[But let me assure you, the Albertan government really can do some shitty things.]

[trouble]

Eee! Busy day! Busy week! Awesome times at Chez Anna!

I'm working on a post for disability (LJ Syndicated Feed here) about a press release regarding the recent BC decision to slash funding for students with disabilities (more details), and it hit one of my pet peeves about Canada.

Dear Canadians [Especially my father, omg]

Please stop acting like Alberta is some horrible throwback to evil where only horrible things happen, while the rest of Canada is a post-Feminist post-Racist post-Ablist Utopia of free love and awesomeness.

"Even Alberta is doing a better job than we are!" is not a good response to your government doing something shitty. Alberta also has some of the best funding for people with disabilities (far better than Nova Scotia), and the Western Canadian Chair of Deaf Studies is at the University of Alberta.

I absolutely promise I can rant about Alberta with the best of them, even better than I can randomly blame our weather on Toronto, but Alberta is not entirely made up of Ralph Klein, Ed Not-Klein, and his minions.

Please look to your own, so that you really are better than Alberta on things like disability, gender, sexuality, and race.

Lots of Love, please do something so Toronto stops making our weather so awful,

Anna

Unrelated, but eeeee! Meeting with Dr T. the thesis adviser in, like, and hour and a half! EEEEE!

Comments

[From: zingerella]

It's not our fault! Blame Ohio and Michigan!

[From: trouble]

Bah!

I blame the economy.

[From: zingerella]

Hmmm ... I blame Alberta, generally. [[ducks]]

[From: goldjadeocean]

You're just jealous, because all the recession did to us was take us from "OMG WE ARE GROWING 1000% A YEAR WE HAVE NO WORKERS" to "...so, maybe this growth is kind of sustainable now."

[From: ginny_t]

ITTET, Nova Scotia can't afford good weather and has to make do with Toronto's rejects. *hides*

[From: trouble]

Okay, see, now you're just trying to get me to laugh, and that is NOT ACCEPTABLE. This is VERY SERIOUS BUSINESS.

Toronto: Ruins Everything.

[From: goldjadeocean]

Alberta also has some of the best funding for people with disabilities

D: D: D:

-An Albertan

[From: trouble]

When we lived in Alberta, Don got $900/month from AISH.

In Nova Scotia, because I'm a student, Don gets nothing. They told him that I'm expected to get Student Loans in order to fund things like his medications.

I don't qualify for student loans (long story, involving an ex who was given money to pay for my student loans while I was in China, but spent that money elsewhere, so my loans went to collections, and thus I'm not eligible for student loans anymore - even though I paid that off as soon as I got back from China and found out what had happened). This fact has not stopped them from refusing to fund Don at all, because I'm a student and thus all our funding should come from student loans.

[From: goldjadeocean]

Yes, but... you can't live on AISH. It's an absolute pittance and...

(My parents-the-landlords hated renting to people on AISH purely because they knew every rent increase they had to make was taking food off that person's table, and it was painful to watch.)

*flail* People should be BETTER than us!

(It doesn't help, as a single girl, that any guy who dates me has got to be thinking in the back of his mind that if my health takes a nosedive, he'll be expected to be my caretaker. Gah I hate this system so much.)

[From: trouble]

Oh, I agree completely.

We should be in the UK again, where there's four things that are evaluated. Don got funding independent of me because he couldn't prepare his own meals, and because he had difficulty walking (this was before the wheelchair). There is also Council Tax cuts (everyone pays Council Tax, it covers stuff like sewers) and an income-based assessment that he didn't apply for. Even on the lowest amounts that he was eligible for, it was a huge boon. And there, all medications cost the same regardless, and it's not all that much (I think it's about 5 pounds per).

I mean, obviously the UK is not a post-feminist utopia (oh lord, the rapeconviction rates are in the single digits) but they do so much better on disability.

[From: cesy]

£7.50 last time I checked. But yeah. Not much.

[From: trouble]

PS:

I can't speak for everyone, obviously, but I never thought much about it (regarding the caretaker role thing). I was too busy falling in love with his voice, see... (I'm very shallow.)

[From: zingerella]

When I was a student, living in a different country and maintaining a separate household from my then-husband's I had my student loans cut, because my living-below-the-poverty-line-in-a-different-country husband was supposed to somehow fund my living expenses.

The entire metric is so completely whacked.

[From: scemo]

Just out of curiosity, why is Toronto to blame for you weather? :o Apart from their smoginess, I mean.

[From: trouble]

The radio news report I caught a week or so ago said our bad weather was because of some sort of low pressure system over the Great Lakes, which means it's Ontario's fault, and Ontario is all Toronto. I know because of my learnings. ;)