Social Policy in Ontario

Queen’s Park is failing hungry Ontarians

Posted on November 26, 2015 in Social Security Policy Context

—

TheStar.com – Opinion/Commentary – Despite her promise to be the ‘social justice premier,’ Kathleen Wynne has failed to ensure that low-income Ontarians can afford to eat.
Nov 26 2015.   By: Desmond Cole

Tracy Mead dislikes travelling to a local food bank and lining up for a number, but out of necessity she and her housemates make the monthly trek together. Mead also volunteers at a local meal program, which gives her more access to food she can’t afford to buy. When I meet her at a South Riverdale Community Health Centre this week, we share some quinoa and vegetable salad left over from a previous day’s program.

“A lot of the meetings that we have here, people will only come because they know there’s food,” says Mead, an energetic, middle-aged woman who works part time at South Riverdale. She doesn’t earn enough to keep her cupboards stocked, and has recently become one of the 400,000 Ontarians to access a food bank this year. While it’s clear she appreciates the help, Mead and others shouldn’t be relying on handouts to feed themselves.

Volunteers with the Put Food In The Budget campaign have been watching premier Kathleen Wynne since she took over the Ontario Liberal party leadership two years ago. Wynne pledged that if elected, she would become the “social justice premier.” Her government has since increased the minimum wage and made future increases automatic. The 2014 provincial budget provided a very modest increase for people on social assistance. But PFITB points out that folks surviving on low incomes are still going hungry.

“Social assistance is simply too low,” says Mike Balkwill of PFITB, who has joined me and Mead for our meal and coffee. He points out that half of the people on welfare or disability supports rely on food banks. “People are being as generous as they can be,” Balkwill says, “but the government is relying on the goodwill and generosity of volunteers to do what the government needs to do.”

A single adult on welfare receives $656 a month, up from $626 before the recent Liberal increase. Only $376 of that amount can be spent on rent, leaving a welfare recipient $280 every month — less than ten bucks a day — for all food, transportation, clothing, and any other basic needs. Everyone needs to eat, but on such a limited budget, people understandably choose to go hungry so they can get around or pay rent.

Mead considers herself relatively lucky because of her access to different food banks and meal programs in Toronto. Such options often don’t exist for residents outside the GTA. A Salvation Army food bank in Sault Ste Marie recently cut its donations from once a month to once every two months. Such grim decisions to ration supplies are becoming more common for charitable groups who can’t keep up with food demand.

Christmas is coming, so it’s more likely that food banks, which were never supposed to become permanent suppliers for the poor, will see a holiday surge in donations. Last Christmas Wynne herself showed up to CBC Radio’s Sounds of the Season, an annual food drive fundraiser, reportedly with her own personal donation of cans. PFITB volunteers, including Mead, weren’t impressed. They’ll be looking for Wynne at the fundraiser this year to demand more.

The province’s health professionals keep telling us that people who don’t eat well are more likely to get sick. In purely pragmatic terms, it’s foolish for the province to let people go without healthy food when we know doing so drives up health care costs. A spokesperson for the provincial treasury tells me by email that the province is working on new measures, including more money for local food security programs. The spokesperson also noted that, in addition to the recent social assistance increase, the province increased the Ontario Child Benefit for low-income families.

But it’s not enough to prevent people from lining up in the wee hours of the morning in Toronto, just to get a number to come back later on and stand in line. Mead describes the mood as people wait: “There’s usually a lot of laughter and goofing around. Everyone kinda makes light of it and jokes, just to cover up the fact that everyone’s completely uncomfortable. There’s no dignity in it, there’s no health in it. But there we all are stuck in the same situation, doing what we have to do.”

They shouldn’t have to, not for food, in one of the wealthiest countries on earth. Hopefully the premier is preparing an early Christmas present for hungry Ontarians, one that will better sustain them all year round.

< http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2015/11/26/queens-park-is-failing-hungry-ontarians-cole.html >

Tags: budget, featured, Health, housing, ideology, mental Health, participation, poverty, standard of living

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 26th, 2015 at 11:19 am and is filed under Social Security Policy Context. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.