I was reading some of the party platforms of some of Canada's horrible right-wing parties (I don't know why) and I saw the phrase literally "deserving poor" and "undeserving poor" used in the platform for a supposedly Christian party and I nearly flipped over my chair in rage.
I think I will stop reading those.
Just for curiosity, are they from western Canada? Just because a party name has the word "Christian" in it (ie. "Christian Heritage Party"), don't assume it actually gives half a damn for people like us. They're all about the money, cutting social programs, and putting mandatory prayer back in all schools, taking LGBT tolerance and age-appropriate sex education out of the curriculum, and putting creationism into science classes. Some are fringe separatist parties. Oh, and every disabled person is supposed to have a family to take care of them. Even now I'm frequently told that I "must" have some family member or friend to help me so I don't need the government".
As I very bluntly tell them after the half-dozenth reiteration of them not understanding that I don't have a familial support system: Do excuse me for not having family to step in. They're all dead. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Uhh... yeah.... In this context it's usually understood that 'deserving' is short for "deserving of social support under our oh-so-benevolent party policies".
Able-bodied dole-bludgers by that definition would therefore be 'undeserving' -- because those lazy *******s should be
working.
And as someone who's grown up in Germany over the past couple of decades, you would also likely be
horrified by the criteria that an average far-right (North American) politician might want to use to define 'able-bodied':
@aimeeandbeatles,
@Valka D'Ur, and
@Synsensa would all likely 'qualify', simply because they can hold a coherent conversation, and walk without anyone else's assistance (at least on good days).
Years ago, I was advised to leave my vocabulary at home when talking to my AISH worker or applying for particular supports. There's this perception among an annoying lot of people that if you can use words above an elementary school level, it must mean your whole self functions properly.
I'm on the Elections Canada mailing list, and apparently they're sending out VICs now, in anticipation of a possible early election (haven't checked CBC for awhile; has the government fallen or did Justin call a snap election?). I'm willing to bet that if I checked Section 12 of the online manual for Returning Officers that anyone qualifying for in-home special ballots will still be discriminated against by being forced to have the candidates' list read to them (whether they can read or not) and being forced to tell
two EC workers who they want to vote for, and will not be allowed to write the name on the ballot themselves (assuming they can write).
This violates the voter's right to cast a secret ballot
if they choose; I certainly have no objection to any disabled voter
asking for assistance - I just object to having it
forced, as though all physically disabled people are also illiterate. I wrote a lengthy objection to my local Returning Officer about this, pointing out that disabled people are encouraged to be as independent as we can manage, and that by forcing us to be treated as though we're illiterate, the government is actually undermining our efforts at independence, and that I consider this to be discrimination.
He said he'd make sure it was passed along, but I'd bet that if I were to contact the Chief Electoral Officer, they'd probably say they never received anything regarding this issue.
I'm going to have to contact EC anyway and update my address. Whether we have an early election or not, my addresses won't match and I need to get that straightened out ASAP.
As for walking without assistance... I could kick the building manager... if I could kick. I've told him that most of the times he sees me it's because I'm having a better sort of day where I have the energy to be out of the apartment, instead of being so tired I just sleep when I'm not feeding the cat or taking my meds. There are days when I need canes just to walk down the hall from the kitchen to the bathroom. He doesn't see those days, so he assumes I'm able to do more than what I can do, consistently. And he doesn't get just how exhausting it's going to be to do this move.
First I was promised the keys on October 1. Then it was supposed to be yesterday. Then it's Friday. Yesterday I was told it would take another 10 days, which would mean I'd have just 5 days to move the smaller stuff so I don't have to pay a mover to do it. Moving all this in 5 days (multiple trips up and down)
will result in my being sick. I know I don't have the energy for that.
And the manager still acts like I'm moving on a whim. I'm moving to get away from multiple plumbing issues that have plagued me for years, not to mention they want to rip out part of the walls to deal with insulation and I don't want to be here when they do that.
