Work or Die: Disabled Under Capitalism
What does Doug Ford mean when he says "every able bodied person should be working"? What is the impact of those words and the legislation behind them?
Host Jessa McLean and Disability Advocate Jay Woodruff unpack some of the recent developments in Canadian politics that reinforce the narratives so prevalent under capitalism.
Topics include:
- The passing of the Canadian Disability Benefits Act and the inadequate Provincial support programs that prompted the demands the federal government do something.
- Meritocracy and the stigma attached to people on social assistance.
- Eugenics and the expansion of MAiD, or assisted suicide, in Canada.
Transcript
We titled this one, Work or Die. It'll become clear as we go through the episode together just what we mean by that, but I wanted to insert myself here to provide a trigger warning. As we work through some of the tough realities and ugly narratives facing disabled people in Canada, the topic of assisted suicide, or made necessarily, comes up.
We raise it in the context of various legislation and policies in Canadian politics that work to reinforce this work or die mentality so deeply ingrained in our capitalist world.
Jessa (:Now it was something a politician said that set me off again, but it's an episode we've actually been meaning to do for a while.
Jessa (:Our good friend Jay Woodruff is here for this one, but I wanted to give a shout out to the many of you on social media for amplifying a lot of these issues and helping us better understand them. In particular, I want to thank Sarah Calero whose views you'll hear me echo at points, especially as we get into the politics of it all.
Jessa (:Alright, so there's a video that went around TikTok of Doug Ford talking about how every able-bodied person, every mentally able person, needs to get up and work. He goes on about how, you know, the rest of taxpayers shouldn't be supporting people who just don't want to work. And I mean, that pissed me off for a lot of reasons. More reasons than one, we'll get into them as we go through the episode, but...
I thought it was time to kind of get into a few of the narratives surrounding disability rights and legislation that deeply impacts disabled people. Namely, the Canadian disability benefits that hit the news last week, as well as made or assisted suicide. Jay Woodrifts with me in the studio. Jay is a disability advocate and I'm sure you've heard him on the show before.
Jay, did you hear Ford in that video? I mean, it's nothing we've not heard from politicians before, but, you know, it takes a little bit of more context now.
Jay (:Yes, and that's the only way he knows how to, if you say disability, he says work. The narrative they build is work or die. He does not know how to talk about disability without, within two words of speaking, saying the word work.
Jessa (:I mean, you could say that about the liberal minister of, what is it, employment, workforce development, and disability. That's like disabilities, like the afterthought there in the title. Carla Qualtrough. I mean, every time she tweets, every bit of federal legislation that has come down the pipeline has been really tied to getting disabled people into the workforce, as if that's the only answer.
Jay (:The thing about Qualtrough, and I really want people to understand, there is no one focused on disability in the Canadian government. Her ministry is workforce development and disability inclusion in that workforce. Her department is ableist just in its foundation and scope. Its mandate is work or die.
Jessa (:It's in there in the name, like you're not lying, you know?
Jay (:Yeah, it's there's been many years of people thinking that ministry is actually a disability focused ministry and that her focus as the token disabled in the government is to help the disabled. But no, her mandate is the ableist work or die.
e was an interview she did in: Jessa (:That seems to be the government's answer for everything. Get a job. You know, it ignores so much, but it also, you know, that's one of the most pervasive narratives in capitalism, right? That ties your worth to how you've navigated the workforce. And that's not even fair. That makes it seem like it's your job to navigate. It's just like your relationship to the labor force, whatever that is. And
you know, when that plays out in somebody who's supposed to be a disability advocate. But I guess, you know, keeping her title in mind, her mandate probably has nothing to do with actually helping disabled people. But a lot of people buy into that. A lot of liberals and, you know, even leftists, I think, fall into thinking that some of these things that are being passed are huge improvements, reasons for hope.
you know, when you read the statements that accompany them, it's obvious, it's obvious that it has nothing to do with helping disabled folks. It's a whole lot of optics and, you know, reinforcing that narrative, that work or die, you know, that stands for everyone.
Jay (:In 2020, I authored a House of Commons petition demanding the government create a new benefit for the people they specifically excluded from Serb. The official government response was a list from Qualtrough of all of the work-related programs that the government had created. So if you were working...
Here's $2,000 that is the minimum to survive. If you were not...
We created opportunities for you to work while people are. I just want to say right off the bat, the funny thing that we tend not to recognize or acknowledge is you take most workers and tell me that working is improving their life. It's not making it much better, especially if you have two or three jobs. So the idea that I don't understand how people can still view humans as capital assets
Like it's, it's so messed up.
Jessa (:I think some people don't see it that far. They still absorb these narratives and they just feel, you know, you're a better person if you have a well-paying job. You know, they just make these connections without fully understanding what's at the root of it. You know, they don't do a lot of thinking about it. The reality is there's so many reasons why people don't work. Disability is just one of those reasons, right? Like you mentioned one of them.
people end up working, being exhausted, and still living in poverty. It's easy to see why some people might make the choice not to do that, but there's other, like, real barriers, like lack of childcare, transportation, the availability of jobs where you live that don't leave you, you know, stretched. I was reading the un- go ahead.
