City of Toronto CUPE 79 and 416 Strike – Day 29 – Impact on Children in Ward 43

by John Laforet
posted on July 20th, 2009 at 07:15:02 am

‘Kids make bad political footballs’ - John Laforet

I’ve written about child poverty in Ward 43 before. Listening to resident’s stories during and after the campaign made this the kind of issue for me that it is difficult to see as anything but a social justice issue. Ward 43 has the highest rate of child poverty in Scarborough. Low income Ward 43 residents who are eligible for a child care subsidy have lost access to 97 of those spaces or approximately 10% of child care subsides available to residents since the 2006 election and without any consideration to the impact of the economic crisis that has seen unemployment skyrocket in Toronto to 9.6%.

I am definitely not your average child care advocate. I am male, young, single and without children. But – as someone who has run for public office, and been involved in politics in a community with the highest rate of child poverty anywhere in Scarborough; it’s an issue I’ve come to learn a lot about. Linking the availability of child care to a parents ability to provide a life outside of poverty for a child is a challenge I believe needs to be taken up if we are to unravel some of barriers to employment faced by especially single parents.

Because of this strike, of the 935 families that were able to keep their subsidies after the City of Toronto cut roughly 10% of the subsidies allocated to eligible Ward 43 residents, 25% of those families have found themselves without access to their subsidized child care spot for 29 days and counting. Because the City directly operates 226 spaces in Ward 43 that are available to families eligible for subsidy, and because those day cares are run by unionized workers, 226 low income families have 226 children without access to much needed, affordable day care.

If the other impacts of the strike wasn’t bad enough, these families are now forced to find unsubsidized options of childcare to ensure that they are able to continue going to work to maintain employment. Child care is not a service the City provides to enhance the lives of residents, it is one the City provides that is essential to allow low income earners to remain in the work force, provide for their families and have affordable, safe and accessible childcare for their children. The strike is now depriving them of that. 

Kids make bad political footballs. While garbage may be the most noticeable impact of the current labour disruption, the City shuttering its day cares and providing no alternative to parents whose children were receiving subsidized daycare in the public system is probably the most serious.

Somebody needs to start thinking about the impacts this strike is having on Toronto’s lowest income earners, their children and our future. Children without access to licensed, safe and affordable childcare are at risk. With each day this strike carries out, the 3000 or so kids whose subsidized care has been provided directly by the City are at greater risk. Their families financial situations further tightened, not to mention the tens of thousands of parent’s who rely on parks and recreation programming to provide summer time daycare through the summer camp programming run by the City of Toronto.

My hope is prior to any future labour disruptions, the City can reach an agreement with the unions to ensure that childcare and more importantly child safety isn’t compromised by a future strike. Better yet, the City could end this strike by removing the unnecessary and controversial issue of sick leave pay from the negotiating table, strike an agreement and strive to prevent a future strike by maintaining good relations with union officials and starting negotiations well in advance of the expiration of an existing collective agreement.

REPOST: Bed Bugs – From Stories I’d Like to Share

by John Laforet
posted on October 17th, 2008 at 22:20:28 pm

Stories that have shaped my views and have continued to fuel my passion was the primary reason for launching www.laforet.ca this past June. A single father provided me one of those experiences when I ran for Toronto City Council in Scarborough’s Ward 43. While Councillor Paul Ainslie was elected, the race certainly had a lasting impact on me. This man’s story has been impossible to forget, and has served as a reminder to me of the real needs constituents have and the importance of an elected official to address those needs. It is with this, I would like to once again draw attention to a story I want to share. I originally posted it on July 17th 2008.

Bed Bugs

When running for office, you meet a lot of people. Many stories touch you, but often stories have an ability to make you see an issue through the lens of another, and sometimes, change your own views. Often times, it is anecdotes and the stories of others that give one a far better lens to view an issue through. I met a single father and his eight-year-old boy who did just that. Together they showed me their modest apartment, the plaster less living room wall, the drywall falling into their bathtub and the holes in the baseboard that allow cockroaches to migrate into their apartment. The dad informed me of an eight-month-old maintenance request that has gone unanswered, how his son’s school was implementing a uniform policy and he did not know how he was going to pay for it. What really got me was something each of us ought to be ashamed of; bed bugs infesting community-housing buildings in our city.

