What causes illness? I found my passion when I realized my answer to this question. Five years ago, when I started my health science degree at Simon Fraser University, my response to this would have been about bodies, bacteria and infections.
Today, my response is completely different.
Over five years of studying, I learned that wellness is fundamentally connected to our physical and social environments. Diving deep into the causes of illness taught me that policy, education, culture, city planning and inequalities are more important to health than biology.
I want to challenge the systems in B.C. that stop people from experiencing the well-being we all deserve. B.C.’s current income-assistance (welfare) system generates inequality and it is the first beast in our broken system I will focus on changing.
How B.C.’s welfare system treats those who need support is inhumane and unjust. The system fails users in three ways: access, adequacy and an inability to alleviate poverty.
By doing so, it also fails us all. We’re paying for the broken system with our own health and money.
Research has shown that inequality in a population affects the health of everyone, not just those on the bottom.
Our tax dollars are supporting those needing welfare indirectly through public services and directly by transferring money. We are all bound together by this system.
Accessing welfare isn’t easy, even though it should be. B.C. has lowered the number of users by making the system harder to enter instead of easier to exit.
The first demand of new welfare applicants is to exhaust all resources, including loans and family support. Fair enough. Except that a person who has used all of their options is then turned away to complete a five-week job search.
Proof of dire circumstances, including abuse escapes, is also required. Applicants must prove an annual minimum income of $7,000 from formal employment for the previous two years to show independence.
On top of all that, access to the Internet or a phone is increasingly required to apply due to service office closures. If all of these hoops are jumped through, the applicant is accepted into the system.
Inadequate cheques are then given, ones that shape life into a mode of survival instead of a mode of rebound. Could you live on $610 a month?
On welfare, survival becomes dependent on free meals scattered around cities, and nights spent in crowded and insecure housing. The allowances force an inhumane lifestyle that no one would wish a loved one to endure.
Last week marked the seventh year of stagnant income-assistance rates. The last increase in 2007 was minimal at $50. Due to market inflation, people receiving welfare today are 12.5 per cent worse off than they were seven years ago.
The system should focus on alleviating poverty, but the province is concentrating on getting users to work. Many people on welfare are unable to work, due to illness or requirements such as fixed addresses, phones, transit passes and clothing. Attending jobs might interfere with getting access to free food and shelter. Consequently, getting a job may not be financially beneficial.
In 2012, with the hard work of advocacy groups, the province re-implemented earning exemptions of $200, 10 years after itremoved them. This means people can now keep up to $200 from work while keeping the full welfare amount.
Change is possible, but it is not easy. We have to demand it from our governments in a loud collective voice.
Why speak up? If we collectively paid for poverty up front instead of through fragmented systems, it would cost less and we would all be better off.
B.C. is one of two provinces without a poverty-reduction strategy and has experienced the highest poverty rates in Canada for 13 years. It is time to adopt a poverty-reduction strategy that includes a welfare reform to make B.C. a more equitable society that is better for everyone.
Jennifer Vallee is a health science undergraduate at Simon Fraser University and an active member of the B.C. Poverty Reduction Coalition (bcpovertyreduction.ca).
