What we have now in Ontario, and I think we have this in other provinces, is that when...especially what we might term the “new poor”. The only difference between the old poor and the new poor is that the new poor come to a social assistance office with maybe a little bit of money. We know that through Statistics Canada, that they have small amounts of savings--$5,000 or $6,000 in an RRSP, let's say, something very modest. For someone in Ontario, for example, their asset limit on social assistance is only $572. It's very low all the way across Canada, as the National Council of Welfare report shows. What an office will do, especially a tightly run office, is tell them, “You have $6,000 in an RRSP, and our asset limit is $572. For the next 10 months, you should live on that $6,000 or so. We'll make a notation in the file, and you can come back after that 10-month period and apply for assistance again.”
Of course, what happens is that the person cashes out their RRSP at a low point in the market, and the next year they have to pay a tax liability. They have a much higher tax bill at a time when they're on public assistance.
That's the sort of thing we're seeing that doesn't make sense. In terms of the recommendations we've both made--at the Toronto City Summit Alliance, and Barbara can speak to this as well--we're hopefully looking at social assistance programs that, especially during a recession, would allow somebody not to become completely destitute in order to just get some help, especially when the EI program provides so little.
I think we've both recommended that these draconian asset limits be lifted, especially during the recession.