Social service charities getting the shaft

My story on social service charities in THIS Magazine, called "Whose Burden?", is on newsstands this month, and also available online. It's about the way right wing governments (Conservative and Liberal) have caused us to rely on social service charities to keep a big chunk of Canadians alive and well, then undermined the very same charities with terribly designed policies. It's also about the way these social service charities, by virtue of being charities, have so far largely failed to resist this new regime. And, finally, it's about the potential for these organizations, after all the reflecting and renewing they've done over the past two decades, to help build a much more just and democratic society--if only the government would lift its obscene burden off their back, and if citizens rise up to demand a better deal. (Implausible as that might sound.)