Surrey NDP MLA Jagrup Brar’s personal test of the (in)adequacy of the employable-status, monthly welfare rate of $610 is very admirable.
However, his attempt to expose the meagre funding as much too little on which to subsist, even on the lowest level of lifestyle, is basically a futile effort, for very few taxpayers care about the welfare of social assistance recipients.
It seems that, gradually replacing the original left-wing and right-wing ideologies, libertarianism, though liberal on core social issues like homosexuality and abortion, is becoming the prevailing fiscally conservative philosophy – especially in its most frightening extreme form, when it pretty much translates into “the survival of the richest and the fully, well-employed.”
Thus “social services,” even for the mentally ill, automatically become dirty words.
Frank G. Sterle, Jr.