Former cabinet minister Moe Sihota is the new president of the B.C. NDP.
And his rise to the top spot likely ensures that the B.C. NDP will continue its rightward course under the leadership of Carole James.
Sihota was a key minister in NDP governments of the 1990s, which adopted a tough-love approach to welfare recipients. The Mike Harcourt government barely uttered a peep when the federal Liberals eliminated national standards for social assistance in the 1995 federal budget.
After national standards were abolished with the elimination of the Canada Assistance Plan, the NDP government infuriated antipoverty activists with a 1995 rule saying people could only collect welfare if they had lived in the province for at least three months. Sihota was one of the few lawyers in cabinet at the time, and presumably knew that mobility rights and rights to security of the person were guaranteed in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The B.C. Supreme Court ruled that the residency requirement was beyond cabinet's power under the GAIN Act. Mr. Justice Spencer's 1996 decision didn't deal with the constitutional issues, and the NDP government quickly reintroduced the residency requirement.
This prompted another constitutional challenge from antipoverty groups. In 1997, the NDP government backed down, notably after it had won the provincial election.
After Gordon Campbell became premier, the B.C. Liberals made it tougher for single moms to collect welfare. Family-maintenance payments were clawed back, and single mothers were deemed "employable" when their kids turn three, even though there's a child-care crisis in this province.
With James at the helm, the NDP has kept relatively quiet about the B.C. Liberal government's draconian welfare policies, which are among the most punitive in North America. In this province--unlike in most jurisdictions--welfare recipients can't make any money on the side without the government deducting this on a dollar-by-dollar basis from their cheques.
All of this has been well-documented by the B.C. office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
The Campbell government's welfare policies are also directly responsible for B.C. registering the worst child-poverty record in Canada for six straight years.
The NDP often makes a point of highlighting the child-poverty rates. But typical of the James-led party, it refused to call for an increase in welfare rates in its recent response to B.C.'s abysmal record.
Instead, the NDP called for an increase in the minimum wage, more accessible and high-quality childcare, and more social housing. Welfare isn't even mentioned in the NDP news release about child poverty.
From this, we can only conclude that the NDP thinks it's okay that the B.C. Liberal government claws back every dollar of income and every dollar of family maintenance from single mothers across B.C.--and that these policies have nothing to do with the child-poverty rate.
Is it any wonder that so many B.C. voters stayed home in the last election?
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Comments
Oh yeah, Sihota was recruited by Carole James herself... whose popularity is only exceeded by her negativity in opinion polls. Sounds like the NDP better go back to the drawing board.
As a working class hero I have no problem with a social system which helps those who need it. All too often I have seen employable men and women living off welfare when they could have been working. And this was during a period when store where looking for workers.
They have to come up with some type of system where the person goes out to work even if it doing communite work.
This will improve the persons mental state as well as showing the individual that if you work you can acquire some of life luxuries. Like a car or an LCD.
I think a better use of MY tax payer dollars would be an increase for the people who deserve it most.
Our retiree's. Why should they have to live below the poverty level? They are the ones who built this country
I'm a single mother, two kids, and I work my a$$ off everyday to look after them while sticking to a very tight budget. It's difficult but we're getting by and slowly gaining some ground. By comparison, I have a neighbour that is also a single mother of two who doesn't work as hard or budget as stringently. This woman will complain until the cows come home about how the world owes her something and her personal woes while coming over to me asking if she can borrow $20 to buy her kids milk while wearing a new Lululemon outfit. A few doors down the other side of me is another single mother who buys her son an X-box for his birthday and then complains about how they have no money for his soccer shoes. What is up with some of these people's priorities?
I moved here from Ontario a few years ago and I cannot get over the sense of entitlement that runs rampant in this city. My neighbours epitomize this deluded and self defeating mindset and when it's combined with their irresponsible spending habits it becomes very clear, at least to me, what is directly responsible for the child poverty problems in this province, and it sure isn't the government.
Helen
Surrey, BC
I don’t recall the residency rule having been struck down by the courts, although a Charter challenge may well have been launched. If so, I doubt it would have succeeded under the mobility rights section, which says that the right to move to and take up residence in any province and the right to pursue the gaining of a livelihood in any province is "subject to any laws providing for reasonable residency requirements as a qualification for the receipt of publicly provided social services.”
In any case, the BC rule was lifted for other reasons.
Every province in Canada, save for Quebec, deducts child support from income assistance payments. Draconian indeed.
Clearly you can see where my bias lies. I could only hope that you'll be more forthright with yours in the future.
