The last stitch in the net.

When most of what you own has been sold, your savings are gone, and your unemployment insurance benefits have run out, it's time to visit your local welfare office

"I can lift 250 pounds," the 26-year-old man told reporters. "You think I should be offwork?" A heavy-equipment operator for eight years, the man had earned up to $20 an hour. But, in the previous year, he had worked only six weeks and his unemployment benefits had dried up. Now on welfare, he gets $625 a month, most of which goes to rent a tiny basement apartment.

In Canada, welfare is "last resort" income. It helps pay basic living expenses for those who can't make ends meet and have nowhere else to turn. The most likely candidates for welfare are single-parent families, people with disabilities, and people who simply can't find work. In March 1993, three million Canadians depended on welfare.

Under the Canada Assistance Plan (CAP) Act of 1966, the federal government shares the costs of welfare and selected social services with the provinces and territories, who administer their own programs. In Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Manitoba municipalities also run welfare programs.

Rules vary from one jurisdiction to another, but people generally are able to get welfare if their needs exceed their incomes and their assets (what they own) fall within given guidelines. Where they live also affects how much they receive. Each province and territory has its own way of calculating basic social assistance, which includes money for food, clothing, shelter, utilities, and an allowance for personal and household needs.

As well, extra assistance is often available for special needs. And welfare recipients have opportunities to earn some money without losing welfare assistance. How much they can earn varies according to the province or territory and to factors such as family size.

During 1992/93, governments in Canada spent more than $16 billion on welfare and social services. However, the National Council of Welfare states that the help from most welfare programs is "grossly inadequate for the vast majority of recipients." Most of the assistance is so limited "the only guarantee that welfare offers consistently is poverty." Thousands live in substandard housing. Thousands go hungry.

Many people also find welfare status degrading. They are forced to use up all their savings to qualify for help in the first place. Then, their needs are defined -- not by them -- but by governments.

Writes Globe & Mail columnist Michael Valpy: "There cannot be more than a fraction of those without work, without sufficient earned income to support themselves and their families, who are not embarrassed by their status, who will not wish with all their hearts that things were otherwise and who would not in a moment rid themselves of the shame and self-dislike and humiliation for their children of not having the chance to pull their own weight."

Still, in the late '70s and early '80s, welfare lineups grew -- especially for single, employable people. The inflation and recession of the time were primary causes and they hampered efforts to deal with the problem too. Costs of social assistance were rising at a time when government income was falling. Across the country, the welfare system and its recipients came under closer scrutiny. And the problem worsened with the recession of 1990/91.

Hard times even hit Ontario, the manufacturing heartland of Canada. In fact, Ontario suffered the fastest growing welfare rolls in the country. In the year between October 1989 and October 1990, the number of people receiving municipal welfare leaped by 50% -- 68% in Toronto.

"This is the first time I've ever had to come in here," said one young man applying for help at a welfare office. As a successful, self-employed installer of tile and marble, he hadn't expected his business to die as it had in Ontario's ailing economy. And, he did not qualify for unemployment benefits.

"You have to bring yourself down a couple of notches," he commented. "What else can you do, right?"

Right. Or, is there something else? Certainly, people have been looking.

Pressures on the public purse have prompted calls for greater self-reliance. Critics of the welfare system claim that individuals should be doing more to look after themselves, only rarely turning to the government. These critics want to move people off welfare and into jobs.

Some governments have responded by penalizing employable welfare recipients who were neither working nor training for jobs. Others have offered encouragement and rewards. The federal government, for example, supported job training programs and gave extra help to programs that allowed people to earn more while on welfare. The purpose was to encourage welfare recipients to gain more experience and confidence in job markets so they could move off welfare completely.

But, for many, it's not that easy. More than a third of the people on welfare are children whose parents receive assistance. At least 10% are adults with disabilities, some of whom are unable to work. Of the remainder, those over age 60 have few opportunities in the job market, those who are single parents of pre-schoolers are mostly better off on welfare, and many of the others have few skills to take to the job market.

But, efforts to find jobs are limited by the number of jobs available. And there is an obvious link between welfare and unemployment. It's a simple relationship: people can't find jobs when unemployment is high, and unemployed people often need welfare if there is no other source of income.

Of those who do find jobs, many are stuck with low-wage positions. And that could leave them even worse off than they would be on welfare. For instance, a 1994 family with one member working at minimum wage would pocket nearly $9,000 a year less than a family on welfare.

"Social assistance is insufficient, but working is more insufficient," comments social policy consultant Terrance Hunsley.

Further, welfare can become a trap. Many recipients have a hard time finding a job that meets their income needs, especially taking into account the benefits that come with welfare, such as free prescription drugs. What's more, workers have to face additional costs of extra clothing, transportation, and child care.

