An enraged Mr. Conway is demanding a public inquiry, as well he might. What has this nation come to, when ordinary, decent leadership hopefuls cannot indulge in a little political grandstanding without having their access denied, their motives questioned and their hairstyle mocked? Perhaps this is why Ms. McLeod, instead of denouncing the violent protest outside the legislature (the punks and postal workers, I mean, not Mr. Conway), blamed a government that "has declared war on a lot of groups of people in the province."

You must understand: The government may not implement the platform on which it was elected. For that is to be - expect to hear this a lot - "divisive." The word has an idiosyncratic usage. If the NDP brings in a law banning replacement workers, that is not divisive. If the Tories repeal it, it is. If the Liberals and the NDP run spending up to $47- billion, that is not divisive, but if the Tories run it back down to $41- billion, it is. If a stick-wielding mob storms the legislature, that is not divisive; if security locks the doors, it is.

So grave is the threat posed by this government that its critics cannot be held to the usual standards of civilized behaviour. The protesters simply could not contain themselves: After all, they were enraged. Neither can we condemn Ontario Federation of Labour President Gord Wilson for vowing to "kick the hell" out of any replacement workers who cross a picket line. He, too, is enraged. As for John Clarke, the perpetually enraged director of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty - well, now that you mention it, let's just look at those welfare cuts.

The government makes much of the fact that, before this week, Ontario's welfare rates were 35 per cent higher than the national average. In fact, at their peak they were higher than that. According to the National Council of Welfare, social assistance for a single employable person in Ontario in 1993, at $7,935 a year, was 40 per cent above the average. It was 24 per cent more than in second- place British Columbia, where living costs are at least as high.

Even after the cuts, Ontario will pay 19 per cent more than the national average for single employables, 17 per cent more for a single parent with one child, and 9 per cent more for a couple with two children. This raises the curious objection that the average of the other nine provinces is a misleading basis of comparison: Apparently, if you calculate the average including Ontario - that is, if you compare Ontario to itself - the gap closes. Isn't math fun?

Or consider the matter in light of Ontario's own recent history. Benefits to single employables have now been cut to $520 a month. In constant 1994 dollars, i.e. after adjusting for inflation, that rolls benefits all the way back to the dark days of 1986, when they were merely the highest they had ever been - before being jacked up another 30 per cent after inflation over the next five years.

More to the point, recipients will now be able to earn back most of the reduction in benefits, without penalty. That gets at the real disincentive to work in the welfare system: not the level of benefits per se, but the crippling dollar-for- dollar clawback of benefits against earned income. But if recipients are to keep a bigger part of their welfare cheque as they earn more income from work, you have to start from a lower base. Otherwise the cost of the system explodes.

It is disappointing that the Tories did not, as they had promised, let recipients earn back all of the difference. But it's not quite Dickensian. True, at $6,240, a single employable welfare recipient now gets less than the average cost of a basket of necessities in Ontario, as calculated by Prof. Christoper Sarlo: roughly $7,700 (recipients with children remain above the comparable "basic needs" poverty line).

But if welfare can supplement earned income, so earned income can supplement welfare. To make up the missing $1,460 at the Ontario minimum wage of $6.85 an hour, Mr. Single Employable would need to work about four hours a week. Four hours a week. It is not true that anyone can find a job if they want one. But anyone can show up at a warehouse on a Wednesday morning for a half a day of casual labour.

It's still a pretty meagre living. But it hardly justifies all the rhetoric about mass suicides and starving children. Though it's probably a more pressing concern than who stole Sean Conway's pass-card.