AFFIDAVIT of ERNIE LIGHTMAN I, Ernie Lightman, of the City Of

Court File No.: 02-CV-229203CM3 ONTARIO SUPERIOR COURT OF JUSTICE B E T W E E N: DALE BROOMER, on his own behalf and as litigation guardian for KYLA BROOMER, EMILY BROOMER and TRAVIS BROOMER, PAULETTE DUKE, on her own behalf and as litigation guardian for KEENAN HUGHES, MADISON HUGHES and ETHAN DUKE and ROBERT BEAUPARLANT Applicants - and - ATTORNEY GENERAL OF ONTARIO, THE DIRECTOR OF THE ONTARIO DISABILITY SUPPORT PROGRAM, THE ADMINISTRATOR OF THE NIPISSING SOCIAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION BOARD and THE ADMINISTRATOR OF THE KAWARTHA LAKES/HALIBURTON SOCIAL SERVICES ALLIANCE Respondents APPLICATION UNDER Rule 14.05(3)(g), (g.1) and (h) of the Rules of Civil Procedure AFFIDAVIT OF ERNIE LIGHTMAN I, Ernie Lightman, of the City of Toronto, in the Province of Ontario MAKE OATH AND SAY as follows: 1. I hold a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley. Between 1972 and 1974 I taught in the economics department at the London School of Economics and Political Science in England. I began working at the University of 2 Toronto as an Assistant Professor in 1974, and am presently a full Professor cross- appointed to the Faculty of Social Work, the Centre for Industrial Relations and the Graduate Collaborative Program in Women’s Studies. A copy of my curriculum vitae is attached hereto as Exhibit ‘A’. 2. My general area of professional interest and competence involves the relationship between economic and social policy, including the impact on the social welfare system of governmental economic policy. I have written and published extensively on these topics and consider myself knowledgeable about the professional and academic literature in this area. In 1988, I authored a study which forms the basis for a report of the Social Assistance Review Commission called “Transitions”. For a period of time, I was also principal author of the report. To date, “Transitions” remains the only comprehensive review of welfare ever done in Ontario and the most comprehensive review of welfare ever done in Canada. 3. I am also currently the principal investigator for a three year project entitled “Social Assistance in the New Economy.” The project is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada, and is being conducted with the assistance of the City of Toronto Social Services Department. The study will explore the links between social assistance and work, using both primary and secondary forms of data collection and analysis. 3 4. As a result of my personal research, my review of the relevant literature, and my professional inquiries of persons in government and in practice in the field, it is my informed and considered view that the regulation at issue in this proceeding, colloquially known as the “lifetime ban,” amounts to poor social policy based on ill-considered theories and regressive ideals. Social assistance, consisting of Ontario Works (“OW”) and the Ontario Disability Support Program (“ODSP”), is a fundamental social institution designed to ensure that no Canadians will be left without the minimum conditions for health, well-being, family life, and the ability to participate as free and equal members of a democratic society. The lifetime ban permanently bars certain Ontarians from accessing social assistance, thereby exposing them and their dependents to the risk of enormous harm. Poor People: A History of Disadvantage at the Hands of Relief Programs 5. At various times throughout history, poor people have encountered society’s indifference, disapprobation and even disdain. Poverty has always had myriad causes, involving a complex interplay between economic, societal and health-related factors. However, in attempting to identify and address the root causes of poverty, certain governments and charitable organizations have tended to overlook these systemic factors and instead focused on the supposed moral deficiencies of poor people themselves. One of the earliest examples of this phenomenon took place in Elizabethan England. Elizabethan policy makers believed that there was a subset of poor people - typically the able-bodied poor - who could be presumed to have caused 4 their own poverty by their own maladaptive and immoral behaviour. Given this understanding of the causes of poverty, it was said that poor people deserved to suffer. Hence, the belief evolved that society has little or no obligation to these ‘non-deserving’ poor, who are the authors of their own misfortune, or alternatively, that society has an obligation to police and to punish the behaviour of poor people. 6. As a result, the Elizabethan concept of deservedness related to the perceived moral qualities of poor people, not to their actual level of need. The fact that many so- called non-deserving poor may be unable to meet their most basic needs was either a subject of indifference to Elizabethan policy makers, or was seen as a justifiable outcome. The deprivation caused by poverty was historically seen as an appropriate punishment for the qualities that the poor were said to choose, such as laziness, drunkenness, and slovenliness. 