Every few months, the father was forced to throw out their furniture, go to the furniture bank and arrange for new mattresses for him and his son. As it was, they had no couch, just a single large chair in the living room, a basic coffee table and a small TV resting on pieces of wood. His son told me about waking up in the night, being bitten by bed bugs, and bleeding for the sores because it was hard not to scratch. As he told me his story, he began jumping up and down, and frantically rubbing his arms and body to show me what it is like for him.

I was shocked that in a city like Toronto, we would allow conditions this bad to exist for our most vulnerable citizens. Simply put, it is not right, and particularly a government run entity should not be forcing people to live in conditions like this. Why should a boy go through his childhood fearing his bed and waiting for the next time it needs to be replaced? I thought back to my childhood, and can only recall having two beds while living with my parents and once since. I simply could not imagine such a frequent need for a new one. The amount of worries this single father had to deal with were daunting enough without having to teach his son life lessons like putting the cereal in the fridge to keep cockroaches from crawling into the box, or worrying about the next time the bed bug infestation would get so bad a new mattress could be the only solution. This day changed me. It showed me something that I could not forget, nor wanted to. It gave me something to fight for and something to want to change.

As the days and weeks went on after meeting this family, I shared the story of a father and a boy living in Toronto Community Housing and going through all they had to. I told people if elected I would fight community housing on things like this, and bring light to the backlog of maintenance requests publicly, even in the Council Chamber if I had to. I met a lawyer who told me each year he devotes two weeks of his time to helping low income tenants with landlord issues for free, and that if I were serious about this, he would help and ask some of his colleagues to help too.

I consider the time I spent in that apartment hearing their story and talking and thinking about it in the days and weeks that followed central to changing my thinking around social justice. It really opened my eyes to people not being served by their government and the need for activism within government as well. More than that though it showed me that we as a society cannot turn a blind eye to those who are less fortunate and struggling to get by. While we may feel that this family having affordable housing is a blessing, we need to also think more about the conditions of that housing and the impact it has on both father and son in this case.

On Declaring Bed Bugs a Heath Hazard

by John Laforet
posted on October 17th, 2008 at 10:00:44 am

Councillor Howard Moscoe will ask the Toronto Board of Health to work with the Province to declare bed bugs a health hazard. The reason for the declaration is essentially to empower the City to have the authority to fumigate units that have infestations even if the tenant does not want it sprayed. 

Bed bugs should be declared a health hazard and the City should do absolutely everything possible to rid Toronto Community Housing buildings of their infestations and work with the private landlords and property managers throughout Toronto’s rental community to fight infestations there as well. I have been fortunate in my short experience renting never to live in a unit with cockroaches or bed bugs. But that is because I’ve always made a point of asking prospective landlords before renting whether there were bug problems and what they did about it. 

The impact bed bugs have on a tenant and their family’s ability to enjoy their home is immense. If you are unable to sleep because of the psychological impacts of bed bugs, that will effect your health and the quality of your life. No one should be afraid of their bed or made to keep their cereal in the fridge because behind that seal is the only way to keep bugs out. A city like ours should not have problems like this. 

Tenants in our city, especially in low income buildings are powerless in ridding their units of infestations. You can wash your dishes right after eating, clean you bed sheets weekly, vacuum your furniture and mattresses until you’re blue in the face, if your neighbouring unit has a bug problem, you will too. 

The City of Toronto needs to do more to help tenants in TCH rental units especially. On election day the building I was working in was so badly infested on two floors, you could see glue traps and dead cockroaches and other bugs beside the door frame to apartments. It was the first time, I’ve seen bugs in the hall of an infested building. Imagine what that does to your enjoyment of the building if you are literally walking past a bug graveyard on your way into your unit. 

There is no excuse for the City not having an all out program to fight bug infestations in our community housing buildings. I am glad that Councillor Moscoe has brought the issue of bed bugs up, and hope he will use his position on the Executive Committee to get additional funding in the 2009 budget for a war on infestations in our public buildings. These residents are constantly forgotten by municipal politicians and it is simply wrong the way their issues are continually ignored. 

Clean, well maintained, livable affordable housing units will make for safe, engaged and vibrant neighbourhoods in our city. It is time Council act to show residents of these communities that they understand the problems they face and are going to try to alleviate at least one of them before this term is up. Fighting Bed Bug infestations would be a good place to start.