The following is taken from a presentation to Peterborough County council by Jim Struthers, a Trent University historian who has studied the history of social assistance in Ontario in the 20th century.

Welfare liens admittedly will affect only a small number of social assistance clients, since most do not own their own homes. However, the symbolism of this policy change is extremely disturbing. Quite simply, the fundamental idea behind placing a lien on the property of an Ontario Works (OW) recipient is that welfare is a loan a debt to society which must be paid back. The last time Ontarians operated on this assumption was the 1930s and 1940s. We abandoned the idea then for very good reasons, and it is foolhardy to return to it now. Let me give you a few reasons why.

Real estate and social policy make a very poor mix. We learned this lesson at some cost during the "dirty thirties." Thousands of Canadians lost their homes in the Depression many in this community simply because they could not afford to pay property taxes which bore the primary burden of financing unemployment relief. Thousands more had to sell their homes and liquidate all their assets as a condition of eligibility for relief, simply because they could not find work. Destroying the equity built up through years of work on family farms and homes was one of the most devastating financial and psychological consequences of the 1930s. The memories of this trauma live on today in the minds of children who grew up in those years. It was one reason why the search for social security was one of the key legacies of the immediate post-war era. Why do we want revisit such policies of placing liens on homes now, even for a small minority of the population?

Between 1927 and 1951 Canada's first old age pension scheme a "means-tested" program which paid the indigent elderly $20 a month when they reached the age of 70 also allowed for the provision of "liens" against the homes, farms, and property of the aged as condition of their eligibility for a pension. Throughout these years provincial old age pension commissions rigorously enforced these regulations creating enormous hardship for the elderly and their children, much confusion as to whether old age pensions were "charity" provided by a benevolent state to the aged or a right they had earned through their hard work in building Canada, and rising anger and deception by the aged and their children, as they sought to avoid the hated means test, and liens against family property, by transferring assets from parents to children in the years just prior to the elderly's pension eligibility.

James Snell, an historian at the University of Guelph who has written extensively on Canada's old age pension system, has eloquently described the backlash which ensued. As Snell writes, "Most elderly bitterly resented what they saw as state interference with their property. For pensioners, claims or liens with a view to claiming the property after death made the OAP not a pension but a loan." By the late 1940s, most provincial governments effectively gave up trying to collect the costs of pensions out of liens on the estates of the elderly because of rising public opposition and recognition that the legal costs and paperwork exceeded the amounts they eventually received. In 1951 we created, instead, Old Age Security (OAS) our first universal public pension scheme which recognized that the aged had a right to social security. Pensions were not to be thought of as either charity or a loan.

Does anyone here today believe this was a mistake? Will our next step in returning to the social policy of the 1930s be to place "liens" on the homes and property of pensioners in receipt of the needs-tested Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS)? Liens in exchange for welfare and old age pensions were linked closely together in the social thought of the 1930s and '40s. Why assume that this linkage won't reappear once we move back down the slippery slope of thinking about social provision as a "loan" rather than a right, or return to mixing together real estate and social policy? South of the border American state governments routinely place liens on the homes and property of indigent Medicaid recipients. Through Medicare, Canadians have developed a very different approach to health care. We view it as fundamental social right. It is not charity. It is not a loan. It is not a claim against property. Throughout the last five years we have radically reformed our welfare policy to match American state models. Is health care next? The point I am trying to make in this brief historical overview is to alert all of you to the fundamental dangers I see in what otherwise might appear to be a minor change in OW regulations. Imposing liens against the property of OW recipients will not save us much if any money, nor does this policy shift emerge out of any measurable budget crisis. Ontario's economy is flush. Instead, this change is motivated purely by ideology. It symbolizes a return to thinking about social policy as a loan, rather than as a collective responsibility of Canadian citizenship, or as a way of pooling the risks we all face in a rapidly changing economy. Left unchallenged it has dangerous implications for other key forms of social provision Canadians cherish. It also marks a return to mixing together real estate and social policy in ways we abandoned for very sound reasons after World War II. Let's not turn backwards and walk down this road. We won't like what we find at the end of the journey.

Jim Struthers is chair of the Canadian studies program at Trent University.