The biggest failure in determining "able to work" is the over-reliance on bureaucracy. Everything is coded and labelled a very specific way, and any kind of deviation puts you in appeals hell or outright disqualifies you. The system also has an incredibly unrealistic image of the job market. I have had someone seriously suggest to me, after me saying that I could work somewhere within a 10-minute walk for a couple hours a day with a lot of leeway in rescheduling (and never two days in a row), that I should do exactly that and that that means I'm not unemployable. Except that isn't what employers hire for; it's an employer's market, not an employee's, and they have no incentive to hire someone with so many conditions on their able employment when they can just open the meat grinder and take the first schmuck that comes through the door who'll drop everything on a whim for their boss and work odd, long hours. (I'm sympathetic to the employer, actually, on this. They shouldn't have to make their scheduling so intensely complicated to cater to someone who needs so many concessions.)
Personally, I think someone choosing to do nothing forever likely has some sort of disability affecting them. Humans, barring neurological complications or severe mental illness, have a primal drive to contribute or at least function. You see it all the time when people get injured or fired. They enjoy their "do nothing" stage... to a point. After a while, they become restless and they want to be involved. A total absence of that, I feel, is suspect, and simply attributing it to laziness doesn't work. Even slothful people have a limit to inaction.
Really, I don't think we're at the stage of society where people need to be going without. Our technology is advanced enough and our productivity is high enough in order to provide everyone a decent quality of life. We just aren't willing to do it. A significant percentage of the world is raised from birth to believe in corrupt ideas such as "personal accountability" (wherein the things that benefit you are conveniently forgotten, and anyone who is without is obviously so because they personally failed and deserve it) and "needing to earn your survival." People are taught to crush others where possible, to hoard advantages, and to "other" their peers. The notion of a state and society that cares for all is specifically labelled as weakness and snuffed out of juveniles who believe in it. Slowly more and more people are coming around to it, but it's nowhere near the point of becoming reality. Most progressives still believe in remarkably conservative and cruel ideas when it comes to support for all. They say they believe in it, but there's always an asterisk next to it with "Terms and conditions apply."
I also think that most incapable people can contribute, in their own way, with the right supports. The issue here is that the system doesn't want them to contribute in their own way with the right supports. The system wants them to contribute like a "normal person," despite someone with difficulties being automatically excluded from that category. This is another failure of bureaucracy. There's very little interest in individualized care and work. You are a number on an assembly line, nothing more.
"Normal." Ralph Klein is coming back to haunt us, with his "severely normal" phrasing. Now there's an argument about how handicapped one has to be to be considered
severely handicapped, and therefore qualify for AISH. Since a lot of people spoke up against kicking people off, now they're trying to change the eligibility criteria to eliminate anyone whose primary issue is a mental health condition.
Because to do otherwise would be discriminatory and punishable by the law
however, when the acceptance rate for even an interview hovers somewhere around 3%, to say nothing of the actual job offer to application ratio, how are you going to be able to tell?
It's an unfortunate fact that it's often not what you know, but who you know (or you could be pleasantly surprised if they're short of experienced applicants). If I were capable of staying awake and alert for 16 hours straight and had everything I needed for disabled access, I might be inclined to apply for a DRO job (not sure what it pays now, but back in the '90s it was about twice minimum wage, plus a flat rate for the training session).
The procedures have hardly changed in the last 30 years other than minor changes to the ID process, and I'm well aware that DROs tend to end up with laryngitis the day after, from reciting the same speech to hundreds of voters over a 12-hour period (you have to say it to every person regardless of whether or not they already heard you say it to the people in front of them).
However... I've been a bit
vocal on social media and on CBC.ca with my opinions of the Reformacons, and since the federal incumbent is Reformacon, they'd be sure to stack the poll workers with their own supporters (they're not supposed to ask what applicants' political affiliation is, but they do anyway). I rather doubt I'd get in unless they were seriously short of workers.
All that said, there are people who want voting to go online, which I think would be handy, but a mistake. They can't even guarantee the accuracy of the VICs, so how could they possibly set up a tamper-proof online polling procedure?
) you can always send letter to Haroon if you want to 
