the changes to the injustices they complained about to the Ombudsman. Then, the women's centre personnel, transition house workers, and legal advocates in the province of B.C. are wrong. They are accused of exaageration, fear mongering, being "political", and their daily experiences on the front lines are rejected. Now, in the last letter to your paper, Bryony Lake, who has the audacity to suggest that welfare fails single mothers, is accused by Mr. Richmond of making false assumptions and doing a real disservice to your readers and the ministry.

In the face of criticism, Mr. Richmond trivializes or politicizes the work we do, he insults our professional integrity and patronizes the vulnerable who have the courage to complain by dismissing their feelings and experiences as assumptions, exaagerated, misunderstood, or just plain not true.

If your government is so fair to single mothers in dire need, why did your ministry force single mothers with children turning three to look for work, while reducing their monthly income assistance, transition to work benefits, and cut funding for child care, making it harder for recipients to receive a subsidy? Why did your ministry eliminate the exemption on child support income, so single mothers cannot keep any extra child support dollars?Why did your government eliminate before and after school programs. Why did your government eliminate the Ministry of Women's Equality, eliminate employment equity for women, and restricted eligibility for early childhood development and special needs children? Your government cut funding for Women's Centres by one hundred percent, even though BC has the highest rate of violence against women in Canada. Judge Thomas Gove has warned that funding cuts and policy changes are leaving social workers with unmanageable caseloads, turning the clock back on the well being of children and young people in BC ( many of whom have single mothers). Is he wrong too? The UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women singled out your provincial government for special criticism after reviewing Canada's compliance with the Convention of Discrimination Against Women. Is the United Nations wrong too? Mr. Richmond owes a standard of care to the people his ministry serves above any other ministry in this government because it is his that is supposed to provide food on their tables, medicine for their mental and physical illnesses, and rooves over the heads of the most vulnerable in our society, in which, statistically, women prevail significantly. When your system fails, and every system does from time to time, you risk people's lives. They end up incarcerated from desperate acts, they lose their families, they lose their sobriety, they lose their homes, their health, they prostitute themselves, they are victimized and victimize others, and sometimes they lose their lives. This is not reported as a conspiracy against the ministry, this is reported because the system is terribly flawed.
And while he says he knows he has to do more, that starts with listening more, and allowing the criticism to motivate him more and exasperate him less.