Jay (:If you-
If you're starving, that's a barrier to working. If you can't afford good clothes.
or acceptable clothes, that's a barrier to working. If there's so many things that poverty itself is a barrier to working because you're clawing just to survive or fighting just to survive every day and then go get a job and then hopefully they hire you without the discrimination that many people face no matter how good they are fed or how well their clothing is. So it's a really it's one of the most
using things society does where there is this idea of get a job and your life is better. Well we know that's not necessarily true. There's working poor is like the largest demographic in this country I think. And then saying that
Working solves everything. You should be punished if you don't work, but working doesn't solve anything and you're still getting the punish. It's this cyclical, I think is the word, or circular self-feeding system that has allowed for a lot of other things to happen outside of just disability and work. A lot of social injustice stems from the things we're talking about.
Jessa (:Absolutely, you know, and when Ford gets up there and he says stuff like that, he's reinforcing what a lot of people feel that is not just damaging to disabled folks, especially, right, that face that extra stigma, but it's a detriment to the working class to not fully understand the powers that are at play and the reasons why folks are unemployed and that is by design as well.
Right? Capital absolutely benefits from a high unemployment rate. But, you know, we really did want to focus on the disability aspect of this, because that's essentially who he's talking about. When he's talking about people on, he's saying able-bodied and mentally able. He was a little more woke this time around. Right? Like he acknowledged that there you might be able-bodied, but not still able to work. But he's really implying that folks are faking it.
that there are people collecting social assistance that are able to find work. And when we're talking about ODSP, that's the Ontario Disability Support Program that Doug Ford is responsible for, it does anything but support people. I wanted to hit at that myth a little bit that people would actually voluntarily go on ODSP, even though they could.
hold down a job that gave them what they needed. You know, like, let's just unpack what it's like to be on provincial social assistance for folks. And just before people think that ODSP is like the black sheep of the provincial assistance rates, it really doesn't matter who you've elected. In BC, where the NDP have held a majority for some time.
The rates are very comparable to Ontario. They're all bad right across the country. There is no shining star. I, you know, we're not gonna break down all the numbers here, but you're talking about like $1,300 for a single person.
And we know what it costs to live, right? And Jay just reminded you what the government gave everybody $2,000 a month as like the bare necessity to just get you through the pandemic or get you through that lockdown, that joke of a lockdown. So Jay, as someone on ODSP,
Do you see a lot of people like voluntarily getting excited about signing up for that or finding reasons to?
have their life scrutinized in that way and put in that kind of financial, we call it legislated poverty.
Jay (:The-
Jessa (:That must make you so mad when you hear that.
Jay (:The narrative about their scammers, we actually have numbers. I don't have them off the top of my head, but it is a very extremely small percentage after they threw millions at investigating people on ODSB. It was under, I think it was under 1%.
So that's over 500,000 people on ODSP and very few, like, extremely rare cases. And that narrative should just end there. Second of all...
you're not accusing the people on the program of being frauds or lying or anything. You're accusing doctors and specialists of faking tests and forging documents to the government. So before we get too much further into it, I'd like that to be the thing people realize. You're not saying that disabled person or that person is milking the system. You're saying that doctors willingly lied to the government
legislated poverty. It makes no fucking sense when you say it out loud but a lot of people still like to say that out loud including Ford. So it's a forced conservatorship. They become your parent. You have very... most people have access to a worker but having that worker respond, having that worker be
good or motivated or even like give a shit is very hard because they probably have a large caseload. So there's no individual connection with the person who is your forced overseer. You have to beg for money for shoes, for a bed, for like everything you must justify and validate a hundred times over.
you have to become your own advocate and you have to continuously defend your doctors and specialists prognosis when the government should be having issues with the doctors and dealing with the doctors not the person who is in a situation where they're on ODSP.
So the number one thing I can say is I know people think it's like a life of easy luxury to just be handed legislated poverty, but it comes at a cost of the mental health impact and that never gets talked about. No one goes on ODSP without their mental health declining because of the program. And that that's just to apply.
After months and months of applying, hopefully you get forced poverty and severe mental health decline.
Jessa (:And let's be clear, like, nobody pretends it's anything other than that. The ODSP is broken up into what's called basic needs and shelter. The shelter allowance is abysmal. But the fact that the other category that is also completely inadequate is labeled basic needs, they really do mean it. Like basic, basic. There is no
assumption or there's no belief there built in that disabled people unable to work can live good lives. That there should be anything left over for the roses, just the bread and barely enough bread, right? Like the reality is a week in, right? Two weeks in, folks on ODSP are out.
They're out there relying on the food bank. Jay, I don't wanna like speak to your lived experience, but I also don't want you to have to be this example either. I don't know. Sorry, I don't know if we wanna edit that out, but.
Jay (:I'm very, I've always been very open about it. It's what society forces on us. So I have no shame in talking about the abuse that people allow us to go through. So there's a pattern that on, you get your money at the end of the month. So the next day your rent is due, your bills are due.
if you get enough to pay first off it the combined amount of shelter and basic needs there's no safe healthy place you can find in this country for that amount uh beyond that once you get past the first day of having that money for the microsecond where you're like relief that you didn't have some kind of issue or they didn't screw something up and the money is there it's gone
And then you go into, okay well now I need to beg for mutual aid until it's time for food bank. And then those who are lucky enough to go to a food bank, it doesn't matter where you live, the lines are getting longer, the supplies are getting less, and it's, there is no healthy food bank. This is all stuff people, like I'm not shitting on the fact that people are donating instead
throwing it out but there's it's not about health it's about here's canned whatever that looks like it probably was bought by your grandmother in the 60s so it's it doesn't how oh and then sorry you go back to mutual aid begging for another week and a half before the payment comes and then you repeat that
There's no one who is living in a situation where the money they get from ODSP is 100% luxury. It's not 100% necessity or basic needs or rent or anything. So this concept that anyone would game this system is absurd.
