DRUG-TESTING PLAN RAISES BIG DOUBTS

If the difference between love and hate is truly a fine line, consider
the tightrope the Harris Tories are walking these days. Stepping, in
recent weeks, where even angels fear to tread, the Harris gang has
floated a couple of trial balloons that take the Tory penchant for
risk-taking to even greater heights. The just-withdrawn plan for a
huge pay raise for MPPs pretty much speaks for itself as a testament
to insensitivity and disregard for the electorate.

The proposal earlier this week to force welfare recipients into
drug-testing and drug-treatment programs is quite another matter
although it too speaks to a Tory tendency to leap before looking.

First, though, let us be clear about this newspaper's view of welfare
and what we believe it should be designed to do.

We probably sit right where most Ontarians do, believing welfare is
necessary to help the disadvantaged. We believe access to welfare is a
privilege, not a right, that it should be temporary, not permanent,
and the goal of any such program should be to encourage those using it
to seek ways back into society's mainstream.

In other words, people who are deemed employable should be encouraged
to find work and to support themselves. In this society, in this
economic environment, that is not an unreasonable goal.

It is also not unreasonable for a government to wish to reduce the
numbers of those on welfare. In Ontario, in October, more than 206,000
people received welfare cheques. Factor in the family dependents and
you see that more than 450,000 people in this province relied on
welfare support last month.

But is mandatory drug-testing the answer? Will drug-testing and the
welfare cutoff of those recipients who refuse to take part really cut
the numbers or do anything to get people into the workforce? Frankly,
we don't know for certain. Neither does Queen's Park and therein lies
the heart of our concern. We don't know if drug-testing means testing
for alcohol addiction. Or marijuana consumption. Or ecstasy. Or cocaine.

We don't know if drug-testing can isolate occasional users from
hard-core, twice-daily addicts. And we certainly don't know what
possible good can come from cutting off welfare for a single parent
with both a drug dependency and two small dependent kids hoping for a
decent meal and a good night's sleep.

And we don't know, ultimately, if Queen's Park has thought this thing
through to the point where it realizes that just as welfare
administration requires a significant, costly support structure, so,
too, do new drug-testing and drug-treatment programs.

The folks at Queen's Park appear sincere in calling for welfare
drug-testing. They say they have welfare recipients' best interests at
heart, and that encouraging them to rejoin mainstream society as
active, productive, employed adults is surely the right thing to do.
We don't disagree with the general direction. But we do have some
questions and some concerns about the route.