Dear Mr. Prime Minister… an email from an educated voice in the depths of poverty

Dear Mr. Prime Minister (or the assistant to Mr. Prime Minister who filters through the emails)
 
I am writing you today out of frustration and despair regarding the government’s complete and utter blindness to the reality of day-to-day life for the citizens it is supposed to be serving.  
 
Let me tell you a little story.
 
It is the story of a 30 year old woman who once believed in the rhetoric of the meritocracy… That if she worked hard and tried her best, things would turn out okay… and that if she worked hard and tried her best, Canada’s highly-acclaimed social safety net would assist her in trying to achieve her goals so that she would no longer have to be a burden to the state. 
 
Upon discovering that she would have to support not one, but two autistic children, she decided to go back to school and get her education in an effort to make life better for herself and her family.  She studied hard and managed to become an exceptional thinker, yet unexceptional student due to the conditions of her domestic life.  She obtained a student position on a SSHRC-funded research grant in her fourth year as an undergraduate and things began to look up.  She enjoyed and excelled at her job, so much so that she decided to extend her student status… for, you see, federally-funded SSHRC grants would only employ her if she was a student, despite her now 2 and a half years of experience and career success.  Unable to secure funding for a Master’s program and unable to access more student loans to continue her studies (as she had accrued over $50,000 in loans to get a degree which would prove to be worthless unless she invested more money and time into her “credentials”), she found herself with Ph.D. level skills in the social sciences, and facing a life of underemployment.
 
In late 2007 things began to get even worse.  The stresses of poverty and trying to support and care for two autistic children while working and studying began to have damaging effects on her marriage and her mental health.  She separated from her husband in the hopes that they would be able to work out their respective issues later down the road.  However, psychological stability comes at a cost.  Unable to secure reliable after school care for her children, due to 1) the cost and 2) the lack of space for the care of disabled school-aged children in local programs, she had to take a reduction in hours at her place of employment, and become the sole care-giver of her sons, while working at her office in the morning, and from home in the evenings after the children went to bed.
 
In December 2007, the high cost of winter was beginning to take it’s toll.  Unable to secure billable oil delivery due to the fact that she was a “credit risk” as her student loan went into repayment and she was still trying to pay off the debt her family had accrued from living 8 years in absolute Canadian poverty, she could only afford $150 worth of oil every payday.  As the cost of home heating oil rose and rose in December and into January 2008, she found that $150 would heat her rented home for 10 days, which she was able to stretch out to 13 days if she kept the room temperature just below 15 degrees.  
 
Xmas was a bad one.  After enjoying two years off the Salvation Army Xmas List, she sadly had to call and put her name on the list again so that her boys could at least have a few presents under the tree.  Her parents tried to help out all they could, but being on a fixed income themselves, the majority of support they could provide was emotional.  Friends and extended family donated food and money to try and get her through the holidays, but there is only so much that informal support systems can provide.  Further, all the government payments that she was used to receiving at the end of every month had come two weeks early.  Her rent cheque bounced and she had to confine her diet to one meal of macaroni and processed cheese a day so that her kids could eat properly and her home could be heated.
 
Then, right after Xmas, a big announcement from the federal government!  Tax breaks and a reduction in the GST!  Her taxes were reassessed, and she received $107 for her 2006 household income of $27,468.  However, in that reassessment, it was discovered that she had been overpayed or her Universal Child Care Benefit, the one that was taxable and that she had apparently spent on popcorn and beer.  To her surprise, her January payment of benefits was half the amount she expected, and was half of what she was counting on to stock her empty fridge, fill her empty oil tank, and pay for her bus fare to and from work for the next two weeks.

   
 
She fought back tears as the CCTB customer service representative explained to her why her payment was half of what she expected. 
“You’ll be getting a reassessment notice in the mail,” the representative said.
 
As she was hanging up the phone, her tears of desperation turned into tears of anger.
 
“What a stupid and unfair way to take repayment,” she thought, “In January, the month after the most expensive month of the year for Canadian families, they decide that taking $400 in one lump payment is a way to handle an overpayment for a family living below the poverty line.”
 
If you haven’t guessed by now, that woman is me, Charlene Croft, a 30-year-old-overeducated-underemployed-mother-of-two-autistic-children-that-she-can’t-secure-childcare-for-and-is-wondering-what-kind-of-supper-she-can-make-with-condiments-and-rice…
 
The thing is Mr. Harper, where I once believed in the promises that this system of meritocracy and self-governance and corporate-capitalism would lead to the good life if you played the game according to the rules… I am now beginning to feel duped by the rhetoric of social mobility and the pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps mentality that this government believes is for the benefit of the Canadian citizenry, especially for those growing number of Canadians living in poverty and struggling day-to-day just to get by.  
 
I don’t think that you, or anyone of your party members, or any parliament members from ANY of the parties for that matter, truly understand what it is like to live under these conditions.  You think that if you throw money at problems, they will go away, or at least subdue the masses discontent so that they can go out and buy popcorn and beer.  The Canadian government has grown ineffective and stagnant… because all around it, society is changing… culture is changing… the NEEDS of the citizenry are changing… and yet, here it sits, in the same version it has for decades and decades, actually perpetuating and, to a certain extent, causing the growing number of social problems like violence and crime, weakened family values and sense of community, and even psychological distress as we are all told that we must fend for ourselves in the society that has been created around us by power-hungry elitists who have been educated by out-dated and irrelevant paradigms for this day and age.
 
I feel the need to say this all now, not only because of my own specific troubles and personal discontent, but because I see, and indeed feel, the discontent around me.  Any keen social scientist would be able to tell you that the masses are grumbling… that the poverty-stricken in Western society are unstable and unhealthy, and that we are all uncertain of what the future holds… a sentiment that I think even you can appreciate.  An effective government today needs to be strong, and certain, and needs to reinvent itself around society… not try to reinvent society around it.
 
So take this email as you will.  I’ve copied it to not only you, but all the leaders of all the parties in Anglo-Canada as well as my own MP, Peter Stoffer, and will also be posting it on my blog.  I don’t have a lot of money, I don’t have a lot of power, but I always have my words and my voice which I will continue to use to encourage change and the questioning of the way things are, just because it’s the way things have been done.  I won’t hold my breath for a response, but I do feel better that I got this off my chest.
 
Sincerely,
 
Charlene Croft
Halifax, Nova Scotia
charlene.m.croft@gmail.com
http://charlenecroft.wordpress.com
   
–
“What an absurd amount of energy I have been wasting all my life trying to figure out how things “really are,” when all the time they weren’t” – Hugh Prather