Claiming that illiteracy and drug addiction are hindering people from getting off government welfare rolls, John Baird, the provincial minister of Community and Social Services, says the tests will help welfare recipients "get back into the workforce and make them productive citizens."

Since first being elected in 1995, the Harris government has made welfare recipients a special target of its attacks on workers and farmers. In 1995 more than 1 million people were on welfare. That year the government reduced welfare payments across the board by 21.6 percent. Since then, the government has driven 579,000 people off the welfare rolls and the remaining 430,000 could be cut off from welfare unless they agree to the literacy and drug tests.

Currently, 50,000 people on welfare have been forced into "workfare" programs where they either work 17 hours a week in "community employment placements" or face having their welfare checks cut off.

The drug testing will be administered by "specialized staff" in government welfare offices who will screen welfare recipients who they "suspect" of having an addiction. Those suspected will then be forced to take oral or written tests that the government says can "indicate an addiction." Those who decline to take the tests have a "choice" of providing blood or urine samples to a doctor to prove that they are drug free. Refusal to take the test or provide body samples will result in the government ending the person's welfare benefits.

The literacy tests to measure math and literacy skills will be given to welfare recipients who do not possess high school diplomas. If those failing this test refuse to then enroll in government literacy training courses they will loose their benefits.

These attacks on the human dignity and the right to privacy of working people on welfare have not gone unanswered. The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), which represents 15,000 workers who interact with welfare recipients in Ontario, voted at its annual conference last November that its members not participate in the drug screening program. Sid Ryan, president of Ontario CUPE, said union members will not do the government's "dirty work for them" and will not participate in "any type of work which will further marginalize poor people."

Individual doctors have also objected to the Social Assistance Reform Act because it requires doctors perform the urine and blood tests. Dr. Phillip Berger, chief of family and community medicine at St. Michael's hospital in Toronto, has called the act "a complete contradiction to the ethics of the doctor-patient relationship" because it violates the right of patients to take medical tests on a voluntary basis. "Welfare recipients are not criminals," he said. "They have not lost any of the civil rights that the rest of us enjoy." Berger has criticized the Ontario Medical Association and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario for refusing to oppose the measure.

Keith Norton, who heads up the Ontario Human Rights Commission, has said that the commission may challenge Bill 142 in court because drug and alcohol testing "as a condition of receipt of public assistance" could violate Canada's federal Charter of Rights and Freedoms which prohibits discrimination against those with an alcohol or drug disability.

Ontario is the only province in Canada that imposes lifetime bans on receiving welfare to anyone convicted of so-called "welfare fraud." The impact of these criminal prosecutions was highlighted in August when Kimberly Rogers, a student who was eight months pregnant, was found dead in her apartment in the town of Sudbury in Northern Ontario. Rogers had been charged with welfare fraud in April 2000 because she had taken out a government student loan totaling $49,000 to help pay for her education while she was receiving welfare benefits. Rogers was sentenced to six months house arrest and cut off welfare benefits for three months.

Although an autopsy was unable to determine the cause of Rogers' death, Shelley Martel, a New Democratic Party member of the Ontario parliament, called on the Sudbury coroner's office to hold an inquest into Roger's death to determine if the government's prosecution of Roger's had contributed to her death.
 
 
Related article:
Canadian rulers target rights of workers  
 
 
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