In my mail today was a brown envelope from the Government of Ontario. Ontario? WTF? So I open it, and it's my first HST transitional rebate cheque, for $100.
That just pisses me off.
It isn't the tax that pisses me off. It isn't the fact of the rebate that pisses me off. It's the fact that they never corrected the major inequity in the rebate: Single individuals get $300, but couples without dependent children get $1000.
That is, quite simply, wrong. Living as a couple is not more expensive than living as two single individuals. The rebate for a couple with no dependents should not under any circumstances exceed the rebate for two single individuals.
Of course, I pointed this out right away, as soon as the March 2009 budget came out. I blogged it and emailed it to my MPP and the Minister of Finance and Dalton McGuinty. I talked to people about it, and all the married and cohabiting couples in my life agreed with me that it's unfair, so I encouraged them to write to their MPPs. Basically I spotted a flaw in the plan and did everything I'm supposed to under those circumstances. But they didn't correct it.
I am incredibly frustrated because lately it seems like this is happening with everything.
- Transit City has been defunded, and none of the candidates are proposing solutions that will solve the part of the problem that affects me personally.
- Abortion is being excluded from international development maternal health programs.
- No one is working to correct the flaw in the ORTA that allows landlords to increase rent as much as they want if the building happens to have been built after 1998.
- The new copyright bill makes it illegal to break digital locks.
- The City of Toronto is encouraging buildings to close their garbage chutes rather than encouraging them to use them for recycling or organics.
- They're requiring stores to charge people 5 cents for plastic bags and eventually banning the use of biodegradable bags rather than simply requiring stores to use biodegradable bags in the first place.
- They introduced age-specific (rather than experience-specific) restrictions for young drivers.
- They seem to be seriously considering forcing a rape victim to testify in court with more of her body exposed than she is comfortable with.
And there are at least two other things too. I know I had at least 10 things, but I'm so upset I can't think of them.
All of these are things that I wrote my elected officials about. I wrote sensible, reasonable, coherent letters (much more sensible, reasonable and coherent than this blog post) identifying the crux of the problem and proposing specific solutions. In at least half the cases (garbage chutes, plastic bags, rent increases, driving restrictions, HST rebate) my solutions were objectively better for all involved. (They might in fact be better for all of these issues, but I can't objectively assess my solutions in all of them.) I did exactly what I was supposed to and was helpful and productive, but none of this stuff got fixed.
But when they came up with the excellent of idea of making O Canada inclusive, people wrote in and complained so they chickened out. And when they came up with the excellent idea of updating sex ed for the 21st century, people wrote in and complained and they stopped. But they never stop when I write in and complain.
I am drained and frustrated and exhausted. I'm being a good and diligent citizen, and no one is listening. But they are listening to the people who want to hurt me.
Our standard of living has been stagnating or declining since 1980. I was born in 1980. Things have been getting worse my whole life!
My parents were about the same age I am now when they had me. They had been married for seven years, so the choice to have a child was deliberate and mindful. And this choice must have been informed by the context in which they grew up: be good, and life will get better. My parents were good. They did well in school and went to university and got good sensible jobs, and were therefore able to achieve a much higher quality of life than the one that they grew up with. So they tried hard to make us smart, insofar as parenting can influence that sort of thing, so that we could achieve the same.
I was also good. I did well in school, got a good sensible job, never hurt anyone, and turned out vaguely smart as well. And I'm being a good girl politically too, always writing my elected representatives with good, logical, sensible, coherent letters that propose helpful solutions whenever I have something useful to contribute. But it isn't working! And, in a number of cases, they're actually hindering my quality of life!
This all feels so depressing and hopeless.
13 comments:
Well, I'm part of a couple with no dependent children, and I get ZILCH. So how pissed off do you think I am?
Single individuals get $300, but couples without dependent children get $1000.
I am part of a couple without depending children and we got $300. I agree that many laws discriminate against single people - also against people without kids.
* * * *
But more importantly, re the larger picture, we are in a bad time right now, a period of decline for the rights of women and working people. I hope you will try to take a longer view than the last 5 years or the last 10 years. Progress and justice don't seem to just grow in a straight line from bad to better to best. In the same period of time that you're talking about, there have been gains for queer people, for women, for health care, for labour - as well as setbacks.
I think, also, you may be mixing the very short-term with the big picture, throwing everything in the big bag marked Things Suck.
In your parents' time and grandparents' time, some things were better, but lots of things were worse.
I think.
Anon: How come you don't get anything? Everyone who filed a tax return is supposed to get something, no?
L-girl:
I hope you will try to take a longer view than the last 5 years or the last 10 years.
10 years is my entire adult life. I can't view the time before that through the same lens no matter how hard I try because it's filtered through the shelteredness and propoganda of living as a dependent in my parents' home.
Anon: How come you don't get anything? Everyone who filed a tax return is supposed to get something, no?
My partner didn't get anything. When I said "we" got $330, that is because our money is all together. But technically, I got a refund under my name, he got none.
10 years is my entire adult life. I can't view the time before that through the same lens no matter how hard I try because it's filtered through the shelteredness and propoganda of living as a dependent in my parents' home.
I was thinking about this.