7. 16th Century England saw a marked deterioration in standards of living. High prices combined with a decline of real wages to produce hardship for large portions of the population. At the same time, the supply of charitable assistance (monasteries, religious guilds, fraternities, almshouses, and hospitals) diminished under the anti- Catholic reign of Henry VIII. These economic trials reached a crisis in 1595 to 1598, when four consecutive poor harvests led to famine conditions, and those left without employment or a reliable source of food were left to beg for their survival. 5 8. The English government responded with the country’s first legislation aimed at addressing poverty on a wide scale. The Poor Law of 16011 placed each local parish under an obligation to relieve the aged and the ill, and to provide work for the able- bodied poor. 9. Unfortunately, along with a new attitude of public responsibility for the poor came an attitude of suspicion toward anyone seeking to avail themselves of the benefits of the poor laws. For example, a 1697 amendment to the existing poor laws aimed to distinguish the so-called ‘genuinely deserving’ recipients from “the idle, sturdy, and disorderly beggars.”2 Accordingly, a provision of Act required all people who received poor relief, both parents and children, to wear the letter ‘P’ in red or blue cloth on the right shoulder of their uppermost garment. Refusal to wear the badge resulted in a reduction or elimination of relief, or imprisonment at hard labour up to twenty one days. In this way, the amendment reflected the view that there is a subset of poor people who are not deserving of public relief because of their perceived moral deficiencies, regardless of their need. Furthermore, the amendment introduced the notion that it is legitimate to subject all beneficiaries of public relief to stigmatizing and humiliating treatment, both as a means of deterring the poor from relying on public relief, and in order to ensure that the non-deserving poor do not receive relief. 1An Act for the Relief of the Poor, 1601, 43 Eliz., ch. 2 (Eng.), reprinted in 7 STAT. AT LARGE (Eng.) 37-37 (Danby Pickering ed., 1762). 2An Act for Supplying Some Defects in the Law for the Relief of the Poor of This Kingdom, 1696- 97, 8 & 9 Will. 3, ch. 30, § 2 (Eng.), reprinted in 10 STAT. AT LARGE (Eng.) 106 Danby Pickering ed., 1762), amending Poor Relief Act 1662, 14 Car. 2, ch. 12 (Eng.), reprinted in 8 STAT. AT LARGE (Eng.) 94-95 (Danby Pickering ed., 1762). 6 10. The Poor Relief Act of 17223 introduced a new dimension to poor relief: the workhouse. While the workhouse provided some food, clothing, and shelter to the old, the sick, the unemployed, and their children, they were also plagued with filth, overcrowding, epidemics, and early death of both adults and children. Workhouse residents were also placed under a strict regime of control, under which their movement was restricted, their social and family relations were manipulated, and the consumption of alcohol or tobacco was prohibited. Children who lived in the workhouse were streamlined through an apprenticeship system, which purported to train them in work habits, but in reality, was “little more than ‘thinly disguised slavery’ in cotton mills, mines, and, in what is probably the most infamous chapter of child exploitation in English history, the employment of pauper children as chimney sweeps.”4 11. The deplorable conditions that characterized the workhouse did not arise solely through inadvertence or insufficient public funds, but rather, were deliberately designed to serve a distinct regulatory purpose. This purpose has been described as “[making] the receipt of aid so psychologically devastating and so morally stigmatizing that only the truly needy would request it.”5 In other words, the workhouse was a “test of 3The Poor Relief Act, 1722, 9 Geo., ch. 7 (Eng.). 4Guest, D, The Emergence of Social Security in Canada, 3rd Edn. Vancouver, University of British Columbia Press, 1997 at p.12. 5Posner, EA, “Contract Law in the Welfare State: A Defense of the Unconscionability Doctrine, Usury Laws, and Related Limitations on the Freedom of Contract” (1995) 24 J. Legal Stud. 283 at p. 310. 7 destitution,”6 designed to distinguish the so-called ‘deserving’ poor from the ‘non- deserving poor,’ who could presumably be identified not by their level of need, but by their refusal to enter the workhouse. The desires to deter the poor from reliance on public relief and to ensure that the non-deserving poor did not receive relief in error were seen to be so pressing that it legitimized subjecting the residents of the workhouse to deplorable, punitive, and degrading treatment.

Load more