We all need a little help sometimes.
But there is a stigma when it comes to needing help.
Needing help does not make us weak or lazy.
One in seven Canadians live in poverty and the Canadian unemployment rate was 7.0 per cent in August 2015.
According to Statistics Canada, 1.2 million Canadians are part of the “working poor”, those who work at least 910 hours annually. That means they are working 17.5 hours a week at their jobs. This number represents 6.4 per cent of people in Canada.
Those working part-time jobs, either through lack of local work or lack of hours at their job, know how hard it is to get more hours. Those with families know how difficult it is to have multiple jobs and raise their children.
It’s easy to blame the people in poverty for being in poverty but a lot of the time, it is luck of the draw that they are not able to pay their bills and buy food.
Cases of welfare fraud are extremely low. In Ontario, 3 per cent of those on actually on welfare abuse the system. Since this is the largest Canadian province with the highest number of people on welfare, if we used this as a base line against the national average of 1,679,800, only 50 thousand people across Canada would be abusing the system. That would also mean that 1,629,406 people would be legitimately using the system.
Abuse happens, but is the stupidity of 50 thousand people really going to black mark everyone else who goes on Welfare.
I hear it all the time how lazy welfare people are, how they do not deserve to be helped, how it is obviously their fault for being in that situation.
Come on!
Are we really going to continue the ‘if it is isn’t happening to me, then it isn’t happening’ attitude? Are we really going to continue painting everyone with such a broad brush that we do not see the heart of the problem?
What does the amount of working poor say about our levels of employment, the availability of work or the types of people who use the system?
What about people whom physically unable to work? What about single-mothers, disabled persons or seniors?
In an interview with Niamh Menz for Disability Employment Awareness Month, she gave me some interesting statistics. Sixty per cent of us will be disabled by the time we are in the senior age bracket.
Looking at the rest of our lives, we are all disabled at one point. As children we all needed help. What about times when we needed medical care? Pregnant women cannot always do everything, especially later in their pregnancies.
Stigmas for mental illness still exist, especially when it comes to working while dealing with mental health issues.
There are many reasons someone needs help.
Before we judge the people in the system, we should question why the system is needed.