Jessa (:For folks that want a little bit more detail on life under ODSP or the Disability Social Assistance that we have in Ontario here, we did a live stream where we had advocates on people with lived experience talking about it. And one of the main focuses there is what we're going to get into now is because those rates are just so abysmal.
across the country, like what Jay is talking about is repeated for every disabled person on social assistance across our country. An appeal was made to the federal government to institute a disability, a federal disability benefit that would, I mean, the aims are to lift disabled people out of poverty. The numbers are atrocious.
disabled people living in poverty. It is absolutely shameful. And so it's really upsetting then to then get into the nitty-gritty of this bill, C-22, that does get a lot of people excited. And I'll be honest, the folks that we had on our live stream from the organization, Disability Without Poverty, seemed entirely focused on this bill and completely naive to its shortcomings.
that thing was tabled in June:for $2,000. Meanwhile, this is working its way through the House. And Jay, how would you describe Bill C-22? We were talking about it earlier. Now that it's passed, are you gonna start getting payments from the federal government?
Jay (:C22 as it exists or sorry, I guess it's no longer C22. The Canadian Disability Benefit as it exists is an IOU
to who knows who because we don't know the qualification criteria. There is no budget for it. There is no, there is nothing. It is a blank IOU that supposedly will start seeing payments sometime next year. But there's...
probably going to be an election next year. There's probably going to be... There's so many different things and I want to stress...
since April of:they have not one government body, not one social assistance program was forced to raise to that minimum. So three years ago it was determined it's $2,000. Now we have a blank IOU that may come to fruition next year if you qualify who knows how much and the
There was a lot of in-fighting in the disabled community because you did have organizations and a lot of people and a lot of politicians saying, we just need to get it done. We can work out the details later.
There was a lot of people who were holding on to that passing and getting money and like being able to survive for the last two and a half fucking years who then got told I owe you. So C22 I think like I truly believe that and I got to work quite closely with that.
I truly believe it was strictly a PR stunt that they, oh shit now we have to do it. And that's the only reason it didn't get disappeared. Because they could have, if they didn't pass it when they did, going into the, what is it called, summer break or whatever, it would have died. The bill would have died. So.
tually had no intention since: Jessa (:And it's tough because you see a lot of people really holding their breath for it. And we can understand why when you're living month to month or, you know, eking by month to month and the prospect of some relief there. So getting tied up in it for so long. And there's still so much we don't know about what to expect, but there's stuff we do know that there'll be another 18 months on top of the two years folks have been spent.
all this resource and energy trying to push it through parliament and lobbies the Senate and lobby MPs and you know almost entire organizations built around passing this bill. I mean from appearances that's how it seemed. And
Again, we'll see in its language the things that we do know tie back to what we started talking about, that same narrative, because it is limited to people of working age. That means it won't be for seniors who are also struggling, right? It won't be for disabled seniors even. Who then always fall off of the Canadian federal disability benefits and have
to then rely on just standard old age security, which is inadequate. We know it costs money to actually live disabled, right? There are extra accommodations. It's not something that you can then live below the poverty line, but we digress a little bit. And it's for low income people. So the language of qualifications that we do know already tie you directly to the labor force. You were only even an entity based on your relationship there, right? So...
terribly disappointing to see that that's the progress that's been made thus far. And I think the purpose... Yeah, sorry. My sarcasm, I didn't put the sarcasm tone on. But, you know, they fully well have known that relief has been needed for so long. And the thing about having elections, and we learned in Ontario, people worked really, really hard to get a lot of...
Jay (:With their quotes, progress.
Jessa (:good labor legislation passed by the outgoing liberals that included a minimum wage hike that had been scheduled for post-election. For the new year, it was a January 1st minimum wage hike and Doug Ford came in and took it away. You can't take away a hike that's already been there though. If they had gotten that dollar in, if they had gotten that increase in right away.
wouldn't have been able to take it away. And my point is, if they really did want to help people and create a disability benefit and ensure that it wouldn't be erased by incoming conservatives, it's to start paying it out. Yes, they can always take away what has been legislated, but once you start paying people, that is once you start normalizing a service like that, it is much, much more difficult.
to then take it away. But if it's simply framework legislation.
that really has no teeth whatsoever and it has no political willpower behind it. Right. So it's another one of those political moves where it's just complete optics, right, to make it appear.
Jay (:Can I add to that, that going back to CERB, Qualturo kept saying that there's no easy way to get the payments to the disabled. We're working on it. We're having trouble finding the disabled to get them payments. And then it switched to the disabled are just complaining they didn't get CERB, you didn't lose a job, so on and so on.
thing is, if you look back to:at that time, which included Qualtrough in her current position, decided that here's how much it is to survive this pandemic and here are the people who don't get to survive. And that has carried on till now. The people who were excluded, who were deemed expendable, are still expendable.
s why they haven't gone since:it is and please don't edit it out.