How do you view history? When you learn about stuff that happened before you were born, you bring an adult lens to it, I think. So could you not apply that lens to any event that happened in your lifetime or earlier?
In my own experience, a lot of times it will go "I used to think such-and-such happened because that's how I was taught, but now I realize it is this-and-that" - the first part being myself as a child, the second being me as an adult. The way you might view religion, for example.
The problem is most things from the last 30-40 years aren't spoken of as though they were history. They're mentioned as though the audience remembers it from the first time around. For example, today I learned that the Meech Lake Accord was a failure. I've heard of the Meech Lake Accord pretty much since it first happened (I also learned today that it's only 20 years old - I thought that it was older), but I didn't know it was a failure. I also don't know what it even is. I know it's a "constitutional accord", but I don't know what a constitutional accord is or why they were trying to make one (or who was supporting it and who was opposing it.)
Meech Lake happened just as I was just barely starting to read newspapers, and it was too hard for me to understand at the time. Forgivable, I think, seeing as I was 9 years old. But then by the time I could maybe begin to grok it, it was being spoken of as though everyone already knows what it is and why it's significant (similar to how we bandy about "Kyoto Accord" without in-depth explanation). So I was never able to catch up.
Now it's true that I haven't done actual research on the Meech Lake Accord, but with older historical things (and current events as well) they're discussed in a way that gives more context and information. For example, if Vimy Ridge is mentioned in a newspaper article, it's going to be mentioned in passing that it's a WWI battle that took place in France. And, because of this, I've always known that it was a WWI battle in France, even before I learned its historical significance. I haven't done any research on Vimy Ridge either, but I know way more about it because it's spoken of like history
But with recent history, it's like I'm living in a world where every single mention of Vimy Ridge takes for granted that everyone knows it's a WWI battle that took place in France. And in the rare cases where they do give context, they simply say "Vimy Ridge was part of the Battle of Arras" (yes, I had to look that up), as though that explains everything.
So I'm getting a disproportionate share of information from my child-self's interpretation of how the adults around me were reacting to things, and an insufficient proportion from neutral facts (because they aren't landing in my lap as much), which means I have to do even more research than I would about straight-out history to feel like I'm seeing it through the same lens through which I'm watching this G20 conference unfold around me.
Hm, interesting. I'm trying to understand.
Maybe part of the difference for me is I assume there are very few (if any) neutral facts in history. I've relearned new views on the supposedly neutral history that I learned as a child (a la Howard Zinn, Stephen Kinzer, etc.)
I never heard of Vimy Ridge before I came to Canada. Since then I've learned that some people believe it was primary in the formation of Cdn identity, and celebrate it. And others believe it was a senseless bloodbath that had very little to do with Canada, that Canada was forced to participate in, and the patriotic stuff was glued on afterwards for the usual warmongering reasons.
Whether or not Meech Lake was a failure undoubtedly depends on who you ask. Much like globalization and/or privatization. Failure for working people, get-rich boon for giant corporations. Depends on perspective.
So I take everything I learned as a child and young adult and review it under my adult lens from a feminist, socialist, progressive perspective.
I do know what you mean about scraps of information without context. Everything feels like that right now to me. With so much information bombarding us all the time, I'm always playing catch up on everything, and depending on other people synthesizing facts and putting them in context for me.
And the problem just compounds itself, because I don't enough about the Meech Lake Accord (or, really, anything that happened politically between 1970 and 1995) to begin identifying where and how it might be spun.
With Vimy Ridge, I have that it was a WWI battle. Took place in France. Allies won. Lots of people died. Hardly the whole story, but basic, unspun facts from which I can determine how people might spin it, what elements might be conventional wisdom that haven't undergone critical thinking, etc. With Meech Lake et al, I don't even have that, so I can only learn about it from sources whose angle I'm not equipped to recognize.
I wonder if this
sources whose angle I'm not equipped to recognize
goes back to Entitlement (as you've used it in your blog) and confidence. I think you are well equipped to assess sources, but maybe don't feel that you are, don't see yourself that way.
No, I truly am unequipped to assess sources for these missing decades, because of this persistent lack of context.
Again using Meech Lake because this is the example that fell into my lap, I didn't know until I read this article yesterday, that Jean Chrétien was opposed to Meech Lake. I don't even know enough of the context that I would have been able to guess that any better than flipping a coin. I still can't tell you why, because that article is a typical example of the amount of context we're given for things that happened in the past 30 years. Knowing now that Chrétien was opposed to it, I could perhaps guess other people's biases with all the subtlety and nuance of a Toronto Sun headline, but I still can't even tell if I oppose it! I can't detect other people's angles with this little information.
In hindsight, its demise has brought about a more unpredictable transformation of the Canadian political landscape than its adoption would have had. Twenty years after the fact, that transformation is still ongoing.
And I can't see this transformation or even guess what she might be referring to, because it started before I became politically aware and it's always spoken of as though it's obvious to anyone who's politically aware.
Another thing you demonstrate is how little we all know, but how few of us admit that, or even know how much we don't know.
I received this from CRA today:
We have determined that you are not entitled to receive the GST/HSTC [C = credit] for July 2010 to April 2011 because your family net income is more than $42,505.
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