By Kendall Worth!
Honourable Brendan Maguire, Minister of Commnunity Services
Dear Minister;
I must say, this news about your sudden crossing the floor from the Liberals to the Progressive Conservatives came to the community as a shock and surprise. However, the community of people on income assistance, I advocate for through my BLOG has very high expectations for you, resulting from this move. This previous post makes points about the principle expectations behind all expectations. Afterall, Brendan, you were a member of the Liberal Government from 2013 till 2021 when the whole ESIA Transformation was supposed to be taking place as this post points out.
In this very recent post I brought up the question: was the whole ESIA Transformation just a government hoax the whole time? With you crossing the floor, maybe this Transformation wasn't a hoax. However, the fact still remains, that, the results of this program – though a few changes happened -- did not result in ESIA Transformation.
Brendan, lets talk about what still needs to happen to change the system of Employment Supports and Income Assistance, in Nova Scotia.
As talked about in the now folded Nova Scotia Advocate article, Income Assistance recipients being allowed to keep more of their earned income from employment, and a $100 increase in income assistance did happen following this publication. The cold hard truth is people still cannot afford to live and that is the bottom line. In fact, since the increase in Income Assistance happened, and since we were allowed to start keeping more from employment earnings, the homeless population in Nova Scotia has increased enormously, and, inflation has got out of control.
Income Assistance recipients in Nova Scotia were expecting Transformation to result in them receiving a livable income. We hope Mr Maguire, this is what you will push for. As pointed out in this post, the expected April 1 increase of $300.00 is good news for the 60% or so, who will qualify, but what about everyone else who is on Income Assistance? Hopefully you will push for an increase for everyone, to decrease the homeless population and to improve life and food security for those that are housed.
Minster Brendan Maquire, other expectations, from my community, which did not happen through Transformation include:
Income Assistance recipients continued and continue today to experience cuts to special diet allowances, that, prior to the cut, they had received for a considerable length of time. Those who were affected expected their special diet allowances to be reinstated and this never happened.
People on Income Assistance were expecting from Transformation that the system would be restructured in way, where they can receive once or twice a year an extra allowance as talked about here. -- Includes things like cleaning supplies, personal hygiene products. etc. Nothing to address this happened through Transformation.
For many years in Nova Scotia we have had a system where people’s rights to be in a romantic relationship has been interfered with. I have written 2 BLOG posts – Part I and Part II - in particular, illustrating why and what part of the Employment Support and Income Assistance policy manual talks about this. This article in the now defunct NS Advocate talks about why this is a Human Rights Violation. People were expecting this to be addressed through Transformation, however , this did not happen.
As I pointed out in detail here, people were also expecting Annual Reviews would be halted resulting from Transformation. This did not happen.
Minster Maquire, from your years of experience as an MLA and especially throughout the whole time of the Liberal’s supposed ESIA Transformation, people I advocate for have very high expectations for you now that you are Minster of Community Services. The Progressive Conservatives may not use the language calling it Transformation. However, Minster Maquire my community wants to be confident that you will push for something like Transformation to happen in your new role.
Your Truly;
Kendall Worth
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