2020, $2,000 is the minimum to survive. No one on social assistance has been brought up to that minimum to survive and then carried on with inflation as it's gone and there hasn't been a single cent that has been sent to the disabled community to help them survive the pandemic or just like today. So that's another thing.
that really I don't care how flushed out this document was.
they have continuously focused on how to exclude as many people as possible. And that was seen in the fact that the amendment to make this guaranteed that everyone who is on disability would get this is by not wanting to piss off the provinces who claw back money from the disabled. Cause if you don't know, if you make money while you're on ODSP or a lot of
programs, it gets clawed back, meaning the government takes their cut. So go get a job, but we're going to punish you for it. And then... Yes.
Jessa (:Go make money, but not too much. That's what we mean by legislated poverty. There is no way out.
Jay (:And the main sticking point that Qualtrough and the government would not let go is if a province claws the money back, they're not going to give the money to people to have it clawed back. So basically saying, for provinces who claw back the money, you're fucked. That's what they have said. Is this is, we cannot.
The reason they did not want that to be changed is because that was the number one exclusionary point. So now they get to put in that exclusion and they don't get to blame the provinces do. You talked about the optics of this stuff. Now the Liberal government, the Qualtru, can say, well it's Doug Ford's fault. Well it's... I don't even remember the...
Jessa (:the age old pointing the fingers back and forth between provincial and federal, for sure you're going to see that play out or you're going to see the conservatives come in and scrap what's there and it'll be all of their fault. And the reality is they knew exactly how to secure a better life for disabled folks and they refuse to do it. And this isn't just trauma porn, reliving the lived experience in legislated poverty.
Jay (:Yeah.
Jay (:Yeah.
Jessa (:It's setting the stage because we're going to talk about maid. We're going to talk about the coercive nature of maid under these circumstances. And you have to couple with we've really just talked financial, right? Financial barriers and support. Jays touched on the mental impact that has but we all know that our health care system is also under attack.
disabled people, you're talking about people who disproportionately need to access the healthcare system and cannot. And they cannot for so many reasons. For the financial reasons we've talked about, for the lack of accessible transit, for the fact that our healthcare system is in ruins, for the fact that mask mandates are being dropped from hospitals making them unsafe spaces for the immunocompromised.
I mean, we could go on, we all know what's happening to the healthcare system. So you need to couple that with the frustration of living in perpetual poverty, legislated poverty that you are not able to escape.
and at the same time as also the nation experiences a mental health crisis. The impact of COVID and what we've been through has been trauma and there is no escaping the fact that folks are absolutely struggling right now in so many ways. But the government seems to find the time to pass legislation.
to expand the resources and the eligibility for assisted suicide. And let's just be clear, neither Jay nor I nor most disability advocates are against the idea of made, are against the idea of medically assisted dying.
they're against, we are concerned and need to point out just how coercive it's become under these circumstances where your government has refused your request for accommodation. Housing waiting lists are in the years, if you get it. Supports are months waiting list applications, yet people's made application is processed quite quickly.
And the government, the liberals were looking to expand, are going to expand access to assisted suicide to those who do not have a foreseeable death. And that includes mental illness.
Jessa (:Now, it's a tricky topic, isn't it Jay? Because like we said, we're not against mate. But there's, yeah.
Jay (:It's not tricky. It's not tricky. It's just people conflate it. There's the program of made which is medical assistance and dying that was lobbied for and created as a program of compassion for people who no matter what you did they would suffer. Now that in and of its own I view that as
Jessa (:Absolutely.
Jay (:Now the problem is when you have people who are perpetually starving, perpetually in unsafe places, who are homeless, who whatever creates a sustained, I'll say negative impact, we have seen that qualifying because of the way the program is currently built.
And what I mean by that is it is a tool that has been manipulated into a poverty. There are things that poverty creates. So we talked about how the disabled community is forced into poverty. And then poverty creates its own issues. Those issues qualify for made. So that's the coercion.
Jessa (:Like set of conditions, right? Like set of intolerable living conditions.
Jay (:Yes.
There are people who, we've seen stories of people who have been unable to find safe adequate housing, who have qualified. Because not having safe adequate housing creates mental and physical issues that qualify for a maid. If you talk about mental health, I have
a long list of people whose mental health is destroyed by the poverty that disability programs force on them. These conditions qualify when you expand that for mental health. Mental health really isn't a part of it. The key thing is a foreseeable death.
technically I can go on starving as I have because I don't go without food. I do consume enough to survive so far. But there is a massive mental impact of the scraps of begging for help of begging people to borrow money to get some food. The mental health impact of that alone will make you
eligible for medical assistance in suicide. So people really are conflating between the compassion and the coercion of when you force people into horrible situations and refuse to offer them a way out of that situation.
Because you're not going to offer me anything that gets me out of my autoimmune diseases and the disability Well, unless there's a cure if you hand me a cure maybe that changes things, but there's nothing you can hand someone That removes disability there will always be issues in this unbelievably top-to-bottom left right ableist way we live
but you don't need to starve them, you don't need to force them into conservatorships, you don't need to punish them, you don't need all of these things that come with being disabled and then go hey all those things also you know we're not going to help you live but you now qualify for made. It is a slow crawling unbelievably disgusting thing to witness.
