Democracies are only constructive when citizens provide feedback to their leaders and when the leaders listen to, acknowledge, and utilize statements of appreciation, suggestion and criticism to effect better service to those whom they have accepted responsibility for.

This open letter is being made available on the Internet for wide access to other persons who are concerned that tax dollars be spent effectively to provide assistance to those who require it in such a way as to empower them to be able to progress beyond such a need. Many decisionmakers and a variety of mass media will be made aware of the address of this letter. It is their responsibility to make themselves aware of the contents, and, they will be held responsible by the electorate for their response, or lack thereof, to the contents.

Individual citizens are encouraged to submit a record of their own experiences, both positive and negative, and their own suggestions ... so that the potentially evolving system will return respect to those who seek to be contributing citizens of Canada.

The Pareto 80/20 Rule will apply here as it does for many outcomes in reality. That is, 80% of this letter will possibly have little application for you personally; the other 20% will ... or you can do something about it. The sections which are relevant for you will often differ from those relevant for someone else. Yet all of them are real --- based on actual experience not intellectualized possibilities and shoulds.

The reporting of facts is not abusive.
If you do not like the description of the real status quo which you belong to, change it. Saying that it shouldn't be --- or isn't --- because you don't like to be included in the victimizing group --- doesn't change reality. Defending the status quo by saying that what you don't want to hear is abusive is denial. And denial is neither constructive nor intelligent.

Personal experiences are real, not theoretical.
When such experiences are reported directly, they are least likely to be made less accurate through the projections, misunderstandings, assumptions, and imaginations of others. The personal history provided here enables the reader to become aware of some of the many factors which contribute to the development of social service requirements and the difficulties encountered in resolving them.

Many persons are ending up on social assistance who never expected to.
I worked 10 years part-time for my father while I attended public and high school. My father was a good citizen who never was before the courts for any charge, who seldom required assistance from the health care system, who produced milk, beef, grains and other products to feed Canadians, and, who regularly paid taxes. None of my close relatives had been on social assistance since my great grandparents immigrated in the late 1840's ... until I had to make the choice.

Cultural expectations and hard work are no protection against personal financial disaster. I worked a further 22 years, not including 4 years of self-paid university education in the middle of that period --- during which I provided many services to various Canadians, paid taxes, saved money, built my own house (fully paid for) and ended that period with an excellent credit rating.

During 1992, I worked for 2 USA companies as a consultant marketing financial products. I earned a lot of money that year ... which would have netted the government a healthy tax revenue. Instead, I ended up receiving nothing for a year of work and business expense.

Can we trust our laws and the justice department ...

In this age of global business, entrepreneurs and consultants will increasingly be at the mercy of the legal systems of foreign countries in which they are carrying out business. The USA is one of Canada's major trading partners and is expected by most Canadians to represent one of the most secure and just legal systems in the world. Obviously, from my experience and the experiences of thousands of others, this is NOT the reality.

Is it encouraging to blame individuals for the failure of governments?
Both the F.B.I. and the R.C.M.P. discontinued any prosecution after 13 months ... because the amount of monies lost was less than 100 million USA dollars! Politically, the FBI had received instructions to dump the many smaller cases and concentrate only on the few huge ones. No one thought of raising their budget and manpower to reduce the spread of these injustices. Obviously, justice is not being served in North America for thousands of persons. The outcome was to leave me penniless and $40,000 in debt.

Mounting a civil case is only possible for people who have the money to hire high-priced legal firms. Even then, crucial evidence required for the success of a civil case will only be made public through a capital (government) prosecution ... bank records, company records, tax forms, .... Thus no federal prosecution usually means no hope for a civil prosecution. And in any case, embezzlers often spend the money they have stolen soon after they get it.

Embezzlement and fraud are only one area of many possibilities as to why individuals and families are increasingly finding it impossible to remain tax contributing citizens. Others include:

1. Acquiring a demanding chronic illness
   which state medicine has no remedy for;
   
   
2. Involvement in costly and lengthy legal suits
   which net you next to nothing;
   
   
3. Sustaining near fatal or severe injuries
   from accidents caused by others;
   
   
4. Repetitive layoffs from well known companies
   which have been poorly managed;
   
   
5. One or more divorces through a lack of life skills
   to result in asset splitting;
   
   
6. The influence of $50 billion of advertising over the past 50 years to promote addictions to nicotine, alcohol, and sex;
   
   
7. The centuries old pattern of promoting alcohol dependency in military training.

I am sure that you can add others to the above list.
I have sustained almost ALL of the above and received little assistance or compensation from company insurance programs or state support programs ... although some people acquiring same did later. If the government, which now reports a $5 billion UIC surplus were to re-invest some of that in empowerment programs, it could contribute to the recovery from and prevention of ALL of the above.

I know it could be done because I took the initiative, did the research, and developed the means to do so ... on my own time and with my own meagre funds. By the grace of God and my humility in asking for spiritual guidance and following that guidance, I have succeeded where many others have failed ... even many times where I thought I would fail ... until I tried with the help of God.
You can see the results at:

Much of the savings attained by the UIC recently have originated by the placement of previous full-time workers into

• part-time positions
  (leading to increasing use of non government supported food banks and soup kitchens);
  
  
• persons unemployed longer than a year living with parents, relatives, or friends
  (increasing levels of interpersonal conflict and relationship stress);
  
  
• persons transferred to Social Assistance from UIC
  (continuously rising rates of new applicants for Assistance);
  
  
• persons denied Social Assistance because they live with an employed person
  (encouraging marital and common law separations and single-parent households);
  
  
• growing numbers of homeless
  (increasing levels of crime and chronic illnesses).
  

