Social Policy in Ontario

Stop blaming ‘computer glitch’ for welfare woes

Posted on February 6, 2015 in Social Security Debates

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TheStar.com – Opinion/Commentary – Ontario’s welfare system has been problem-plagued for 13 years. The culprit is bigger than technological.
Feb 05 2015.   By: Carol Goar, Star Columnist

It is possible, but unlikely, that the neighbourhood surrounding the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health is an isolated aberration in a province-wide success story. That would fit the explanation offered by Premier Kathleen Wynne in November. She blamed a computer “glitch” for a few isolated problems in the delivery of social assistance payments.

Dozens of people in Parkdale — most with cognitive impairments — have received letters from the Ministry of Community and Social Services telling them their disability benefits have been suspended.

It is possible, but unprovable, that the schmozzle extends well beyond the periphery of CAMH. Systemic problems often surface first in areas where there is a large concentration of social assistance recipients and a vigilant network of anti-poverty activists.

That would fit the explanation offered last week by Richard Steele, the bureaucrat who oversees social assistance operations. “We now have a clear sense of priorities,” he wrote in an internal memo obtained by Donovan Vincent of the Star. He estimated it would take at least 10 weeks to sort things out.

There is a third — more unsettling — possibility. Maybe this isn’t a computer problem. Maybe it goes deeper than technology.

If that turns out to be true, the $242-million social assistance management program that the government just rolled out will never work. Computers treat people as interchangeable widgets. They don’t take into account that Ontarians who depend on social assistance (446,500 welfare recipients, 448,500 disability support recipients) have unpredictable lives, unstable housing, intermittent earnings and episodic illnesses. They don’t allow for flexibility or discretion.

That was the fundamental flaw in Ontario’s previous social assistance management system. Initially policy analysts thought its design errors were correctable. But when the province finally got the bugs out — at a cost of $200 million — the truth became apparent. The system was doing exactly what it was meant to do: reducing the government’s payroll, eliminating the room for individual judgment, penalizing recipients for deviating from the province’s harsh rules, and cutting the welfare rolls.

The provincial Liberals inherited that year-old system when they took power in 2003. They could have replaced it, repurposed it or gone back to a face-to-face system. But they didn’t. What they did instead was add more rules, make a few minor adjustments and create new incentives to push people into the workforce.

Nor will the new system make allowance for unforeseen circumstances: domestic violence, evictions, sudden changes in earnings, medical emergencies or funerals. That was never the intent, as Community and Social Services Minister Helena Jaczek made clear. The government was modernizing its computer software to deliver social assistance benefits “more efficiently and consistently.”

Advocates for the poor, homeless and mentally ill are too busy right now tracking down lost payments and getting benefits reinstated to focus on the big picture. But they’re not naive. “Everything that is happening occurs against a backdrop of basic stupidity and discrimination that is built into the skeleton structure of ODSP (Ontario Disability Support Program),” says Sarah Shartal, a lawyer who fights for the city’s most vulnerable people. “I am enraged by the callousness of this system. It causes profound fear when people have their ability to maintain their housing and food threatened.”

She does not fault front-line workers at local social assistance offices. “They are making gazillions of phone calls trying to sort out these problems,” Shartal says. Their incoming lines are jammed. Their days aren’t long enough to deal with the complaints pouring in. Each has a caseload of 150 to 300 clients.

“This is a systemic failure of ODSP to accommodate recipients who live with cognitive and perceptual impairments.”

After 12 years in power, the Liberals can no longer blame former premier Mike Harris for Ontario’s harsh, rule-bound social assistance system. It’s theirs now.

After two years as premier, Wynne can no longer hold her predecessor Dalton McGuinty responsible. She could have put her commitment to social justice at the heart of Ontario’s income support system. But she left the Harris/McGuinty policies in place and introduced new tools to manage the system. She owns it now.

Eventually the snafus will be eliminated. The upheaval in Parkdale will subside. But the fear and distrust of government will deepen. Computer science has no formula to fix that.

< http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2015/02/05/stop-blaming-computer-glitch-for-welfare-woes-goar.html >

Tags: budget, featured, Health, housing, ideology, poverty, rights, standard of living

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