The election lesson taught by B.C.’s clawbacks

For governments, there is one weapon that stands above the others in its ability to mislead and help them take when they say they are giving.

What is it? It is the clawback—simple but devastating in its effect.

Let’s examine its use to perpetuate poverty among some of the British Columbians who are in the biggest need of financial support.

In B.C., people on social assistance—those who receive disability or income assistance—are subject to clawbacks in various forms.

Receive spousal support? That amount will be lopped off your assistance, penny for penny. Able to work part-time? Thanks for the effort, but you do not even need to make minimum wage to have your earnings taken away from you.

Even when it comes to winning $20 on a lottery ticket, one of life’s little victories, the winnings come off your assistance payments so they can be placed in government coffers. Congrats.

In each case above, money that could change lives is taken from the people who need it most, but perhaps where these clawbacks create the most toxic dynamic is in relationships.

B.C. policy prevents most people with spouses from receiving disability or income assistance—in a sense the ultimate clawback.

All that is required for them to be cut off is to have a spouse that makes more than $857.22 a month for income assistance or $1377.56 a month for disability assistance, the standard amounts for someone in a 2-person family unit.

That means someone is cut from disability assistance if their spouse makes as little as $16,530.76 a year, about the equivalent of the province’s $15.20 an hour minimum wage, part-time; for someone on income assistance, the cut-off comes at almost half that.

What does this mean? It means that in order to receive much needed financial assistance, persons on social assistance are forced to hide their relationships or not have them in the first place, creating heavy psychological burdens.

It means that, without a source of income, they are pressured by financial necessity to stay in relationships that turn abusive.

And, most importantly for the sake of this commentary, it means that, when a social assistance increase of $175 monthly was celebrated as a victory, even touted as history making, it made absolutely no difference to a large portion of British Columbians living in poverty, the same people whose material situation was said to be improved by record-setting amounts.

Now, I have spent a lot of time on a particular policy in a particular province, but I want to relate this to the broader picture; to the federal election and Canada as a whole.

The story of B.C.’s clawbacks highlights a truth that every Canadian must apply when evaluating the flood of claims, promises, accusations, and arguments rushing at them during election season: the devil is in the details.

Policies and the impacts they have are complicated things, and can never be reduced to the simplified talking points Canadians are hearing round the clock these days.

For every policy that is about giving something, there are clauses therein about taking away. For every claim of success on an issue, there are angles from which it was a disappointment, sometimes overwhelmingly so.

This is the case when it comes to claims made about the creation of affordable housing across Canada (which is not nearly as affordable as many would have you believe); new disability funding legislation (which contains virtually no details and was rushed through on the last day of the parliamentary session), and even campaign promotional videos (which are not always what they seem).

And that is just to name a few examples.

So, next time you hear a government celebrating all the great things they say they have done, or read a party’s campaign promise to do this or that, or watch a scathing campaign commercial, remember that you are only getting a fraction of the story.

You need to look beyond window dressing and become a critical consumer of what people say and do, a quality that is beneficial in all realms, but especially in politics—arguably a game of perception more than anything else.

If you do not, you are only setting yourself up to be disappointed by what you thought was a good choice.

Spencer van Vloten is the editor of BCDisability.com, a source of news for disability issues in B.C.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.