Dear editor,
Comox Valley MLA Don McRae, is going around acting like he’s listening to people regarding persons living with disabilities.
Over and over and over he has been told the first thing his government needs to do is raise the benefit rates for those living on disability. It has been explained to him over and over and over again that keeping the disabled in poverty, as his government has for more than a decade, is costing this province millions upon millions of dollars in health care and justice coverage.
It has been explained to him, over and over and over again, that upping the rates would actually save the province money.
These explanations have been backed up by years of study and fact collecting.
Yet the last thing Mr. McRae and his government are prepared to do, or even seriously consider, is upping the rates.
More and more disabled people are being forced over the economic brink and into the despair of living in poverty. Meanwhile, McRae’s government has spent tens of millions of dollars fortifying welfare offices and altering service delivery in such a manner that disabled people are treated disrespectfully and in a manner that is more akin to hostage taking than service delivery.
Mr. McRae’s government has plenty of money for advertising. They have plenty of money to engage in “public consultation” exercises and “white papers” that do nothing to assist the disabled.
The disabled and their community service providers have been telling the provincial government for over a decade the same thing. Raise the rates.
This is the No. 1 solution all of them are demanding. And it’s the one action McRae and his government will not take!
Will Webster,
Comox Valley
