by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

At the start of every month Montreal undergoes a slight, almost imperceptible, transformation. Residents congregate on sidewalks anxiously awaiting the mailman. The self-appointed vagrant that holds the door open at the bank has disappeared. Fewer women shake booty at dim-lit strip clubs for more customers. The dealer that parks near Fletcher's Field is surrounded by a large flock of customers, some of whom then furtively shoot up while sitting on the grass. Gone are the rumpled men rummaging through garbage cans for bottles, as are the hookers sauntering the usual strolls. Indeed, a friend from Mile-End describes how early-month mania once led somebody to pry open each mailbox in his foyer with a screwdriver in a quest for precious first-of-month manna.

Every new turn of the calendar is a special time for almost one in 10 of us (544,000 Quebecers, to be precise). Like regularly scheduled rain in the desert, welfare payments see society's economic misfits enjoy a temporary bloom, as roughly $125-million flows into the pockets of the city's poorest folk. Money worries evaporate, optimism temporarily waxes and unrealizable pleasures, like the warm feeling of propping a chilled two-four on the shoulder, are suddenly reality.

The provincial government has the power and right to twiddle at will the taps on this modest and short-lived boon, a right confirmed last December in a close 5-4 Supreme Court ruling. The decision came about as a former recipient challenged the legitimacy of a rule that saw lower welfare payments given to those under 30.

And now the Charest government plans to lower payments for able-bodied welfare takers as it puts the PQ's Bill 112 into practice by slashing payments to a single person who twice refuses work from $536.33 a month to $236.33 per month.

The plan should save $209-million of Quebec's $3-billion annual welfare payments, but it's not just about money. For those who have spent any time in the wage-slave work world - as I can attest - you'll find no bigger common obsession that unites those divided in cubicles than their mutual scorn for easy-livin' two-timin' welfare fraudsters.

Pop your tray at any downtown food court at lunch and tell the workers that you're penning a government report called How to Detect, Apprehend and Subdue Welfare Bums, and the office types will compete to give you the first high-five.

But while Quebec saves $200-million, it also plans to dole out $800-million for hospitals we don't need, and (shudder) $250-million for a concert hall for classical music lovers whose music is so unpopular that it can't afford to support itself, as well as countless other wasteful schemes.

This week I met a welfare couple in their early 20s who had two young children, two cats and a Rottweiler, all living in the parents' basement. The perky and rather likeable girl unselfconsciously beamed an amazingly crooked and yellow smile as she slyly and proudly announced, "Yes we're on welfare but we're making probably more than that under the table!"

The welfare class makes a pittance with nickel-and-dime scams that get them scorned and arrested. Meanwhile, nine-to-fivers take no flak for fleecing much bigger amounts of money. Examples: 240 city employees earn 80-grand each to do absolutely zilch. The retired bureaucrat who gets paid $400 an hour as a lobbyist to sip tea with officials in an effort to manipulate government affairs. The former politician who hauls down big money just to have his name printed on the letterhead as a board of directors.

Lefties want more compassionate cash for welfare. Conservatives want them back in the workplace. Both seem reasonable, but paternalistic, proposals.

I dream of big things for the cash-deprived. Let them meet secretly in dark basements to organize crafty, sophisticated and hard-to-prosecute schemes to vault themselves into ownership of capital. Let them defraud insurance companies, execute the mortgage-scam ruse, let them manipulate stock trade by rumour. Let them be rich for a while.

Comments? kgravy@openface.ca