And it's so easily conflated by people who view made as a program of compassion and say we need this program. Why are you fighting against this program? We're not. We're fighting about it being expanded to qualify for poverty. I'll just say poverty, even though this is a disability related thing. It is the conditions of poverty are being made to qualify you for medical assistance and dying.
And it is very important to note Canada leads this planet in harvesting organs through medical assistance and dying. It feeds the world. We're coercing people, we're expanding it beyond the scope it ever was intended to. It is being targeted at the disabled community, people in poverty who seem to be worthless alive but those organs are prime meat to this government.
So it's so much more than what people make it out to be as, oh you're against medical assistants and die. Sorry.
Jessa (:Yeah, no, and the coercion is like on so many different levels, too. It's not just the, you know, that the fact that we make it a lot easier to die than we do to live well. But there have been very explicit examples of coercion where people are told the type of health care that you need in this facility will cost you X. You know, one of the examples we saw was eighteen hundred dollars a day. That is
an insurmountable sum. So, and in turn, they are given pamphlets or suggestions that made is an option too, right? Very explicit coercion. And that is going to happen, especially when you consider that the Canadian healthcare system relies so much on private companies,
Jessa (:You know, in BC there's the example of radiologists or the imaging facilities that they have. I mean, like half of the facilities are privately run, but they only get X amount of dollars, you know, per scan. And they're saying that's not enough to make profit off of. Well, no shit, you're not supposed to profit off of healthcare. But the point is, these kinds of facilities, these, there are hospitals that are profitized, you know.
Sorry, there's not, but there are clinics and facilities that have been profitized and will go through your healthcare line by line. And this kind of analysis does not have value in human life. That isn't a line item when they're deciding if you're worth that level of care, if you're worth that level of support, if you're worth that level of housing. And the more that we allow that neoliberal mindset to...
set our budgets and especially leak into healthcare, the more people are definitely going to have to opt for assisted dying rather than trying to navigate through this healthcare system that doesn't see any value in them.
Jessa (:Um, so obviously there's been a lot of uproar about this expansion. The public has done a good job of creating that push from below, but unfortunately, I think we're getting into another example of optics where the liberals have pushed back the expansion of this eligibility to people with mental health issues for a year. They're going to study.
they're going to consult. I'm sorry, did you guys pass this expansion with the help of the NDP and the block? The almost unquestionable help of those parties? Only the conservatives stopped and said, and I hate to give them this credit because they know what to say, they would never do it, but they say like, how can you... one of the statements that they gave in the House was directly to the fact that there are very little mental health services for people except for maid.
Like that was the liberal suggestion to the mental health crisis that we're all going through is that they would expand made and not provide it as part of the universal healthcare that we say that we have. But if you look at the statements around the liberals talking about this delay, it's not to address those concerns. They're worried they're pushing this too fast on jurisdictions.
They know how many people will sign up for this when they expand it, because they know how hard people are struggling. They know how suicide is an option for so many people living through this struggle. And they know that the provinces will not be able to handle the level of services that they'll need. What's their quote there?
It will provide time to help provincial and territorial partners and the medical and nursing communities to prepare to deliver made in these circumstances. There's absolutely nothing in this push, this delay of a year, there's nothing to imply that they are going to consider trying to make life easier for people with mental illness. And so when we're talking about mental illness, we're talking about disability. These are one in the same. And it's...
absolutely atrocious. That again, people are thinking they've made headway with the government, they have hurt us, they have hurt our concerns, they've pushed a delay, only to realize their concerns were all backroom concerns. They had been getting pushback from the provinces and what it would cost to administer made because yeah, they're busy cutting our health care.
Jay (:I want to point out the reality is if you are not born into disability, if it's a workplace accident, if it's like me an undiagnosed autoimmune disease that is a ticking time bomb and it goes off regardless of the details, you don't know what is out there until it happens.
You go to a doctor one day and they say your life is forever changed. You are going to get... It's like the movies. I had my doctor hand me information sheets on my diseases, on the medications, and just a little bit of information about how drastically my life was changing from that point on. There'll also be a maid brochure in that.
There are doctors in Quebec who are fighting for it to be expanded to babies in case you accidentally have a baby born with disabilities. Like that is, the reality is not sneaking up on anybody. They're witnessing it happen and they don't care. And when it comes to you, you don't know how bad healthcare is until you need it. Not, not I broke a bone.
Have a cold. When you actually need it, you don't realize Until you actually need it, you don't realize how fucking bad Canadian health care is Imagine a time where you're offered death and how Fucking bad that is to have if I was offered death at that point
Having my doctor say your life is forever changed, you will progressively get worse. This and this and this and I saw a thing saying, you should kill yourself. Because that's what the government and society is saying. You should kill yourself. That is, yeah, that is somehow, yeah. That is somehow where we are at. And they're just trying to make it, they're not trying to make it easier.
Jessa (:Yeah, you don't need the brochures. Like I know you use that as an example, but.
Jay (:They're trying to make more people qualify.
To me, obviously I live this, but to me, the fact that this exists, knowing full well that disability is a part of the human life cycle.
