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TORONTO,
Aug 6 (IPS) - Canadian employers have long used literacy tests to
discriminate against immigrants, minorities, and the poor. Now,
the country's most populous and ethnically diverse province is proposing
to use the tests as a requirement for receiving welfare, or social
assistance.
Those
who fail would have to take remedial courses. Yet, at the same time,
the province of Ontario has cut back funding for adult education
programmes.
Provincial
government officials say the programme, dubbed 'Ontario Works',
will be in place by next March. But opponents are weighing a legal
challenge under the Charter of Rights in Canada's constitution.
The
forced testing ''just reinforces the stigma of the lazy welfare
bum,'' and therefore is a form of discrimination, says Jacquie Chic,
a Toronto lawyer.
One
of Canada's leading civil liberties experts adds that poor people
facing economic destitution are treated differently from the rest
of the population in Ontario, and that the inequality of treatment
will get worse under the new initiative.
''Ontario
has established a regime of ordeal or an obstacle course for disadvantaged
people that includes literacy testing, drug tests and workfare,''
where welfare recipients are obliged to work a certain number of
hours in order to receive benefits, says Alan Borovoy, counsel for
the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
When
the measures are enacted, Ontario will be the first jurisdiction
in North America to force welfare recipients to take literacy and
mathematics tests or risk losing their benefits, says Jamie Peck,
a British-born professor of economic geography at the University
of Wisconsin in the United States and author of the book 'Workfare
States'.
Ontario
is not alone in making welfare a tougher and more bureaucratic business.
''It's happening in the United States, Canada and Britain,'' says
Peck. In many ways, he adds, Canadian welfare programmes remain
more liberal than those in the other two countries.
However,
the racial implications of literacy testing have made even the most
punitive welfare administrators in the other countries leery about
going to the lengths that Ontario is now proposing, says Peck. In
the United States, he notes, literacy testing carries a stigma because
it has been used to bar black voters, generally poorer than the
rest of the U.S. population, from registering to vote in elections.
Officials
say the mandatory testing will target welfare applicants and recipients
with less than a grade-12 education or equivalent. However, mothers
with under-aged children and immigrants who lack sufficient English
will be exempt.
This
means that recent immigrants are less upset over the tougher eligibility
requirements, says Basil Martin of the Ontario Council of Agencies
serving immigrants. However, he notes, Toronto residents of African,
Asian and Indigenous origin are more likely to be unemployed, regardless
of skills and education, and receive poorer incomes and housing
than those of European descent. These minorities will be at risk
of further setbacks.
Toronto,
with a population of some three million, is Ontario's principal
town and reputedly is Canada's most multi-ethnic city. About 53
percent of its residents are non-white. The overall unemployment
rate is about six percent. But among Africans and blacks, it ranges
from 23 percent to 45 percent and among South Asians it is 20 percent,
according to a recent municipal analysis of 1996 national census
data.
No
system is fool-proof and recent immigrants who fall prey to Ontario
Works but who come from authoritarian countries are less likely
than others to join political protests or complain about their treatment,
says Susan Nielsen, who heads the Toronto Adult Student Association.
''Those
born here in Canada have a greater understanding of welfare being
a right in this country,'' Nielsen says.
Efforts
to improve literacy and math skills are not a bad thing, she adds,
but the approach adopted by Ontario Works appears intimidating.
In particular, she worries that people with unacknowledged learning
disabilities, such as dyslexia, will forgo benefits to which they
are entitled rather than go through the humiliation of testing.
''It is a matter of self esteem,'' says Nielsen.
Of
grave concern to advocates and service providers alike, the provision
of adult literacy and education programmes - without which Ontario
Works will serve only to bar welfare applicants - has dwindled.
''Two
years ago, they (the Toronto School Board, whose budget is set by
the province) cat all of the programming to all of the adult-based
schools in the city. It is clear that the province's main motivation
is not about transforming the literacy skills of people on welfare,''
says Ellen Long, a national literacy consultant and researcher.
Rather, she says, policy seems to be designed to discourage people
from applying for welfare in the first place.
As
a result of budget cuts, Toronto's largely volunteer-run, under
funded non-profit programmes have been left to carry the load. They
are able to provide only 3,500 spaces in a city where, on average,
75,000 adults receive welfare per year.
Mike
Van Soelen of the Ministry of Community and Social Services says
that if community-based literacy prgrammes can't keep up with the
demand, privately-owned training companies ''have the experience''
to provide the necessary classes. Ontario Works case workers at
municipal level will ultimately determine whether a welfare recipient's
plans to find employment should include extra literacy and maths
instruction.
Officials
maintain the emphasis on skills is designed to help people into
the workforce. A spokeswoman for the Ontario Federation of Labour,
however, says that some employers use testing and excessive credentials
''to weed out'' job applicants - for example, by demanding that
applicants have a grade-12 education in order to perform basic assembly
work.
Anti-poverty
activist Josephine Grey says she has seen a copy of the proposed
literacy and maths test. She says it includes questions that seem
to be less about applicants' skills needs and more about ''assessing
willingness to enter the workforce.''
This
is no accident, according to Long. Pressure by Ontario Works also
has made many of the provincially funded literacy programmes more
narrowly focused on the immediate hiring needs of employers rather
than on developing self-confident and well-rounded citizens and
job-seekers who have been stuck in poverty.
At
the Preparatory Training Programme (PTP) in Toronto's west end,
for example, hundreds of welfare recipients a year are taught in
short courses to read items like memos, waybills, instructions and
schedules linked to specific types of jobs. This is the kind of
programme endorsed by Van Soelen, the government spokesman.
However,
Tracy Mollins, a spokeswoman for the Toronto Advocacy Council for
Adult Literacy, says PTP's approach is about ''shoving people into
short-term, dead-end jobs.''
John
O'Leary, executive director of Frontier College, a nationwide volunteer
literacy education group, says ''rates of literacy are lower in
low-income communities and (among) people living in poverty. The
issue isn't literacy. It is poverty and injustice. Literacy is a
way of getting at that.''
''We
don't feel it is necessary to coerce people to learn,'' O'Leary
says. ''The challenge is to make the learning meaningful and accessible.''
Even
educators who would seem to be natural boosters for Ontario Works
have kept their distance from the scheme. John MacLaughlin says
he takes exception to the government's ''harsh'' emphasis on literacy
testing, adding that he would have preferred the more neutral-sounding
''basic skills assessment.''
''If
I run a literacy programme, I have a real problem attracting clients.
But if I call it workplace skills, there is a line-up outside my
door,'' says MacLaughlin.
While
Ontario Works strikes some as unwelcoming, Borovoy, at the Canadian
Civil Liberties Association, says it is also unforgiving.
The
programme imposes a mandatory lifetime ban from welfare against
anyone convicted of fraudulently receiving benefits. ''Nobody else
is subjected to such mandatory provisions,'' says Borovoy, who notes
that Canadian judges have plenty of latitude in sentencing people
convicted of other offenses. (END/IPS/NA/HD/PW/AA/01)
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