Pubdate: Tue, 19 Jan 2016
Source: Montreal Gazette (CN QU)
Copyright: 2016 Postmedia Network Inc.
Contact:  http://www.montrealgazette.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/274
Author: Basem Boshra
Page: A2

DETOX CENTRES ARE TANGIBLE VICTIMS OF AUSTERITY

Since being voted into power in the spring of 2014, the Quebec 
Liberal government has been zealously deploying polarizing 
"austerity" measures, chopping services to the public in a 
tunnel-visioned pursuit of its political Holy Grail: a balanced budget.

Significant cutbacks to health and education in particular, and the 
detrimental impact they have had on both the Quebecers who use these 
services and those who deliver them, have quickly become a 
consequential part of the public discourse in the province, with few 
of us remaining unaffected, directly or indirectly, by this new regime.

The latest group to find itself in the "austerity" crosshairs is 
welfare recipients, specifically those who are trying to free 
themselves from addictions to drugs or alcohol, and the beleaguered 
detox centres that treat them.

Beginning in May 2015, Quebecers on welfare who are in-patients at 
detox centres saw their monthly benefits slashed from $747 to $200. 
Since those detox centres rely on their users to defray some of the 
cost of their treatment - the portion users are expected to cover 
varies by centre, but it's roughly $300 a month - many patients have 
been forced to abandon getting help for their addictions at the 
centres, which have seen their number of patients plummet in the 
months since the cuts were implemented.

It didn't take long for those cutbacks to do tangible damage to the 
detox system. (There are 92 detox centres in the province, treating 
some 13,000 patients, roughly 80 per cent of whom are on welfare.) In 
September, the Maison ReNasci detox centre in East Angus, in the 
Eastern Townships, shut down after six years in operation, leaving 32 
of its patients to find alternate treatment centres.

Last week, the Centre Melaric in the Laurentians town of 
Saint-Andre-d'Argenteuil, one of the largest detox centres in the 
province, which had been treating addicts for almost 33 years, closed 
its doors. Some 75 people receiving treatment there were cut loose, 
and 16 employees were laid off. Another detox centre in the region, 
Centre Nouvelle-Vie in Saint-Jean-de-Matha, says it too might have to 
close soon.

In each of these cases, the centre's operators made it clear their 
troubles were directly related to the recent welfare cuts. Yet the 
Liberal government, via minister Lucie Charlebois, who is responsible 
for this particular file, has deflected any blame back on the 
centres, suggesting their struggles are due not to welfare cuts, but 
to fiscal mismanagement on the part of the centres.

The opposition Parti Quebecois, as it tends to be, has been scathing 
in its criticism of these latest cuts. PQ leader Pierre Karl Peladeau 
has called them "odious." On Friday, the party's social affairs 
critic, Jean-Francois Lisee, pinned the blame for the burgeoning 
detox centre crisis squarely on the Liberals, making public three 
reports from independent consultants that warned the government its 
cuts to welfare recipients in rehab would irrevocably destabilize the 
province's detox centres and ultimately lead many of them to shut down.

Despite the protestations from the PQ, and from those in the detox 
milieu, there is undeniably a political savvy to these specific cuts, 
especially among the substantial swath of the taxpaying populace that 
elects (and re-elects) governments. Welfare recipients are easy 
scapegoats at the best times. Welfare recipients who are hooked on 
alcohol and drugs? In "austere" times, no less? Talk about your 
low-hanging fruit. (All of which is to say I have been doing this 
long enough to know a significant proportion of the reaction to this 
column will be variations on "Throw these bums out on to the streets 
and make them find real jobs like the rest of us.")

But while they may score the Liberals some easy political points, the 
callousness of these particular cuts, directed as they are at such a 
vulnerable group of people, is sadly emblematic of this government's 
propensity to place the fiscal bottom line above the quality of lives 
of its citizens.

The kicker: the government estimates its welfare reforms will save 
all of $6 million a year, scarcely a drop in the budgetary bucket 
when you consider that it plans to spend some $100 billion during the 
current fiscal year.

Saving such a meagre amount of taxpayer money in exchange for causing 
so much grief for these poor souls who, as we so often exhort them 
to, are simply trying to turn their lives around, is not an example 
of fiscal rectitude to be applauded, but of a lack of human decency 
that should be denounced.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom