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(Mignon assures that she has: “I have a very big mouth,” she said, laughing. “I’ve realized if you don’t advocate for yourself, they’re just going to step on you.” For now, she says, she’s making it work.)
At the same time, there are strict limits on anything Mignon can save: Put too much aside, and your welfare gets clawed back.
The asset limit on how much Mignon and her son can save, given the assistance they’re getting right now, is $3,000.
“They’ve basically said, ‘We are going to keep you in poverty by not allowing you to save enough money to get out of poverty.’”
Upping that asset limit by a few thousand, she said, could change everything.
“If you have $10,000, you have a stable stand. Maybe a bank will lend you $500. Maybe you can move to a better neighbourhood; if there’s an emergency, if you need your wisdom teeth out, you can afford that,” she said. “You can say … ‘Let me see what my options are.’”
“But $3,000? $3,000 gets you nowhere quick.”
Economists and advocates who study the social assistance cycle argue having savings, or being allowed to accumulate them without losing income assistance, would help keep people from falling back into poverty.
“You have to impoverish yourself to have access to” welfare, says Mary Marrone, director of legal services at Ontario’s Income Security Advocacy Centre, This makes it much more difficult to pull yourself back out.
“People are living on a razor’s edge. … You haven’t had a chance to build up any savings.”
The goal of social assistance programs, Marrone argues, should be to get people into sustainable financial situations so they stay off social assistance, rather than simply get them out of the program as soon as possible.
When social assistance becomes ‘a trap’
About 45 per cent of people who leave Ontario Works to rejoin the job market are back on welfare within two years, the province’s Tedesco said.
Frances Lankin, the former head of Toronto’s United Way, co-authored a report on how to reform Ontario’s social assistance framework. She says there’s too much focus and too many resources devoted to policing the program rather than helping people get off assistance, and stay off.
“It’s not a joy, being on welfare,” she said. “Social assistance can become a trap.
“So if minimum wage is very low and if the jobs available have no prospect of becoming decent, middle-income jobs … let’s say you’re a single parent with a kid with asthma, all of a sudden you’ve got a moral decision: Do you go back to work and get a job that pays a fraction more … but has no drug coverage to pay for the asthma drugs for your kid? That’s not a decision that, ‘Oh, I am lazy and don’t want to work.’”
At the same time, Lankin said, people in that position are faced with fewer options.
“A number of the supports outside social assistance have become frayed over time. And people can’t live on the margins. So they fall into social assistance quicker and it’s harder to get back out.”
On bad days, Mignon is overwhelmed with the juggling her life entails, swamped by self-doubt. Graduation feels far away, the prospect of subsequent employment iffy.
On good days, she has plans: Getting Michael into a better school. Moving – maybe someday to a white-picket home in the suburbs around Toronto, with a backyard for Michael.
Graduating from Centennial and working in community economic development.
“I know what it’s like to be on both ends of the spectrum – to have financial security and to be very, very, very insecure, financially,” she said.
“I think that, as Canadians, we kind of have rose-coloured glasses on where our economy really is.”
Tell us your story: Have you given up on the job market? Have you been trapped by social assistance? We’d love to hear from you.
Note: We may use your response in this or other stories. While we may give you a shout to follow up we won’t publish your contact info.
A counterterrorism catch-and-release campaign by Canada's national police force may have prevented 10 aspiring jihadis from heading off to war, but the roundup at Montréal-Trudeau airport is raising worries about what comes next for radicalized youth.
On Wednesday, while federal and provincial political leaders applauded the police work, anti-radicalization experts said only an integrated effort involving civilians and police can deal with youth fixated on taking up arms in the Middle East or joining terrorist groups.
In Montreal, which has become a jihadi recruiting hotbed, the only tool appears to be handcuffs. In the past six months alone, at least seven youths have left the city to join the Islamic State in Syria or Iraq. At least 15 other teenagers and young adults have been arrested pre-emptively. Some have volunteered to be monitored, while others, such as those arrested at the Montreal airport on the weekend, were simply released after having their passports confiscated.
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Acting on a tip from one or more parents, the RCMP arrested the 10 youth at the airport but have released few other details. An 11th teenager was captured on video being led away from a Montreal home by investigators. None of the teenagers have been identified publicly and no charges were laid.
The government may opt not to pursue a criminal case for fear that any public trial could force it to reveal sensitive intelligence methods – a situation that is a chronic issue in Canadian counterterrorism cases.
The passport confiscations recalled last fall's terror attacks in which two lone-wolf assailants each killed Canadian soldiers after they were thwarted in attempts to travel abroad and possibly join jihadi groups. Officials provided no answer when asked how they might prevent similar backlash in the latest cases.
The arrests again turned scrutiny toward a pre-university in Montreal's east end. Four of the people arrested on the weekend attended Maisonneuve College. A total of 11 alleged extremist recruits have now come from the school, which again denied it has a radicalization problem. "It's increasingly clear youth recruitment is happening through social media," a statement issued by the school said.
Observers are increasingly asking whether the threat to Canada can be contained if the ranks of extremists and thwarted jihadis continue to grow.
The RCMP's terrorism prevention program is designed to intervene before suspects mobilize toward violence, but the details of the program remain murky. In Quebec, Premier Philippe Couillard has promised oft-delayed legislation to deal with radicalization. He said a new law will be presented within weeks, meaning it will be months before any new program is enacted.
The City of Montreal has announced a radicalization-prevention centre, but so far it amounts to a phone number at police headquarters. Mayor Denis Coderre said Wednesday that much work remains to be done.
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"How many parents will have to call the police or the RCMP on their children because it's all they have for tools to prevent radicalization?" said Agnès Maltais, an Opposition member of Quebec's Legislature.
Vern White, a police chief turned senator, pointed out that police cannot put released suspects under surveillance indefinitely because monitoring can require as many as 25 officers per target.
"I do have confidence if charges are warranted they will be laid… If this is an early intervention, [police] might have gotten to this before they crossed the line into criminality," Mr. White said in an interview.
But, he added, authorities have to learn how to de-program extremists – and quickly. "Now it becomes a de-radicalization discussion."
Civilians who are trying to set up anti-radicalization efforts say they're getting little support and are struggling to build trust – both among police and parents who suspect their children may be radicalized.
"You know things have already gone sour when the police are involved," said Abdul Rashid Anwar, a leader in the small Montreal Ahmadiyya community who is trying to get anti-radicalization efforts off the ground in the city but is having little success. "Parents, teachers, community leaders have to do the work of educating these kids before the police get involved. We seem to be missing the bridge from one side to the other."
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Christianne Boudreau, an Alberta woman whose son was killed in 2014 fighting with the Islamic State, is working with a public outreach program called Extreme Dialogue. She says a hardening stance in law enforcement combined with a recently enacted federal anti-terror law are making it even harder for police to reach for tools beyond arrest and detention. "Every police force is different, but some of them are hesitant. Some have their hands tied. Crown prosecutors often have their own agenda, too," she said.
Amarnath Amarasingam, a terrorism researcher who is studying Canadian foreign fighters, said it is significant that no charges have been laid in Montreal.
"I think it shows just how difficult this issue is. Tracking these individuals and understanding their networks and intentions is enormously complicated," he said. "I think, perhaps, the government is trying to move away from approaching this from strictly a law-enforcement angle."
The size of the alleged cluster caught in Quebec is large, possibly uniquely so in North America, where smaller-scale interdictions against "high-risk travellers" and "foreign fighters" have become commonplace. The Montreal case is also significant because police pounced without pursuing any immediate criminal charges or peace-bond conditions.
Charges may yet come, but investigations such as this may be the new normal. Ever since the self-proclaimed Islamic State started to seize swaths of Iraq and Syria, jihadi siren songs on social media have enticed a growing pool of would-be recruits from the West. The conflict has no end in sight and police are increasingly put into the position of trying to stop suspects who cannot be proven to have broken any laws.
AMD's EPYC Launch presentation focused mainly on its line of datacenter processors, but fans of AMD's new Vega GPU lineup may be interested in another high-end product that was announced during the presentation. The Radeon Instinct MI25 is a Deep Learning accelerator, and as such is hardly intended for consumers, but it is Vega based and potentially very potent in the company's portfolio all the same. Claiming a massive 24.6 TFLOPS of Half Precision Floating Point performance (12.3 Single Precision) from its 64 "next-gen" compute units, this machine is very suited to Deep Learning and Machine AI oriented applications. It comes with no less than 16 GBs of HBM2 memory, and has 484 GB/s of memory bandwidth to play with.AMD also presented a 2U server rack with EPYC processors and Radeon Instinct MI25 GPUs on-board that they have co-developed with Inventec. It is capable of a staggering 100 TFLOPS of performance.It is certainly encouraging to see AMD launching competitive products in this market segment.The high points of the presentation are available below:
This is the second part of an ongoing look into the state of online gaming in Japan. If you’d like to read more on the subject head over to part one.
Last time, we discussed the issues facing the Japanese online gamer. Of note, Japanese online gaming is so niche that the term MMORPG has very little meaning to your average online gamer, who tends to be more of a console shooter fan than PC playboys/girls. According to Akiba MMO‘s CEO Keiko, “Japan essentially skipped the PC and jumped straight to mobile phones.” Having a big, bulky machine that’s primarily used at one’s place of work hardly seems like something that would have awesome games on it. Worse yet, because of the small market, few western companies translated their games into Japanese. No problem, right? Japanese people must be able to speak English like the rest of the world despite being an island nation no where near an English speaking country…
English Only
Despite having to learn it for at least six years, Japanese people really don’t speak English. As a teacher, this comes up a lot, but Keiko in particular noted that English’s role in Japan is often restricted to unique wording/phrasing that only makes sense to Japanese. In short, it’s used for adding an exotic flavor for advertisers, but as a communication language, people may only passively understand English. Even then, as founders of gaming, Japanese expect good games to be translated for them if they are indeed any good.
While there are certainly Japanese players who like western games, remember that online gaming is already a niche market. Add in the fact that foreign products are even more niche, so it’s more difficult to find translated fan sites of foreign games if you’re a Japanese player. There’s even a stigma that “Western games are shit” partially due to the fact that Japan simply didn’t have the PC gaming market to support localization into Japanese. While localization teams for Blizzard games may advertise in Japanese, the client is often still in English. This is most likely why Blizzard is practically unknown in this country. Everyone I spoke to who knows Blizzard’s games enjoyed them, but when asked why the games didn’t seem popular, the answer was always the same: no Japanese language support, until recently. Even then, keep in mind from last time that Japanese gamers tend to prefer anime style art. This is perhaps why Blizzard needed Square-Enix’s help releasing the game in Japan.
But let’s be fair. As Keiko put it, it you can’t understand the story, how to play the game, or the character/item system, it’s very hard to play the game. This is a universal issue, not a Japanese issue, and one reason why importing and raw media is uncommon at best for the general population. However, western PC players have greater access to these games for lower prices than console gamers. Europe and Asian countries with strong PC gaming communities allow us to invade their virtual worlds from time to time so we’re exposed to the idea of playing games in a foreign language more than the Japanese console gamers.
This isn’t to say that Japanese don’t play western games, and they certainly don’t avoid online ones. However, culturally speaking, Japanese people would prefer to stay silent and avoid inter-cultural communication issues. That may sound racist, but as someone who lives outside of the major Japanese cities, I can tell you life out here is quite different. It’s a stereo type, but all stereotypes are based on perspective. I’ve seen stupid Americans yelling when they just need to speak slowly, but I’ve never seen them begin to cry because a foreigner was trying to explain (in English) that their traveling companion doesn’t speak English.
Now, apply that to games, where you can no longer easily gesture, use facial expressions, draw pictures, or use the tone of your voice. Like in real life, Japanese players want to play games in their native language with other people that speak their language. However, in some ways, Japanese players online are perhaps a bit more clannish.
To be fair, Keiko feels that many Japanese players choose games they like and meet new people there. It’s not unheard of, and I even had a lone Japanese guy join my guild in Star Wars: The Old Republic. However, in my experience, many Japanese gamers in the MMO sphere, much like with Monster Hunter, people begin by joining their friends. Outside of Neverwinter Online, I was unable to find a Japanese guild in both the Japanese version of Darkfall and ArcheAge, even though I specifically went of out my way to search for them. Admittedly, these are PvP games, and foreign made ones at that. Often, people do tend to stick with people they’ve previously established ties with when joining these games. I did meet other lone wolf types, but when I asked if they would join a guild, many said they were waiting for a friend to join the game.
When I mentioned this issue to Matthieu, developer of Gangs of Space, and the Akihabara eSports Square staff, they had similar responses. Both feel that this is changing, but felt it is a bit of a problem. Part of it is the language. The eSports staff in particular noted that, for Japanese, it was difficult to talk to a person they don’t know outside of a game in English.
I can understand this, but also know this is compounded by the fact that, in my experience, not speaking and trying to play with native speakers is worse than admitting you’re not proficient in the language. There are countless times I’ve been grouped with non-native speakers, not just Japanese but Chinese, Korean, even German. Shy people exist in all cultures, but when these people didn’t speak up, they were verbally abused, and those are usually the words people understand. In MMOs, the first thing I do when there seems to be a problem is to check if the other person is a native English speaker. Most of the time, this is the problem, and since I’m an English teacher, if the group has a little patience, we can get through things well enough.
Few people play foreign games and possess zero knowledge of the foreign language/culture. Just the same, if a person doesn’t communicate their language handicap and is constantly abused, they won’t really bring their friends to the game. Although there were a few rude comments when I had previously mentioned my language issues when playing with Japanese players, the good ones stood out much more, and I honestly tend to be more of a negative person. Most people seem to stereotype Japanese as being overly polite, so you can only imagine what happens when foreigners who are usually accused of being rude taunt a Japanese player.
However, that can’t be the only factor. As Matthieu and the eSports Square staff commented, this may partially originate with Japan’s local co-op traditions. Although playing a game at someone’s house is limited to friends and family, Japanese people have been meeting in front of stores and at arcades for decades to physically play with or against people. The latter is especially relevant in terms of PvP play, in that the arcade scene (particularly fighting games and shooters) in Japan generally has you battling someone you can see and interact with before and after the fight. When taken online, where people can be anonymous and resort to trash talking, which I often saw between Japanese and Korean players on their shared Darkfall server, this tradition breaks down. It’s no wonder the Japanese players would prefer to stick with people they know!
The View of Online Gamers in Japan
Although online gamers in the west are seen differently than non-online gamers, online gaming is so niche that most of my contacts have said there’s almost no difference. Matthieu says there is a small difference in the perception, with online gamers being seen more for being basement dwelling loners, but that image is going away. This is slightly confirmed by the eSports Square staff commenting on the fact that there being any difference at all only being recognized recently, but, in general, gamers are gamers in Japan, and as all my contacts– professional and casual alike– agree, gamers in Japan are still not highly respected. The overall negative image we hold of gamers in the states is still pretty true in Japan, but like the west, it is starting to soften, partially due to mobile gaming making games more acceptable by your average Japanese citizen.
Internationally, however, there are still issues the Japanese gamer must deal with. As I mentioned previously, Japanese gamers are often shy and may not even admit to being Japanese. People who played the original Final Fantasy 11 would also mention how the Japanese players sometimes seemed clannish, though I’ve also witnessed genuine random acts of kindness towards non-Japanese as well.
Within the eSports community, I’ve had people (Japanese and non-Japanese alike) personally tell me that Japan simply doesn’t care about international recognition, but that was up for debate. LoL players in particular seem to look forward to seeing what Japanese players are capable of, though many still don’t realize the Japanese players still don’t have their own servers (and Riot games has yet to return my inquiries about the situation). I know some of the eSports Square staff have personally voiced concern about Japanese players’ LoL skills in the competitive community, but the overall tone is that they just hope esports become more recognized in Japan.
Mathieu, on the other hand, noted that Japanese players often have different styles. A good example is the shooting scene. At least compared to the people in his non-Japanese gaming circle, the times the Japanese players he knows have joined them in matches, the Japanese are simply in a different league.
However, Keiko really brought up what may be the truest sentiment: if Japanese players don’t care about the international scene, it has more to do with their language ability than anything else. The hesitance to community in an international setting, in English, is quite challenging, especially when the games themselves are also often in English. If the tables were turned, and the games were in Japanese and had international players speaking in Japanese, they would be much more open to it.
The Future
The overall environment for online gaming in Japan is certainly a small and fairly close one. It’s alive and healthy enough, but as Matthieu put it, if you don’t know someone in it, you don’t really have access to it. However, even the most cynical people I spoke to do think online gaming has a future, even with competition from the mobile crowd. I feel that the rise of tablets is giving the PC market a solid middle ground and potential step for those who tire of mobile phone games and need something meatier. The availability of World of Tanks and its Japanese client certainly drew attention to the event Keiko helped with!
However, there needs to be support. Steam already provides Japanese language options at least for shopping, which is a good start. Riot’s Tokyo office will hopefully release news on a Japanese server, or at least language pack, for Japanese gamers. Kei’s MMO site, Akiba MMO, serves as a general community site, mostly for PC gamers and developers. It’s actually providing a space where presenting developers are posting about the games they’re bringing to Tokyo Indie Festival. The country is already home to many internet cafes to make-up for the fact that PC aren’t considered a necessity in Japan, but Akihabara eSports Square at least encourages patrons to download their Steam games when visiting their location.
It’s a good start, but I wonder if it’s enough. In the west, we had small time developers leading the charge in MMORPG development. Origin Systems and Turbine aren’t exactly household names, but few MMO players have trouble recognizing their work. Perhaps a game like Kantai Collection can help make way for online games’ popularity, but I don’t know if that’s enough, and indie developers are rare in Japan. There’s a big difference between making doushinji (games made for fun more than profit) and being an indie developer trying to make a living, and the latter are quite rare in Japan, though I was lucky enough to meet some.
My interview with Matthieu occurred at Pico Pico Cafe, which hosts something called “Picotachi,” a monthly indie game developer (and fan) meet. The place is absolutely packed to the point where I’d certainly call it a “standing-room only” type of event. There were some interesting games, but mostly they were simply, ranging from 2-D platformers to a 100-player Tetris that required 10 people to form a single line across their territories to clear the blocks. Fun stuff but nothing quite on the same level as an online game. In fact, after talking to Matthieu and looking at the list of TIF presenters (so far), it seems the Japanese indie devs are naturally chasing the most profitable market: mobile gaming. Aside from Gangs of Space, nothing seemed to indicate that the indie scene here is looking to bulk up the online gaming market.
It feels like the big corporations, like Square and Sega, will be needed to develop the online gaming market. Smaller projects certainly seem to be helping. Before starting this project, most people I talked to seemed, like myself, fairly isolated in their physical locations about their online, PC gaming hobby. We mostly meet and talk to other people online, and if someone changes games or doesn’t log in at the right time, they seemingly disappear. Finally making some business contacts has shown me that there is a community here, but it’s certainly in a position to grow. There are opportunities for people willing to network and innovate, assuming you have the money understand the current culture. I feel that the last point is probably what’s kept western publishers out of Japan. Until they either invest the money or innovation to attract the audience, Japan’s online gaming community will probably remain very niche, limited mostly to shooter fans, monster hunters, and gamers who also are willing to put up a foreign language in their pursuit of finding a virtual paradise…. or Valhalla.
Related: Akiba MMO
Take action! The principle of integrated education is under attack like never before in this country following the Government’s announcement that it will introduce a new generation of state schools that can religiously discriminate against children for all of their places. We are encouraging everyone to write to their MPs to speak out, and we’ve provided a facility through which it’s possible to do so.
In line with its ambition to deliver 500 new free schools by 2020, the Government has given the green light to 11 new religious schools in its latest wave of 77 free school approvals. The schools are the first to be approved since the Government announced that it will move to scrap the requirement that new ‘faith’ schools keep at least half of their places open to local children, irrespective of religion or belief. If these plans go ahead, all 11 schools will be able to religiously select 100% of their places. The British Humanist Association (BHA) has stated that the latest free school approvals are yet another sign of the Government’s backward approach to improving integration in the education system.
Of the 11 religious schools given approval, nine are either Church of England or Christian in character. They are:
Derby Cathedral School, a Church of England secondary
A Level Sixth Form School, Bury St Edmunds, a Church of England school for pupils aged 16 to 19
The Trinity College, an all-through Christian school in Colchester
Bishop Arden Church of England Free School, a secondary in Hillingdon
Emmanuel Community School, a Christian primary school in Waltham Forest
Cathedral Free School, a Church of England primary in Liverpool
Cathedral Enterprise School, a Church of England secondary in Bristol
East Village C of E Academy, a primary school in Swindon
Middle Wichel CE (Primary) Academy also in Swindon
In addition, two new Hindu schools have been approved, the Avanti Leicester School and the Avanti Brent School. Both are being set up by the Avanti Schools Trust which currently operates five other existing Hindu schools in England.
The approval of these new religious schools comes just days after the Government announced the removal of the so-called ‘50% cap’ on religious selection, meaning that both new and existing free schools may soon be able to religiously discriminate for all of their places when previously they have only been able to do so for up to half. The move has been strongly criticised by a range of individuals and organisations, with Conservative Party grandee Ken Clarke MP asking the Education Secretary Justine Greening to ‘reconsider pretty fundamentally the announcement’, and Professor Ted Cantle CBE of the Institute for Community Cohesion Foundation calling the move ‘retrograde’ and ‘deleterious to integration’.
The Catholic Education Service, which has been largely responsible for encouraging the Government to drop the 50% cap, has already announced its intention to open 35 to 40 new religiously selective free schools. This follows the Church of England’s announcement over the summer that they would establish more than 100 new schools in the next four years, equivalent to a quarter of the Government’s target number.
BHA Education Campaigner Jay Harman said, ‘In the last few days the Government has stated unequivocally that it wants to tackle segregation in our education system and ensure that children from different religious and non-religious backgrounds are able to learn with and from each other as they grow up. Unfortunately, it has also set out that it intends to achieve this by allowing religious schools to become even more mono-cultural than they are, and approving new religious schools that will divide communities and discriminate against local families. This is quite remarkable.
‘If these policies continue to be pursued by the Government, our education system and our society will become a great deal more divided than they already are. All those who would rather see schools be inclusive, fair, and open to all children, must join us in opposing this entirely counter-productive approach.’
Notes
For further comment and information, please contact BHA Education Campaigner, Jay Harman, on [email protected] or 020 7324 3078.
See the full list of approved free schools: https://humanism.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016-02-09-List-of-proposed-Free-Schools.xlsx
Read the BHA’s previous news item ‘Comment: Government moves to drop restrictions on religious selection in new faith schools’: https://humanism.org.uk/2016/09/09/comment-government-moves-to-drop-restrictions-on-religious-selection-in-new-faith-schools/
Read the Government’s green paper, where it sets out the proposals: https://consult.education.gov.uk/school-frameworks/schools-that-work-for-everyone/supporting_documents/SCHOOLS%20THAT%20WORK%20FOR%20EVERYONE%20%20FINAL.pdf
Read more about the BHA’s work on ‘faith’ schools: https://humanism.org.uk/campaigns/schools-and-education/faith-schools/

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