On Walletpop we often focus on those who have no problem getting work or keeping a roof over their head. However, recent movement from the Ontario Government indicates a decision may be coming that, if it goes through, will have a catastrophic effect on the personal finances of the most vulnerable among us.

The Ontario Ministry of Social Services provides income, employment and other social support for over 700,000 people through its two bulwark social assistance programs.

Advocates, beneficiaries and even the providers of the Ontario Works Program [OW] (formerly called "General Welfare') and the Ontario Disability Support Program [ODSP] have been saying for at least 15 years that both of Ontario's social assistance programs are in desperate need of reform. With that directive, The Commission for the Review of Social Assistance released their final report on October 24, 2012 with 108 recommendations and now Ontario Premiere Kathleen Wynne has said she wants to move forward in implementing those recommendations.

However, the changes recommended were not what advocates and recipients of either program had hoped for. Instead of helping people out of poverty with comprehensive systemic and long-term support, they fear the recommendations, and their focus on austerity through a continuing pressure-filled and punitive strategy, will see the majority of the province's social assistance recipients, particularly those with disabilities, left to completely fend for themselves in a dire struggle for their own survival.

In our last post on this issue, we answered why making employment a mandatory condition of receiving social assistance would put many of the people with disabilities receiving ODSP at significant risk. Now, we will reveal that the increase in income for those on OW is done by reducing the benefit for those on ODSP, which creates an even more meager sum than those people with disabilities survived on prior to the recommended reforms. It's a sum with no basis on the current cost of living and a sum that's well below the commonly accepted poverty line.

On Walletpop we often focus on those who have no problem getting work or keeping a roof over their head. However, recent movement from the Ontario Government indicates a decision may be coming that, should it go through, will have a catastrophic effect on the personal finances of the most vulnerable among us.

The Ontario Ministry of Social Services provides income, employment and other social support for over 700,000 people through its two bulwark social assistance programs.

Advocates, beneficiaries and even the providers of the Ontario Works Program [OW] (formerly called 'General Welfare') and the Ontario Disability Support Program [ODSP] have been saying for at least 15 years that both of Ontario's social assistance programs are in desperate need of reform. With that directive, The Commission for the Review of Social Assistance released their final report October 24, 2012 with 108 recommendations and now Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne has said she wants to move forward in implementing those recommendations.

However, the changes recommended were not what advocates and recipients of either program had hoped for. Instead of helping people out of poverty with comprehensive systemic and long-term support, they fear the recommendations, and their focus on austerity through a continuing pressure-filled and punitive strategy, will see the majority of the province's social assistance recipients, particularly those with disabilities, left to completely fend for themselves in a struggle for their own survival.

Just this week, The Huffington Post reported that The University of Toronto Students' Union called on Ontario's Labour Minister to ban illegal unpaid internships, contending that over 300,000 Canadians are misclassified as interns, trainees and non-employees at a time when the youth unemployment rate is double the national average at 14.2%. The union also argued that such practices do damage to the economy in general by inflating the student debt even more.

Wait a minute, "Misclassified?" Yes. As Walletpop has covered before, Unless the interns in your office are part of an internship program from a high school, college or university and working for course credit, the following six conditions must all be met before they can legally work for free:
For his part, Labour Minister Yasir Naqvi agreed with the union writing to Huffington Post that "If you perform work for someone – unless you are self-employed, in a co-op placement, or a trainee – you are an employee covered under the Employment Standards Act and should be paid – it doesn't matter if you are called an 'intern' or not."

However, he did not make it clear whether he would address the existing double standard and close the legal loopholes that allow employers to break the law by relying heavily on unpaid or underpaid labour.

However, the exploitation of the youth labour force across North America goes way beyond just unpaid internships, even the people technically getting paid are working harder and longer, while getting paid less than any other previous generation.

If you'll be placing a bet on the winner of the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship game, guaranteed you'll be doing it online or privately among friends.

The only sports betting available in Canada, and provided by its provincial governments, is called Sports Select and it goes by various names depending where you're playing it: in B.C. it's called Sports Action, in Quebec it's Pari-Sportif and in Atlantic Canada it's known as Pro-Line. All of these games are parlay bets, meaning they are a single wager dependent on the results of multiple sports games.

This is because it's illegal to bet on single sports games in Canada, but this could soon end. New legislation that sailed unanimously and without debate through the House last March would amend Canada's Criminal Code to change the law.

Some people leave you holding the bag, but retailers will leave you holding the merchandise, with less in your pocket, while you wonder what happened.