I reject the accusation that I have had to access social service funds because of mistakes I made and irresponsible personal financial planning. That was the response I received on Tuesday, September 23, 1998 when I tried to apply for assistance from the Jarvis - Wellesley office of Toronto. It is a response which is commonly voiced by status quo representatives and which others on social assistance have remarked to me that they hear often.

Please see the Ben Stein column in USA Today, Wednesday, September 23, 1998 --- entitled "If only Clinton valued his opponent's dignity." When you take away the dignity of others ... "people tend to fight harder, not slink away." The difficulty here, for the government and the Canadian taxpayer, is that the social service applicant will be prompted to fight harder to ---

1. Get a job at any cost to get away from the service intended to "help", not "victimize";
2. Get even with Social Services by doing everything to make the system fail;
3. Give up out of desperation and depression and fail to contribute anything further.

Programmed losers can easily be found in any shelter. You may not like the phrase (good). If a person has no wish to improve themselves and have no confidence in the social service or other community agencies to help them --- there is little chance that they will make any changes.

No changes means everything stays the same, or, gets worse. If a person has "learned" this attitude from their mentoring, then we must hold the mentors responsible. Social mentors are mothers, fathers, relatives, friends, teachers, peers, mass media, church leaders, government representatives, work supervisors, wives, husbands ... our culture. If the significant others in those areas abuse us constantly by ---

• needlessly limiting our freedom;
• spoiling us and overprotecting us;
• making promises which are never kept;
• telling us that we are useless accidents;
• structuring our environment to be unpredictable;
• encouraging us to be proud, intolerant, ignorant ---

--- then we are "programmed" to have little respect for ourselves or others and to follow unassertive, despairing, and depressing lives of failure.

There is a saying in business that every unsatisfied customer tells 10 friends and acquaintances of their negative experience. They are a billboard of anti-our-business advertising. Satisfied customers seem to only share their success with one other person. The net result is that it is worth 10 times the effort to save a customer and have them choose to be lifelong contributors than to needlessly have them fail.

The same is true with interpersonal relationships ... social services. Every citizen "programmed" or "allowed" to needlessly fail, represents a "hard" applicant who may require tremendous effort and cost to resurrect. If a person has come to believe that winning, for them, is impossible ... they won't even try ... for trying, and losing ... is just more losing.

Panhandlers are professional losers.
After 10 days experience of being new to the downtown Toronto hostel area, homelessness, and bureaucratic deficiencies --- I was severely chastised one evening by a "professional" for not knowing where all the locations were for free meals. After all, how could I call myself a panhandler if I could not totally live off the benefits provided by others.

The man assumed that because I was homeless, I would then "naturally" become a panhandler. His behaviour and description of this "profession" was to eat free, sleep free, collect assistance, dress in discarded clothing, and NEVER look for or take work. What he did not realize, nor could accept as "intelligent" was that I had no desire to become a panhandler.

My focus was, and is, on getting a job, becoming self-reliant again, and contributing to society. Whatever the abuses he had suffered in the past, he no longer wanted the undependable, fake, hypocritical options offered by society. He was content with the stability and security he felt he had by living at the bottom of our income-driven society.

What he did not see, was that if all persons believed and behaved like him he would have no free food, free shelter, benefits, clothing, or freedom. He represents the "lost" who destroy the fabric of a society which provides bandaid solutions. There are many, and we are creating more. When do we stop with the bandaids and seriously look at providing a cure?

Stein concludes his article with:

"If Clinton believed that those who differ with him have some dignity and are not mere varmints to be run over, he would be ahead of the game. Nixon learned this lesson too late, and it looks as if Clinton will never learn it.

But it's a darned good message for those of us who are looking on from the sidelines, wishing none of this mess had ever happened."

Will the Ministry of Social Services ever learn, or, will it continue to simply add to the destruction of Canadian lives?

Why is it so hard to get off and stay off Social Assistance?
It has been five years since I was left too poor to declare bankruptcy. Yes, unless you plan in advance to go personally bankrupt --- chances are that you won't be able to. I always intended to recover financially through employment and repay my debts ... so I did not plan for bankruptcy. In Ontario, it costs more than $1,300 to declare bankruptcy.

When you don't have any credit left, no savings, little income, few or no assets, and less than $100. cash --- $1,300 is a lot of money. So, because I was honest, well-intentioned, had always managed money well and been self-directed ... creditors felt that they lost out because my personal bankruptcy would have allowed them to simply write-off my debt. Either way, my credit went from bad to worse and has been there since. If you can't even get up to a zero balance, many things in our society become non choices.

Just how good is the economy?
The public is continually encouraged to have confidence in the Canadian economy by the reporting of monthly declared bankruptcies and suggested levels of unemployment. As was the reality with me, I am fundamentally bankrupt but I am not part of the statistics because I cannot afford to declare bankruptcy!

How many other Canadians fit this profile? No one seems to question the relevance of the reported statistics. Where are the investigative journalists? Where are the supposed legislative representatives who have pledged to serve Canada. Hiding in denial behind the status quo?

Consider this example.
If out of our pool of businesses, 7 or 8 thousand go bankrupt every month --- how long will it take for all businesses in Canada to become bankrupt? Of course, there are new businesses being created. Sometimes the new businesses are simply the bankrupted business re-started under a different name.

I know of one company which has declared bankruptcy 6 times and restarted the same business under a different name 6 times. There have been many reports in the media during the past 6 months that have declared that 99% of Canadians have pledged ALL of their income to debt repayment and necessities. This reinforces the oft-quoted American finding that if the income of 60% of the population were out of work for ONE month, they would be on the street (homeless).

If any bankruptcy statistics are to be taken constructively, then each of these factors and their numbers should be included and detailed. Of course, that might shock the status quo ... it might even lead to some constructive motivation to make some changes. Just think of it: YOU may be one pay cheque away from being homeless.