Part of the working public resents welfare programs and the tax burden these programs represent. During hard economic times, proposals to reform welfare by introducing some form of "workfare" -- working for welfare -- seem to gain popularity. Supporters think that it's only fair to ask people to do something productive for their welfare wage.

Over the years, various forms of workfare have been suggested. In 1979, for example, the mayor of North York, Ontario, proposed that all able-bodied welfare recipients shovel snow. As a minister of human resources during the 1970s, Bill Vander Zalm promoted workfare in British Columbia: "If anybody is able to work, but refuses to pick up the shovel, we will find ways of dealing with him."

But workfare opponents claim it is more expensive to administer involuntary work programs than it is to issue welfare cheques. What's more, the number of people who switch to regular employment after workfare is extremely low. Most projects involve menial labour that offers little on-the-job training and no worthwhile work experience. And these projects reduce the time available to get training or hunt for jobs.

While some government efforts have focussed on analyzing the welfare system, others have tried to make sure no one takes advantage of it. Ontario, for one, has launched a major crackdown. Having seen its welfare costs soar from $3.5 billion in 1991 to $6.2 billion in 1993, the province hired 270 inspectors to review 690,000 cases. Ontario says it has always investigated suspicious cases. Now, it is checking every case.

Preliminary results of the investigations were released in September 1994, and they surprised a lot of people. According to Community and Social Services Minister Tony Silipo, irregularities were found in 20% of the 40,000 cases studied. These problems ranged from clerical errors to outright fraud, and averaged $2,600 for each file.

However, several other studies have found that only one to four percent of welfare recipients cheat the system. That's less than the percentage of people who file dishonest income-tax returns. But, rumours of widespread welfare fraud are common. One manager of Toronto's social services calls them "fairy tales" and says they do nothing but foster hatred and intolerance for the poor. But, as welfare dollars are not easy to find in tight government budgets, the push is on to catch the frauds.

Earlier this year, the federal government commissioned a national opinion poll as part of its review of social programs. A whopping 80% thought the programs are easily abused and 69% believed they "make it too easy for people to give up looking for work."

However, Canadians did express significant support for welfare, and 56% felt that better-off families should give up some of their benefits so the poor could get more.

Although Canadians agreed that social programs needed reforming, 44% didn't think the federal government could do a good job of it, Nonetheless, welfare reform is primarily a government effort. Various reviews and reforms have been ongoing for years -- with input from many individuals and anti-poverty groups. The National Council of Welfare, for one, is a body of citizens that advises the Minister of National Health and Welfare.

In a 1987 report, called Welfare in Canada: The Tangled Safety Net, the Council recommended changes to all provincial and welfare systems to assure:

* adequacy of the standard of living provided by welfare;

* simplification of welfare systems in terms of rules and categories;

* accessibility of welfare information and benefits;

* equity of benefits between and within provinces and territories; and,

* guarantees of due process of law and reasonable appeals.

Within the broad guidelines of the CAP, provinces and territories can change their own welfare systems. So far, however, they have not done much to meet the Council's recommendations. Programs are still very complex. Little has been done to improve access. Benefits remain low and inconsistent. Between 1986 and 1992, some recipients actually became poorer because their benefits were not raised automatically as the cost of the living rose.

The federal government made things worse by reneging on its cost-sharing commitment under CAP. Beginning in 1990, it restricted increases in payments to British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario to five percent for five years.

As more effort is put into reform, experts agree there should be changes to:

* employment programs, such as training and job creation;

* family support, such as enforcement of child maintenance orders;

* disability insurance that provides income to persons with disabilities; and,

* pension schemes that allow 60- to 65-year-olds who are facing welfare the option of early retirement.

* As it is, many people are forced to turn to welfare because Canada is lacking reform in these areas. But reform advocates stress that special benefits for poor, single parents should encourage them to take jobs. These benefits could include adequate, available, subsidized child care, an income supplement, and a special housing allowance.

Labour market surveys have shown that more than half the adults who received welfare in recent years had failed to graduate from high school. They point to a need for special training and education programs that are plugged into the needs of the labour market as well as to the situation of welfare recipients.

"The number of people on welfare in recent years has been large enough to suggest that virtually any of us could find ourselves on welfare at some point in our lives -- probably for reasons well beyond our control," states the National Council of Welfare. With that sobering thought, we would be very wise to watch the progress of welfare reform in this country.

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES:

1. Have a team of students research life on welfare in your locality and then have them write a brief fictional account of a week in someone's life on welfare.

2. Debate the following: "Resolved that in today's competitive world, Canada can no longer afford its government-supported social service system and that those who can't provide for their own needs should become the responsibility of private charity."

3. Invite a social worker to your class to speak about the problems faced by those who live on a welfare cheque.

FACT FILE

The federal government has allocated $800 million over the next two years for pilot projects to improve social assistance.

The incidence of psychiatric disorders and school-related problems in children on welfare is double the reported rate in non-welfare families.