You somehow we think being senior means you're no longer disabled. The reward for a long life is disability, sight, hearing, motor skills, cognitive function, just your body wears down. You become disabled as you age and you're setting yourself up that you're going to have a brochure with the word made on it, suggesting that you are no longer valuable to capitalism. You should kill yourself. I've heard that enough.
that it's actually numb, I'm numb to it. The fact that there is a government and a society going, you should kill yourself. It's whispering in everything. And once you make it known that this is an avenue, once you normal, and this is the thing that pisses me off the most, it is normalizing suicide after decades of trying suicide prevention.
making it such a focus that mental health and suicide prevention were so important Unless you're disabled during poverty then you should kill yourself. It's fucking That's the meant that's another part of the mental health thing Just that reality that we're talking about
Jessa (:I think it.
Jay (:will qualify people for me. Cause that is not something, we could not have this conversation for a long form without it just destroying me.
Jessa (:People make jokes about it online, but the reality is that a lot of mental illness is caused by poverty. The anxiety, the depression, the weight of chronic stress on your nervous system.
is often why people are.
at their wits end. And to know this and to just constantly deny any relief to the same people that you are then designing a system around to end the suffering when, you know, you could help them live better. And I think the worst part of it for me, like with all disability issues, is that it is mostly ignored.
by folks that could prioritize these issues. And for made, I think it is a tricky one because the folks who advocate for it really...
from a disabled perspective, are trying to build a compassionate system there. Right? There should be a way for folks to end suffering that cannot be cured. But when you live in a province that even scales back treatment for chronic pain, you can then understand how people are given the option between...
assisted dying or not being able to afford their pain medication any longer for an unforeseeable amount of time. That is a very hopeless situation and that's repeated so many times over. So, I guess we went all over the place in this episode, but at the root of it is driving home one, the disability rights that are being denied consistently.
But at the root of it all is that work narrative. That, that would.
that capitalism absolutely depends on where we start to value human beings only based on their income or their ability to quote unquote earn an income. And it's far more prevalent on the left in what we consider progressive circles than I think, because when I've gone door to door many, many times and you talk to people who think
Public health care is great, they talk about progressive issues, but they still believe their neighbour down the street should be working. That there's no reason they should be collecting welfare, disability payments, I've seen them they can walk to their car just fine. And it's so pervasive, I think that plays into why there's not enough pushback when we highlight the issues that we need to fight, you know, and why disability rights keep getting
Jessa (:It does. It's very pervasive because we've all grown up under capitalism. Even when we ask each other, what do you do? We mean, what do you do to make money? Usually that's what people mean. That's how we greet strangers. What do you do? How do you navigate capitalism? You know, and that is at the root of it. So when I heard Doug Ford get up there and start kind of driving this home and it getting so many replays.
without enough pushback, it was a reason to kind of re-examine these so-called liberal policies for disabled folks, because I think the politicians often tasked with helping disabled people end up hurting them more, you know, with either false hope or legislation completely framed from this meritocracy perspective.
Jay (:One of the interesting things that I have begun to understand is, unfortunately, the working class is one of the most detrimental aspects to disability justice because they are taught...
that like you said, oh I've seen my neighbor, why aren't they working? Regardless what that answer is, it shouldn't matter to you. Don't look at them and go, oh look at them, look at your own life, look at the fact that capitalism itself is going to create your eligibility for medical assistance and dying the way it is being framed. Because the way we live life
Jay (:physical, you're an exploitable resource and your issue is the person down the fucking street. And, in Ontario, if you made $70,000 come tax time, a fraction of a fraction of a cent is going to disability, but fuck them. They can starve and suffer and die. Just, it's this thing where...
Capitalism and governments use the disabled as a warning to workers. This is what happens if you don't work. And workers are like, yeah, fuck them, they should work. That's not where the focus or perspective should be. And the narratives you've talked about, or we've talked about...
are trying to force that perspective constantly because why look at yourself and go wait the way we do things is just really fucking wrong and instead of that you're gonna blame that person on Ontario or welfare social assistance i'll just say social assistance like there's nobody we joke about our yachts the odsp yachts
because we live such luxurious lives. And it gets to the point where you see people, oh, I saw my neighbor who's on ODSP drinking a beer, like you have no right to have that. Or I saw them eating this food, that's not healthy. Like you don't, I...
Don't know if given an entire day to talk non-stop if I could cover all the ways society absolutely abuses people on social assistance and then blames them.
Jessa (:wanted to tell a story just maybe I should insert it somewhere else
Jessa (:I'll probably talk
Anyway, I'm just going to get out. We'll see what we do with it. My neighbor, we'll call her Karen. Okay. Good Christian lady. And I was talking over the fence with her. She's got a unit in her beautiful home that she rents out. And she was between tenants and talking about having to interview people and wanting to find the right person. And she knows my views. Right. I've run.
Jay (:Hehehe
Jessa (:in the neighborhood they had my sign on their lawn. I make my views very well known. We've had talks over the fence about other things. But she felt no ways in proudly telling me that she would not rent to somebody on ODSP.
And I told her, you know, that's illegal. And she's like, but you got to be kidding me. They'll be home all day and you never know. They'll never be able to afford it. And, you know, so if I just see that on the application, it's, it's a no. And she was not expecting any kind of pushback on that. She thought that was perfectly okay. And the reason I kind of throw that in there is just to drive home your point there that you made.
that even those folks that you think are like really good people, there is this really awful narrative surrounding those on social assistance. Even when you know it's because they are fucking disabled. Um, yes she does.
