Legacy of Cuts

There is a deadly cost to cutting social programs

>by Linda McQuaig
January 2, 2006

Ten years ago, Mike Harris slashed Ontario's welfare rates by 22 per cent, thereby cutting by almost one-quarter the incomes of Ontario's most vulnerable families.

The young kids in those vulnerable families are now teenagers. Recently, there's been an upsurge in violent crime by gangs of teenagers. Is it far-fetched to think there might be a connection?

http://www.rabble.ca/columnists_full.shtml?x=45371

Toronto Star
Coyle: Harris and the rage on our streets

Jan. 4, 2006. 08:44 AM

JIM COYLE

`Like that of all politicians, the Harris record needs time to find its context.'

...In fact, his government's first acts were to undo supports, and make circumstances more difficult, for the very communities that Lewis and others had identified as being most vulnerable. He repealed employment-equity legislation. He cut social assistance by 21 per cent. He abandoned social housing, eliminated social programs.

In the uproar that ensued, he declared (like another notable right-wing leader) that folks were either with him or against them. Those who took to the streets in protest were dismissed as ``Iraqis, Iranians or communists.'' With utter certainty, he led followers into what would become a quagmire of inequity, alienation and division.

It is not, of course, that the former premier put a gun in anyone's hands. It is just that, if one were bent on creating a roiling underclass of the neglected, marginalized, hopeless, desperate, demeaned, emotionally deformed, spiritually corrupted and indiscriminately raging, they could hardly have done better than to do as he did.

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