Legal aid for climate emergency
Money for First Nations Wildlife Protection
Paramedic services
Support for Refugees and Immigrants
Legal aid and crime victims
"The 2019 budget forecasts that Ontario’s public account will not reach balance until 2023–24, one year earlier than the prior Liberal government of Kathleen Wynne had proposed but beyond the current term of the government’s mandate, breaking one of Ford’s key election promises." (National Observer.). But it looks like people who really need help to survive and the environment will suffer.
This morning as I waited for the ferry I struck up a conversation with a woman who lived in a luxury high-rise condo who was upset that homeless people made her and her visitors uncomfortable as they sat on a bench near the shopping mall asking for change.
I confessed I felt uncomfortable that people are homeless. It seems to me their plight is way more damaging to their well-being than having to say no to people who ask for a handout.
But then that is a sensibility that predates the concern for balancing the various budgets. The flurry of panic headlines that worry about government debt don't include the costs of homelessness on a societal level -- a kind of blindness we maintain as if life itself is a nuisance, undoing our vague sense of security in the abundance of things, entertainment and nice homes. When people suffer they seem to get in the way of being organized.
