To the editor,
Annelise Petlock had an excellent letter in last week’s Banner (March 9; ‘ODSP increase in income cap misses the mark for amputees’) about one group of recipients of Ontario’s Disability Support Program (ODSP), and how little the monthly payment is. I would like to add another thought in support of the monthly payments being so small.
Twenty years ago, a neighbour in Kitchener had a foster son in his mid-teens. The boy’s head was messed up and we used to wonder if he would ever be able to hold a job.
When the lad was a toddler, his mother fed him some of her drugs to keep him quiet while she enjoyed the life she had chosen. After a run-in with the police, we used to talk out loud about how he “is either going to end up in jail or dead by the time he’s 30.”
That “lad” is now in his mid-thirties, still hasn’t had a job for more than one day, has a lovely 10-year-old daughter with shared custody with the mother, has not been in jail and is certainly not dead.
But he is forced to survive on the ODSP payment and it is not his fault. Society failed to protect him when he needed us the most, so as an adult, he has to pay for our mistakes.
Unacceptable!
John McVicar
Listowel
