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‘Aspirations are not going to lift people out of poverty’: Ontario disability advocates react to the federal budget
Friday, April 19th, 2024
… the feds have placed primary responsibility for funding disability-related social assistance firmly back in the province’s court. The budget calls out “the inadequacy of disability assistance provided by many provinces,” while saying that the federal government “aspires to see the combined amount of federal and provincial … income supports for persons with disabilities grow to the level of Old Age Security (OAS) and the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS).”
Tags: budget, disabilities, jurisdiction, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Policy Context | No Comments »
Everything we know (so far) about the Canadian Dental Care Plan
Sunday, January 14th, 2024
The program will roll out over two years. By May 2024, everyone over the age of 65 who meets eligibility requirements will be able to apply… By the end of the year, qualifying disabled people and those under 18 should be enrolled. After that, enrollment will open to all other eligible Canadians who meet the income threshold (less than $90,000 in household take-home pay) and don’t have access to private insurance through their employer… Program eligibility will depend on the income reported on your previous-year tax return.
Tags: Health, participation, Seniors, standard of living, youth
Posted in Health Delivery System | No Comments »
Social-assistance rates in Ontario should ‘set off alarm bells’: Report
Thursday, October 5th, 2023
Researchers have found that being on social assistance in Ontario is correlated with a higher likelihood of poor health outcomes, homelessness, and food insecurity, among other things… In fact, the “Welfare in Canada” report finds that both OW and ODSP rates have been below the deep poverty line since 2008… “You show how you value people through how you budget.”
Tags: disabilities, ideology, jurisdiction, participation, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Debates | No Comments »
Social-assistance rates in Ontario should ‘set off alarm bells’: Report
Friday, August 18th, 2023
The province’s income-of-last-resort program pays so little that Ontario Works recipients must survive on just 37 per cent of the funds that would be required for them to have a roof over their heads, food in their stomachs, and enough money to maintain a very basic standard of living. That’s the conclusion of a new analysis of social-assistance rates in Ontario.
Tags: budget, disabilities, jurisdiction, participation, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Delivery System | No Comments »
What the new Ontario budget means for those on social assistance
Friday, March 24th, 2023
In this budget, as in all its previous changes to social assistance, the government did not introduce any new funding for the province’s nearly 400,000 Ontario Works beneficiaries. Ontario Works is social assistance for those who are not disabled but cannot work. The program provides a maximum of $733 per month for a single adult, an amount that has not changed since 2018, when the current government halved planned increases .
Tags: budget, disabilities, featured, ideology, jurisdiction, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Debates | No Comments »
‘The rich and everybody else’: Financial inequality in Canada keeps growing
Thursday, January 26th, 2023
Fifty per cent of households are earning less than $16,000 to $17,000. That’s even after taxes and transfers and benefits. That gap between the 50 per cent of the population, roughly 8 million people or more, and that top 1 per cent of earners, a very small slice of the working population, is huge. And it’s growing bigger… Capitalism and democracy have always been in contestation. People want votes. People want rights. And they see that, usually, they can’t get them, because there’s a whole bunch of rich people who aren’t willing to do it.
Tags: economy, featured, globalization, ideology, standard of living, tax
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
What a new food-bank reports tells us about deep poverty
Thursday, October 20th, 2022
“We are failing people every step of the way”… Policy-makers have a selection of choices before them to slow or halt that cascade… but they boil down to this: either give people access to more money to buy food or help the charitable sector, like food banks, with more resources to bridge the gap. Right now, Yalnizyan adds, “the governments are doing none of the above.”
Tags: budget, disabilities, featured, housing, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Policy Context | No Comments »
‘It breaks my heart’: Ontarians on social assistance are struggling even more amid inflation
Tuesday, September 20th, 2022
ODSP recipients recently got a 5 per cent rate increase. But advocates say that doesn’t make up for decades of neglect — or account for sky-high inflation… The PCs have repeatedly said that they will tie future rate increases for ODSP to inflation in law — each rate increase would, therefore, in some way keep up with the actual buying power of what recipients get in each cheque… At time of publication, no legislation to this effect is before the house.
Tags: disabilities, housing, ideology, jurisdiction, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Policy Context | No Comments »
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