Cut Off

Now, That’s Another Story…

This blog started about five weeks ago, today being Mother’s Day, 2010.

It started when I got a letter from ODSP saying I was cut off.

ODSP? It’s the Ontario Disability Support Program – a program of the provincial government in Ontario that will pay an adult who has officially been classified as disabled an amount of money for living expenses.

There are all sorts of other things you have to be to get this money. The words “patient” and “persistent” come to mind. “Genius” is another one, because it takes a certain level of mental gymnastics to figure out what the ODSP workers are talking about when they do things like send letters informing you that you have been cut off.

It being the second time in a year that this has happened I was annoyed and I phoned a Toronto Star reporter to see if I could write articles about how poor people manage the system which “helps” them. There was no one at The Star who wanted such articles. But the idea did lead to this blog which lets me tell some stories. This blog also may help add to some research people are doing about government policies and how they affect people who get income supplements because they are poor.

Back to a few weeks ago… My financial advisor who knows a lot about ODSP told me they send out letters like that one every now and then – seemingly because they want to scare people. It worked! Anyway the next Monday I spent about two hours on the phone, mostly waiting while recordings told me that calls would be answered – eventually. I tried every extension that I had ever been given, and the receptionist, and was able to put messages in about four voice mailboxes.

Several days later my Client Representative called to let me know it was not a real letter - just something I had received because some department somewhere hadn’t gotten the information yet that my CPP pension had started soon after New Years. Even though the money has already started being deducted from my ODSP pension, somehow higher up in ODSP someone thought I was trying to hide it.

My Client Representative got me reinstated. My May pension was deposited in my bank account OK.

Ten days later I got another letter. This time I have to explain why I haven’t reported my 2009 Income Tax Assessment immediately, and in the meantime I am cut off – again. Of course the Income Tax year has barely ended, and I don’t have my final assessment yet, but that’s another story….

Judith