Thanks for your comment. I adjusted the story to reflect what happened. I recalled the measure being struck down by the courts. It was struck down, but not on constitutional grounds. You can check out Mr. Justice Spencer's ruling on October 3, 1996:
http://www.courts.gov.bc.ca/jdb-txt/sc/96/13/s96-1365.txt
Here's what the B.C. Public Interest Advocacy Centre stated in its newsletter (it got the date wrong on Spencer's ruling, but you'll see BCPIAC's position):
http://bcpiac.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/newsletter1997jan.pdf
The NDP government then reintroduced the three-month residency requirement. The federal government eliminated national welfare standards, but retained the ban on residency requirements for collecting welfare for provinces that wanted funding under the Canada Health and Social Transfer.
The federal government withheld a $47-million payment to B.C. for 1995, which was well in excess of the $25 million in provincial savings from the residency requirement, according to a 1997 report by Jack Stilborn on the Parliament of Canada site.
http://www2.parl.gc.ca/Content/LOP/ResearchPublications/bp379-e.htm
He went on to write:
"The federal government obtained British Columbia’s agreement to withdraw residency requirements by undertaking to bring the original penalty into line with the dollar-for-dollar penalties applied to other provinces; this meant reducing the penalty to just over $20 million (reflecting actual savings to the province achieved by the residency requirements). As well, it was agreed that a national multilateral process for considering issues of internal mobility would be established, with a two-year timeframe. It may also be noteworthy that the agreement about residency requirements coincided with a second agreement beneficial to the province, whereby federal funding for the settlement of immigrants would be increased by $67.2 million over three years.(68)
The fact that the residency requirement persisted for well over a year after the application of federal penalties may have reflected the political appeal of the requirement within British Columbia (the government portrayed its stance as a valiant attempt to maintain assistance levels, despite inflows of recipients from provinces that had recently lowered benefits, and despite the federal 5% cap on CAP transfer growth applying to B.C.). Also reflected may have been other circumstances, such as the apparent absence of a clear federal intention to continue penalization. In any event, it is significant that the requirement was not cancelled as a result of heightened federal penalties, but rather by more positive inducements."
sihota came once, came twice and the NDP will be thrown in the bin of discarded political party just like the socreds. Thanks Moe. You are a hero.
The problem is there are some, more altruistic types, who don't approve of Sihota's style. Probably due to Sihota's tough stances and take no prisoners approach, he has made enemies outside of the NDP in the established right of centre crowd. The Sihota witch hunt of the 90's was unfounded and amounted to the law society of bc taking issue with a couple of "undotted i's" in a case where Sihota's client was not interested in pursuing any charges against the man, because Sihota had done nothing wrong and the woman was content with the work done by Sihota's firm.
If Sihota passed Carol James litmus test, she passes mine too.
I can see you're not a fan of Moe Sihota. Any more than Glen Clark or Jim Green.
As for your history of BC Benefits, it sounds a bit incomplete because it doesn't mention the fact that in-work benefits were established at the same time. That move met with some approval from academic experts in income and tax policy fields who normally scorn anything the NDP says or does.
To me your rendition of those policy changes sounds like the offical SPARC story line, which also ignores the in-work benefits. If you want to try another official story line, you could try interviewing some of the longer service or retired "policy analysis" types from the provincial welfare department and ask them what is meant by the term "Smallwood effect".
As for Sihota, I think it's great that the NDP party president's position is going to be occupied, I think for the first time ever, by someone with actual parliamentary and Cabinet experience, and by someone with connections to the business and professional groups in society where the NDP is badly under-represented.
Personally, I think SIhota will be able to work wonders in terms of rejuvenating the NDP apparatus. And if he succeeds as I hope, the next election won't be a re-run of the 1986 Bob Skelly campaign, which is what the party bureaucracy gave Carole James this Spring, and Jack Layton last Fall, with the result that Premier Gordon M. Campbell stayed in office, and BC was the only province in the nation where the NDP's popular vote and seat count went down.
Since you consider Sihota to be news, I wonder if the Straight plans to actually interview him, if not now, then perhaps in a few months?
Rod Smelser
No, I don't have any advice for you other than perhaps you should seek some kind of employment as you clearly did not save enough money for your own retirement.
Your comments are completely off topic from mine. Try re-reading my coment as it is quite clearly directed at a statement made in article, "..government is directly responsible for B.C. registering the worst child-poverty record in Canada for six straight years."
Helen S
Surrey, BC