THE ISSUE

The provincial government has contracted out job-finding and -training services to private companies, which are paid based on the amount of time welfare recipients stay off welfare. Yet critics charge the system rewards these profitable companies for doing little, because many welfare recipients cycle on and off of welfare over periods ranging from a few months to a year or two. Government tracking of these private programs is far from perfect, and the Ministry of Human Resources has tried to shield the results from public view.

Of course, it's complicated

The NDP introduced private training and placement for welfare recipients, and there are critics of the results in both parties.

The bottom line

Is this system sufficiently transparent? Will your government continue to contract out job placement on the current basis? What will you do to ensure that private companies are paid only when there is clear evidence that they have helped an individual welfare recipient find work?

THE ANSWERS

Green Party of BC

Lack of transparency in the process produces predictable results, especially in circumstances that clearly involve a conflict of interest between the companies involved and their payment based on not funding potentially deserving welfare recipients. The role of job-training and job-finding for those on welfare should belong to government. The Green party believes that the Ministry of Human Resources, obeying a Liberal government privatization agenda, is abrogating its responsibility by trying to download its essential role in regulating aspects of welfare to the private sector. To make a bad situation worse, the ministry is failing to regulate the process. The Green party would restore function to the delegated ministry.

Democratic Reform BC

Insufficient transparency and accountability for privately contracted services is apparent. Assistance programs need to be re-ordered on a social service model, which focuses on appropriate communication and effective delivery of legitimate social benefits. Rather than subsidizing private employment agencies and training colleges, and giving employment grants that favour selected businesses, the resources involved would be better applied to providing adequate shelter, food and transportation to those in need while they seek employment. Appropriate public counseling services should be available on a not-for-profit basis. Benefits for employable applicants have been inconsistent with human dignity and reasonable living standards for more than a decade. Rather than providing a compassionate safety net for the less fortunate, both the NDP and the Campbell Liberals have put for-profit enterprise on the dole. During the transition to a renewed social service model, DRBC would empower an independent oversight agency to monitor contracts with private service suppliers. David McCaig, Victoria-Beacon Hill, social services critic, [email protected] 250-598-4226

BC Liberals

The Liberals, who have declined to respond to this or any other of The Tyee's policy-oriented Hot Button questions, vigorously defended the use of private contractors to provide job placement services. Last year, they claimed the reduction in the 250,000 welfare recipients by more than a third as evidence of their success. However, one government "exit survey" interviewed less than a third of the former recipients it sought to reach.

NDP The NDP introduced "performance based" private job-placement programs, which are used in other provinces, for welfare recipients in the late 1990s. While the NDP platform promises to eliminate the restriction that limits "employable" people to two years of welfare in a five-year period, and to restore modest earnings exemptions eliminated by the Liberals, it remains silent on the issues related to contracting out job placement to private firms. The NDP has so far declined to respond to The Tyee's Hot Button questions. In June 2004, Carole James told The Tyee that the NDP "started some of the welfare bashing," but she praised JobWave, one of the private firms training and placing welfare recipients, for its work.