Temagami man asks: Workfare or work-FAIR?

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Workfare became a reality in Ontario on New Year's Day.

From now on, welfare recipients in the province will have to work for their benefits, performing a variety of public service or make-work jobs in programs that will be administered locally.

It is still uncertain whether or not Ontario Works, the new provincial program, will impact First Nations communities - meetings involving Ontario chiefs and Ministry of Community and Social Services representatives will be conducted this month - but it's a sure thing that urban Aboriginal residents who depend on the welfare system will be affected.

Add to this latest provincial development the fact that the federal Ministry of Human Resources Development has been cutting its budget, laying off staff and off-loading many of its responsibilities to provincial governments over the past three years, and you have a lot of uncertainty in the entire area of employment and training.

Enter Lawrence Twain.

Twain is one of those people you can't help but like even if he does come on a little strong at times. The 52-year-old Algonquin man is a former resident of Spanish Residential School. He quit drinking 14 years ago after a long period of serious drinking and decided he wanted to turn his life around. A member of the northern Ontario Temagami First Nation, Twain is a follower of traditional Algonquin values. He's busy these days - some would say too busy - trying to drum up support for an idea of his.

He wants the provincial and federal governments to help him set up a workfare program that is based on traditional Algonquin values.

Many people who work in the system think Twain's ideas might work and his plan is gaining more and more support.

"I call it Work-FAIR," Twain explained. "It's a job creation partnership involving all levels of government. I plan to get one pilot project going here in North Bay and it can grow from there."

Everywhere he's gone in the last year as he attempts to get his idea across, Twain has made friends and gained allies. His former employer, who was forced to end Twain's employment as a drug and alcohol counselor this past September because he put the wishes of his Clan Mothers, Elders and his people ahead of the requirements of his job description, has nothing but good things to say about him.

Deborah Young, a bit of a non-conformist herself, is the director of United Communities Achievement Networks. She runs a unique program that aims to get long-term welfare dependent people back into the work force. UCAN set up the first version of Work-FAIR on Maple Dell Farm in Fenelon Falls (near Lindsay). Young said the program has operated - without government funding - on and off since the mid-1980s. In a setting that is reminiscent of a 1960s style commune, hard-core welfare dependents perform tasks on the farm that generate a modest income which allows the program to continue. The idea behind the program is that once these people get accustomed to being active and keeping a work schedule, they'll break through the psychological barriers that have kept them from ending their welfare dependency cycle, and get a job. Young said hundreds of people have successfully followed this plan.

"For a total cost of between $500 and 700, in from two weeks to a year, we can get someone a job," she said, emphasizing that the cost and the success rate are both clearly superior to the government systems.

UCAN has, however, run into trouble with various government agencies. Training and social services are handled by different ministries in different levels of government and there isn't much tolerance for a program that wanders in and out of the different jurisdictions. Young said she has been effectively shut down on several occasions by bureaucrats who put obstacles in front of her program.

Twain plans to transplant the UCAN concept to his home community and hopes it will then spread to First Nations across the province and beyond. He has seen the difficulties tat Young encountered and has decided to get the governments on his side right from the start. He sees work-FAIR as a low cost way to cut social services expenditures while providing welfare recipients with the confidence to break into the workforce.

Twain is ignoring bureaucratic protocol and force-feeding his plan with a letter-writing campaign but at least one federal government employee (and several community level workers) believe he's got a chance.

"I think he has a good idea," said Zigman Szlek, program and services officer for HRD's Hamilton office. "I don't know if he'd be the best person to solely administer it. He needs to establish linkage with established programs."

Szlek came to know Lawrence Twain in a manner with which many bureaucrats can identify. He had to smooth over a major confrontation in an HRD office after a staff member couldn't give Twain the answer he wanted.

The Ma-Kominising-Anishnabeg Nation member was in court in Lindsay, Ont. in late December (after press deadline) to deal with charges that were laid after he refused to leave the Lindsay employment office last summer. But it's typical of the man that has befriended, and enlisted the aid of, the people who summoned the police to arrest him.

Since cost-cutting has been the central theme behind the federal government's off-loading strategy, some workers in the field believe there could be support for the work-FAIR concept.

"It's a concept waiting for a place to happen," said Ken Noble, co-ordinator of the Sudbury Area Management Board, the agency which oversees federal training programs. "I'm very supportive of Lawrence. He's the most motivated client I've ever had."

"We're supporting him," said Rick Robins, who fills a similar role with the Niagara Peninsula Aboriginal Area Management Board. "He's built his own way of doing business. It's a way that comes from the old way of thinking. It's a grassroots idea that reflects the frustration that our people feel when they have to wok within a structure they didn't create. I don't know what will come of it. I guess that's up to Lawrence."

The chief of the Temagami band council, James Twain (Lawrence Twain's third cousin) points out that he and his council agree that the idea has merits but a little bit of local politics is clouding the issue. As part of his plan, Lawrence Twain is pressing to have the outside governments recognize the traditional clan system of government on his territory. That would mean dismantling the existing band council, something that seems unlikely considering the history of federal dealings with traditional governments.

Chief Twain wants to see some type of Aboriginal-oriented workfare program.

"I don't like workfare unless there's some kind of supplement because it looks like the government wants people to work for slave wages," he said. "We didn't appoint Lawrence but I do believe what he's doing is pretty good."

Twain has invited every person with any interest whatsoever in his work-FAIR project to attend a meeting at the North Bay Indian Friendship Centre on Jan. 28. After that meeting he'll have a better idea if the plan is going to come to life.