You went in and you had a set budget in mind, but all of a sudden, the only thing in your billfold is a moth. How does this happen? It may not be all your fault. Retailers employ a number of tricks of the trade that basically hack our brains and emotions and make us spend more money. These trapping tactics are deceptively simple, but very subtle in a lot of cases.

Is there any more random a foodstuff than chicken McNuggets?

Those little deep fried morsels of white meat have always been suspected to have their origins from chicken offal, or at least the chicken scraps no one else wanted, and were never perceived to involve that much forethought or planning in execution.

Turns out, we were wrong. Those golden chicken morsels dipped in that classic sweet and sour sauce actually have a sort of meat equivalent of The Golden Ratio behind them. Writers from Business Insider discovered that every single Chicken McNugget in the box is perfected and standardized right down to the shape of the nugget.

Suicides in the UK rose significantly in 2012, according to the British Office for National Statistics, and suicide prevention experts in that country say that it's due to irresponsible lending practices by British banks and predatory debt collectors there.

The Brighton Report, released earlier this year, revealed that the number of suicides in the UK hit 6,045 in 2011, a 7.8% increase compared to 2010, with deaths among men accounting for the largest proportion. A total of 4,552 men took their own lives in 2011 compared with 1,493 women.

"Debt clients frequently feel humiliated, disconnected and entrapped, with the process of debt collection having a clear impact on people's mental health," read the report from England's University of Brighton.

The ONS says that, among men aged between 45 and 59 years old, the suicide rate increased significantly between 2007 and 2011 to 22.2 deaths per 100,000 people.

"These figures ... reveal the profound human consequences of the economic downturn, in which unemployment, debt, and the relationship breakdowns that often follow, can push people who may be already vulnerable to take their own lives," Marjorie Wallace, CEO of SANE, a UK mental health charity, told Reuters.

Ever enter a store intending to buy only one thing, only to exit with an arm full of bags? Sure, you could be a shopaholic who lacks self-control and doesn't know how to budget, but, in actuality, it's probably not all your fault.

Store layouts are meant to confuse and disorient you, so that you actually do have that feeling of literally getting lost among the merchandise. Just finding the exit in some of these stores can be a pretty heady task and it's meant to feel that way. The people at the store want to keep you there as long as possible because they know that the longer you are there, the more likely more and more money is going to start leaving your wallet.

Knowing all that, we've complied the tricks stores use in their layouts to keep you spending money and will thereby hopefully inoculate you against temptation forever more.


Source

So, now that the champagne has stopped flowing, the after-parties have died down and the winners have been announced, many of us are still wondering out loud: "When the glad-handing stops and the speeches have been heard, does winning an Oscar really matter?"

Well, it turns out that it depends who you ask. Audiences and actors alike have been told continuously that the moment you get to put "Oscar Winner" in front of your name, the floodgates for primo parts and project offers suddenly open and your phone never stops ringing. Instantly, our favourite actors and actresses are supposedly rocketed to the top of the heap in their profession just because they're bathing the infinite heat of a golden bald statuette.

"The reality for me is that I thought my phone would be ringing a lot, and it wasn't," Octavia Spencer, who took the statue in 2012 for Best Supporting Actress in 'The Help,' said in an interview with Vulture last year. "My phone wasn't ringing off the hook; I didn't feel like anything was changing."

Spencer found out the hard way that an Oscar isn't necessarily a golden key. According to industry insiders, that key depends on several other factors.

A vitamin pack a day will wipe the competition away...at least, that's what Andrew Lenjosek and Alex Hyssen are banking on.

These two 23-year-old graduates of the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario believe the multi-billion dollar premium vitamin industry is in desperate need of a fundamental disruption, and they would know.

The two entrepreneurs were able to aggregate over 30 years of experience in the vitamin industry in the creation of their new start-up -- Koge Vitamins.

'What we'd seen a lot of is really two things with in the industry," says Lenjosek. "The first thing is that if you want to buy premium vitamins, it is expensive and its expensive because you have all of these costs coming from a sales force, marketing, overhead, etc. These are not at all related to the product and yet customers are paying for it."

But thanks to their own manufacturing facility and by selling online, they are able to cut out the middle man and lower the industry standard cost by 67%.

The second thing the two wanted to disrupt in the vitamin industry was the often confusing barrage of products one faces when shopping for premium vitamins.

"The first time I walked into a vitamin store -- I was an investment banker who was not the healthiest guy -- and there are aisles and aisles of hundreds of products and hundreds of brands," says Lenjosek.

"I'm not a nutritionist, I'm just a normal guy, and I have really no idea what I'm supposed to be taking, so Alex and I really wanted to simplify the buying experience and we eventually want to customize it."