Jay (:Does she wear glasses?
She's disabled. Ironic. She needs accessibility devices. This is the thing that I, the reason I say that is there are so many people who don't understand how disabling the way we live life is under capitalism. And just as a society, the way our society is structured now, the mental health impact, you, you...
Jessa (:Yes, she does.
Jay (:you have a family if you have a family and then you send them off to other people to help look after them so you can go earn someone else money so you can hopefully afford a place you rarely spend any time in to eat food with people you rarely see like it's just so absurd but the problem is that person's on ODSP.
This is, and again, if you wear glasses, I really am glad to welcome you to the disabled community. That is a disability. And there are so many people who refuse to acknowledge that because somehow there is still a stigma about disability in a society where there is, we're all disabled, it's just what level.
You the second you are born you are going to become disabled if you live a lot. Hopefully you live a long life You end that life disabled Why is it you can sit there and go I ain't renting to someone on odsp I ain't renting to this person or that person or i'm not hiring that person it's
Jessa (:It's not so much the disability in that circumstance, I think it's the social assistance, although I'm not denying any stigma around disabled people. It doesn't matter if it's because you've got six kids and there's no way you're affording childcare so you've got to stay home, or whatever your reason is that you can't get into the workforce or it would kill you. You know?
Jay (:Mm-hmm.
Jessa (:There's just, people won't let that go. That makes you lesser of a person in their eyes. It absolutely does. And I think it also makes, and no wonder considering the experience it is, but also knowing the stigma that's built into our lives. We feel that too when we take social assistance than when we need it quite often. Like even people who pay into unemployment insurance their whole lives.
sometimes will go months without trying to claim it because they think they're perhaps not in a situation where they need it or they don't want to take it from the purse or whatever it is. But it's just incredible stigma around a system that is designed to just like support us all, right? To make sure nobody gets left behind. It's just not framed that way, not by hardly any politicians either. So when they're talking about it, they're all talking about it from that.
perspective that, well, if we could just find ways to get autistic people into the workforce, knowing the unemployment rate for autistic people is between like 80 and 85 percent, and knowing how many undiagnosed autistic people are out there, can you just imagine how many people are trying to figure out why they can't hold down a job, yet not qualify for disability or any of the other supports? Or they do.
Jay (:and who get fired because they ask for an accommodation because I am autistic, which happens countless times. That's something else that we didn't really touch on, but kind of is an expansion of your neighbor's story about social assistance. If you think about this work narrative, because that's kind of what set this whole thing off is Doug Ford's
Jay (:I could work. There is something I could do. But who's gonna pay me? I may not be there. I may have to take off like in the middle of the day. I may not be able to show up for weeks on end. I may need all these accommodations. Like the reality is go get him a job like it's that easy.
to have an employer who doesn't have that same ableist view that the landlord neighbor has. Where it's this idea that it is on the people that society abuses. It's their fault they're abused because they don't go do this thing that society won't let them do.
If business, if capitalism wasn't about grinding people down and then casting them off, then there could be opportunities. And if there are opportunities, let's say congratulations, you have now found something you can do. Awesome, we're clawing that money back. We're gonna make you add on expenses for work because working costs you money.
People like to forget that, like you need to get there, you need to be fed, you need all this stuff to go do that job and then we're gonna take that money from you and keep you, it negatively impacts people. So how about if we flip it to stop punishing the disabled or people on social assistance and start supporting them, who knows what the fuck happens if mental health is not attacked but
supported and helped. If people aren't starving, if people aren't in unsafe unhealthy living situations That's the only thing we haven't tried. It's just like housing. The only thing we haven't done to the homeless community is put them in a fucking house like and The whole fucking concept of oh these people are Taking from me because they're taking taxpayers money
Are you equally as pissed off that there's 22 billion dollars that the Ontario government is just holding? Because a lot of the things that you're blaming people on you being the- I'm still on the neighbour framing or the landlord framing. But if you have this hate towards the impact of the fractions of a cent that these people are putting directly on you.
Jessa (:No, I know you're not talking to me.
Jay (:What about the government that's putting that person in that position? What about the fact that you won't let them improve their life by renting them that place? Like there's a refusal to own the ableism cause it's so normalized. Like it, it's infuriating.
Jessa (:I guess that's why we do episodes like this because I do realize there is ableism that exists in progressive circles and a lot of people look to the liberals as... Excuse me. As um... Excuse me. And a lot of people look to the liberals...
Jay (:Can't say the word liberal without choking, eh? Ha ha
Jessa (:Maybe that's what it is, it's little L, big L, it doesn't really matter, but they see them as the compassionate version of conservatives, at least on social issues. But one look at their record on disability and the fact that the NDP have supported all of these moves tells you that you know there really is no Canadian electoral champion for disabled people, mind you.
champions in parliament have never really accomplished much.
Jay (:The disabled community isn't being attacked by governments, it's being attacked by society which enables governments to do this stuff. That's something that a lot of people don't like to discuss.
Jessa (:Oh no Jay, I'm gonna challenge you on that. When someone like Doug Ford stands up and implies that there are disability cheats out there, that is an attack that like comes from the top. A lot of these narratives are pumped up from the people with really high platforms. And so we're gonna hold them a little bit responsible.
