Social Policy in Ontario

For a group so fond of proclaiming its commitment to social justice, the Wynne government has done remarkably little to help some of the very poorest people in Ontario.

The basic rates for the province’s social assistance programs are far below the generally accepted poverty line, and the government hasn’t done much to change that.

It now has a fresh reminder of the need to act in the form of a hefty report by an advisory team set up by Helena Jaczek, the province’s minister of community and social services.

The report proposes a major 10-year overhaul of Ontario’s system of social assistance. But the sharpest point it makes is the “urgent” need for action now to boost the amount of money that goes to people on the two main forms of assistance, Ontario Works and the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP).

Right now, a single person on Ontario Works (i.e. welfare) receives just $721 a month. To expect a person, especially in a city as costly as Toronto, to live on that amount means accepting bad health, shoddy housing, social isolation, poor nutrition, petty crime and everything else that goes along with deep, entrenched poverty.

The report given to Jaczek last week recommends increasing that basic amount by 24 per cent over the next three years, to $893 by the year 2020.

This is the minimum the government should do. It would still leave tens of thousands of people living in state-sanctioned poverty, but it would at least start the process of catching up for people on social assistance.

To be fair, the government has raised assistance rates somewhat in the past few years. But in real terms they are far below what they were in the early 1990s, before the Harris Conservative government slashed payments.

The same report recommends that people on ODSP (i.e. disability assistance) also receive a substantial increase. They now get $1,151 a month and the report urges the government to raise that by 16 per cent, to $1,334 by 2020.

Regardless of what wider changes in social assistance the government wants to make, it should start the process of raising rates by the amounts recommended in the report.

Over the past year or so the Liberals have introduced a series of progressive measures – from greater access to prescription drugs, to reform of labour laws, to last week’s plan to increase the accountability of police. Starting to raise social assistance rates would be another positive step in advance of the next election.

Unfortunately, the government has shown a tendency to drag its heels in this area.

It has made only modest improvements to welfare and disability payments, while embarking on a lengthy experiment to test the concept of providing a basic minimum income to everyone.

It’s an idealistic scheme, designed by former senator Hugh Segal, to study the effects of giving everyone a minimum monthly income of about $1,320 a month, or $15,840 a year (more for people with disabilities).

Launched in April, it is scheduled to run for three years and cost $50 million. But it has been slow to start: as of early October only 400 people out of the 4,000 the government hopes to enroll in the pilot project had signed up.

The intentions behind the minimum income plan are admirable: it aims to free people from the petty humiliations of the welfare system and give them incentives to get out of poverty. The first step is gathering hard data on how people’s lives can be changed by having a basic living income and being able to keep more of any money they earn on top of that.

But testing all this, figuring out the lessons, and designing a permanent plan could take many years. And in the meantime, running the minimum income pilot plan must not become an excuse for the government to take no action on raising social assistance rates now. The vision of a big fix sometime in the future should not be a reason to do nothing in the here and now.

The need is clear and the government does not need any more evidence. It should make sure that substantial increases in social assistance benefits are a key part of its next budget, and be ready to present that as part of its case for re-election in June.

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2017/11/04/ontario-should-move-quickly-on-welfare-benefits-editorial.html