All Posts Tagged With: "welfare"
Living on social assistance
Looking back at the “OSAP diet” campaign
Some time ago I wrote a couple of pieces about OUSA‘s campaign revolving around the so-called OSAP Diet. The idea was to draw attention to the fact that post-secondary students, living on OSAP, are budgeted at $225/month for food, or $7.50 a day. I’ll draw your attention to the older stories if you want to catch up, but suffice it to say that a lot of the debate revolves around whether or not students should reasonably be expected to cook their own meals and pack lunches for themselves, and whether or not a daily Starbucks “coffee” (read $5 frappasomething) constitutes a necessary food expense.
Related: The OSAP diet and the student lifestyle
Related: Budgeting for the real world
Now I’m all for giving students a livable budget for their studies, and we can debate back and forth just what that budget should be, but I was underwhelmed then and I remain incredibly skeptical now about the verbiage thrown around in context of this campaign. Students continually referred to this as “poverty” (for which no official definition exists in Canada, by the way) and suggested it was simply impossible to eat healthily on this budget. I won’t put further words in the mouths of the OUSA campaigners, however, and if you’d like to view the results of their experiment you can do so here.
My major issue, all along, is that comparisons to poverty and even starvation are rather apoplectic when welfare recipients in Ontario (excuse me, “public assistance”) receive so much less. If students imagine that they are starving on $225 a month, you’d expect those on welfare to be literally dropping dead. And in fact the reality isn’t far short of that. If OSAP represents a diet then welfare is a real famine. It isn’t so much that I resent students for their campaign for more funds as I’m rather embarrassed when it ignores such a terrible and inevitable contrast. It suggests, much as I hate to admit it, that students are fine with our most vulnerable starving just as long as they can avoid packing their meals for school.
Anyway, I was reminded of this again when the Star (which is rapidly becoming Canada’s best investigative newspaper) ran a similar experiment. In context of The Stop’s “Do The Math” Campaign the Star asked some prominent Torontoians to try living on a true welfare diet. The results were very much like what OUSA wishes it could demonstrate about the OSAP situation. We’re talking about true, desperate poverty now–visits to the food bank, reliance on public agencies, excitement at receiving a doggie bag to take home following a free lunch. The article made me cringe. Now we’re not talking about students who simply fail at cooking their own meals. We’re talking about very competent adults using every tool they have, and still struggling.
Most affecting in this story was an observation from Catherine Mihevc, Councillor Joe Mihevc‘s 11 year-old daughter, and which pretty much secured my lifetime support of his political career. Their entire family participated in the challenge, and she said that she and her sister were rarely hungry because their parents let them eat first. For me that’s a part of my immediate family history. My grandparents were refugees and their children always ate first too, when things were bad. As the children got older they knew to leave enough for their mother, because otherwise she simply wouldn’t eat. And this is what true poverty looks like. These are the strategies that it teaches.
I hate to ever set one group’s claims in direct competition with another’s. There is no reason why adequate funding for post-secondary studies needs to come at the expense of livable public assistance, or vice versa. But I do wish OUSA could have adopted a wider view on this issue, because the OSAP Diet campaign unavoidably trivializes the real problems that some people experience in simply feeding themselves and their children. It locates the needs of those who rely on public assistance outside of any operative definition of human norms. And really, that is exactly the problem with the system as is stands. No one is even trying to be realistic. Welfare is viewed as a punishment, not as an adequate amount of money to subsist on. And that has got to change.
Anyway, it’s something to think about the next time you stop at Starbucks. Or perhaps even before you do.
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Questions are welcome at jeff.rybak@utoronto.ca. You can also follow me on Twitter.
The OSAP diet and the student lifestyle
Just how well should students expect to live while in school?
Okay, I’ll be the one to say it. I have no problem at all with the “OSAP Diet” as exposed by the Toronto Star. Apparently students funding their studies entirely on government loans are expected to survive on $7.50/day for food. And my reaction, mainly, is a big “so what?”
Related: Budgeting for the real world
First, let’s get the obvious (and somewhat spurious) argument out of the way. Social assistance in Ontario–still generally thought of as “welfare”–will provide $221/month to a single adult for all personal needs after housing costs. So this number includes food, clothing, hygiene products, transportation, etc. If that’s $3-4/day for food they’re lucky–and this ignores the fact that most welfare recipients need to dig into their $221 just to cover rent shortfall.
This is a spurious argument because I would never defend welfare as a livable income–not for anyone. Pointing out that some other group of people is being starved out of existence doesn’t prove that students are getting a fair deal simply because they receive more. But I am somewhat surprised that the “OSAP Diet” is a front page news item when the “Welfare Famine” is not. If educated, presumably competent young people can’t feed themselves on $7.50/day, then honestly, what do we think is happening to the people who rely entirely on public assistance? Do we even care?
Second, let’s agree that an ordinary person, with a little effort and attention, can indeed live on $7.50/day for food–assuming access to reasonable cooking facilities. Does it involve a fair amount of pasta, veggies, and bulk food preparation? Of course it does. Anyone who heads straight to the frozen food aisle and loads up on prepared meats might as well be eating out. The only thing to recommend frozen chicken fingers, really, is convenience. For what they cost by the pound you might as well get fast food. So yes, learning to shop and feed oneself on a budget is a skill, even a valuable educational experience.
There are some barriers and potential issues we should acknowledge. Not every student has access to a grocery store or to transportation. On my campus, the residence council (with support from the university) organized regular grocery van trips. That’s a service I’d want to see on any campus not within walking distance of groceries. Some students off campus simply don’t have access to reasonable cooking facilities. They get stuck in living arrangements they didn’t think enough about, and due to roommate problems, landlord problems, or other issues their “cheap” accommodation ends up costing far more than they realized. But that’s a problem of education too.
Some students have dietary restrictions that may increase their food expenses. That’s a huge problem with social assistance as well–adding to what is already a deeply unrealistic calculation–but I certainly endorse considering any unusual dietary expenses as a medical issue. I’m frankly not sure of the status of such claims within student assistance plans, and I’d be interested to learn more. There may be the kernel of a real problem lurking in this story after all. But for now, let’s stick with a typical student. That’s the thrust of this breaking news story, after all.
For all those “drop fees!” proponents who see this as further evidence that education is too expensive, I’d like to remind you that we are not remotely talking about the cost of education just now. We’re talking about the cost of living. The funding that students require to access education is still, in the majority, not required to pay for tuition but rather required to support their lives and lifestyles while they are in school. Which is fine. People need to live, after all. But if you want education to be affordable, and if you expect governments to subsidize it to that point, you need to eventually confront the question of just how much lifestyle the government has an obligation to fund for each student. And please, think carefully about that question because there isn’t an endless pot of money here. The more extravagantly you believe each student has a right to be supported, the fewer students in total can be funded.