Jay (:But that's an echo.
Oh no, they're wholly, again, 22 billion dollars. There's 500,000 people on ODSP who are starving, who are in unsafe, unhealthy conditions, whose lives are made worse once getting accepted to ODSP. So yes, fuck Doug Ford, that ableist prick has been killing people for a long time. But society...
is like the neighbor saying that person there I've seen them working. Doug Ford just has to parent that or parrot that back. When that conversation is actually the real thing being said there is that person's doctors are scamming the system. But no one will say that because it's absurd. So that's
Jessa (:think people think that deeply about it. They swallow that shit and spit it back out whole as it was digested, you know, and it's far easier to do that than really examine because I can see it in people's eyes when you start to list like I go on rants in my family, for example, you know, do you know what it's like to be on ODSP in this province, you know, and I'll like blah, blah. Do you know how easy we're making it to get made and
blah, and how they're stringing them along with the Canadian disability benefits. And like their eyes glaze over after a while, they're kind of mortified, they can't believe it. They think I must be exaggerating that it can't be this bad. We are Canada, there's no way we do this to a huge portion of our population. And it's better off if I just think that buddy down the street is just a cheat. Or my cousin who, you know, I've had to work.
Jay (:Hehehehe
Jessa (:really hard my whole life, even though I feel like I'm disabled. So my cousin should have been doing the same instead of getting checks from the government. You know, even though that employment has destroyed you and left you broke. And so but we always are looking for someone to blame. So in the same way you explained that capitalism needs an example of what happens when you don't work. We like to reassure ourselves that at least we are not them.
Jay (:Yeah.
Jessa (:and there's a certain comfort in that for a portion of the population and questioning that erases that comfort level.
Jay (:I think there's also a term many people may not know that is internal ableism. This is something that I struggle with, many, many people struggle with, and it's the echoes of that societal work or die. So when I hear Doug Ford saying that stuff, it's...
and Qualtro, I can't forget Qualtro on all of this, seeing that work or die, pushing that work or die, and the idea that I am a mooch or a leech or a burden or whatever, there are days where I'll wake up and for like two minutes, I'm not feeling my disabilities or my diseases, and it's like, oh my God, am I better?
I have progressive things. They will never get better. But I still will be like, hey, maybe I could do that. Maybe I could do this. I have non-stop, since my doctor said, you may never work again, I have done nothing but try and find a way that I can work within my accessibility needs. And this is, I have full control over that. But then I get everything lined up.
and then the reality is, oh shit wait, I can't do this. So that internal ableism has been grinding me down so I do it to my fucking self. And then I get it from other people like neighbors who won't rent to people on social assistance. I get it from Ford, I get it from Qualtrol, I get it from...
work where it's like, hey, I'd love to try working for you, but here's my issues that you need to be aware of and let's figure it out. No. Like, so internal ableism is something that I don't think a lot of people understand because it used to be said as, pull yourself up by the bootstraps.
Like, oh things have got you down, persevere, deal with it, shut up, get over it. All those things are, your mind and your body are saying no. Anything you do beyond that, to force that, that's internal ableism. That's you going fuck my mental health, fuck my physical health. And that is, I hate to say it, but not really because of the podcast itself, it's capitalism. That you must be an
exploitable resource or you were spent and you were done and you need to die is Truly how we live our existence as human beings. It is most predominantly experienced by the disabled community and people in poverty because when you look at the Cycle that is capitalism. We're viewed as at the end of that cycle We're right at that wood chipper and everyone's trying to push us in there
Sorry I went off like that.
Jessa (:No, but the woodchipper reference, as bad as it is, made me realize that there's one word we didn't use but was prevalent through our discussion, and that's eugenics. And that is another episode altogether. But it's what we've been describing, right? The elimination of disabled people through many different means. You know, the erasure from the narratives, but also the physical erasure and the devalument of their lives.
Jay (:Mm-hmm
Jessa (:Thank you, Jay, for kind of unwrapping. Well, thank you, Jay, for unpacking all of this with me. We did go on tangents, but I think it's clear that all of the things that we discussed are very closely tied to one another, right? And...
definitely deserves a little bit more deep analysis in terms of Canadian politics and what folks are doing for disabled people.
Jay (:I think if I'm allowed to, I'd like to leave people with thinking about what in their own day to day life they do to themselves or they just accept being done to them which impacts their mental and physical health and realize that it's okay to acknowledge and understand that is not okay.
because that there is something that I think would have a massive impact on disability justice is people starting to understand that it's okay not to accept the things that we do to other people and allow other people to do to us and that's a really hard thing to say because of the intersectionality about that but
I think it's time we stop trying to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps because I don't think there's really straps on boots anymore. It's time to start moving on to something. The next phase of human existence that got out of hand. I'm sorry you can cut that.
Jessa (:I'll cut where you told me to cut that. But to your bootstraps comment, you know, it was never our own bootstraps that are supposed to lift us up. Right? That's the myth of libertarians try to sell that trash, especially, but it's inherent in a lot of the discourse that we have. But that's it's bullshit. We lift each other up. We were it's why we came together.
as a species in the kind of communities that we did is to make sure we don't leave people behind and we've completely lost sight of that. Not all of us.
Jay (:Hmph.
