Archive for the ‘Social Security’ Category
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Ontario’s embarrassing social decline
Saturday, September 1st, 2012
August 31, 2012
The bad news is found in the report, Falling Behind: Ontario’s Backslide into Widening Inequality, Growing Poverty and Cuts to Social Programs, released on Wednesday by the Ontario Common Front, a coalition of community groups, labour unions and students… “Ontario has sunk to last place in Canada when measured against every important social indicator,” says a news release about the report… • Ontario funds all its social programs — from health care to education — at the lowest rate in Canada;.. • Ontario has led Canada on cuts to corporate and incomes taxes.
Tags: budget, featured, ideology, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Debates | No Comments »
Finishing the Fight on Poverty
Monday, August 27th, 2012
27 August, 2012
… the percentage of single parent families living below Statistics Canada’s Low-Income Cut-Off (LICO) after taxes has plummeted in the last 15 years, falling by more than half. Canada’s welfare rolls have dropped, too, from 3 million people in 1995 to just over 1.6 million in 2005… it’s a combination of “tough love” welfare-to-work policies that forced single parents off income assistance, matched with other, “soft-love” measures such as the introduction of a National Child Benefit Supplement in 1998.
Tags: child care, economy, housing, ideology, poverty, tax, women
Posted in Social Security Debates | 1 Comment »
The wait in Ontario for social housing can run to 10 years
Monday, August 27th, 2012
August 26, 2012
For the fifth year in a row more Ontario households joined the waiting list for social housing than got off it. Queues across the province have swollen by a shocking 26 per cent since 2007 with some people waiting a decade for affordable housing… For all too many, that amounts to a 10-year sentence of being trapped in poverty as rents they can barely afford gobble up their money, leaving precious little on which to live. In a country as rich as Canada, this is a disgrace.
Tags: budget, homelessness, housing, ideology, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Delivery System | 3 Comments »
Ottawa’s pooled-pension proposal gets thumbs-down
Monday, August 27th, 2012
23 August 2012
Ottawa’s proposed new pension system is little more than the existing RRSP program with a new label, and could actually be a worse option for low-income earners, according to a new analysis by the C.D. Howe Institute… the program needs provincial buy-in to be introduced across the country… Ontario said earlier this year it has concerns about the program and believes a better option might be to expand existing Canada Pension Plan coverage.
Tags: economy, ideology, pensions, poverty, standard of living, tax
Posted in Social Security Delivery System | No Comments »
An end to the perpetual welfare trap? Guaranteed incomes debated
Monday, August 27th, 2012
22 August 2012
… the idea is a no-brainer. Replacing Manitoba’s complicated welfare system could free up social workers to do what they do best — help people deal with addictions, get skills training and find daycare and decent housing, instead of parsing a huge menu of welfare rules. And it could shrink the city’s burgeoning poverty industry — food banks, charities, non-profits and social-services agencies that eat up millions in government funding.
Tags: economy, ideology, poverty, rights, standard of living, tax
Posted in Social Security Policy Context | No Comments »
Toronto social housing wait lists growing
Monday, August 27th, 2012
20 August 2012
Households — single people, families and seniors — on waiting lists for affordable housing grew by 2.9 per cent to 156,358 in 2011… “Ultimately, governments, especially the federal and provincial governments, have to realize affordable housing is not something they can download to the City of Toronto and offload to the private housing markets… We have to get governments back to the table as serious partners.”
Tags: economy, homelessness, housing, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Delivery System | 1 Comment »
Do we care for our vulnerable?
Saturday, July 21st, 2012
July 19, 2012
… cumulative disadvantage, where someone faces more challenges than she or he can reasonably handle, very often leads to despair. The result is that people in poverty struggle on a constant basis with a loss of hope. The unavailability of discretionary benefits will make the cumulative effect of disadvantage and despair that much worse… The challenge for the generally well off is to treat the vulnerable, the poor, those facing cumulative disadvantage, with basic humanity. What type of community are we?
Tags: budget, ideology, mental Health, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Delivery System | No Comments »
Ontario’s Trillium Benefit: A new way to help the poor
Saturday, July 14th, 2012
July 12, 2012
About 3.5 million low- and moderate-income Ontarians this week are receiving their first Trillium Benefit, a provincial initiative that combines three quarterly tax credits into a new monthly payment… Designed to help households better manage their monthly expenses by providing the money earlier and more frequently than before, the benefit, worth about $2.4 billion annually, is the first outside Quebec to be paid monthly through the tax system to all low- and moderate-income people. Quebec’s monthly “Solidarity Tax Credit” was also introduced this month.
Tags: budget, disabilities, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Delivery System | No Comments »
Changes to Ontario Works Discretionary Benefits policy means less funding
Wednesday, July 11th, 2012
11 Jul 2012
As of July 1, 2012, a change in the Ontario Works Discretionary Benefits policy will mean staff… may have to deny the requests of those who even qualify for the benefits. This is due to a new provincial cap and the board may have met or exceeded the provincial maximum on Discretionary Benefits… includ(ing) dental care, eye glasses, a portion of the costs of prosthetic appliances, funerals and burials, and any other special service item. Non-health related Discretionary Benefits include vocational training and retraining, travel, transportation and moving expenses.
Tags: budget, disabilities, Health, ideology, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Delivery System | No Comments »
Let’s aim to eradicate poverty
Friday, July 6th, 2012
July 6, 2012
Dr. Christine Saulnier and economist Angella MacEwan of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) Halifax… found that poverty is costing P.E.I. $315 million per year and that $40 million is in health costs. Lower-income status has been found to account for 33 – 40 per cent of hospitalization rates in Canada. One study estimates that an increase of $1,000 per year would lead to nearly 10,000 fewer chronic conditions, and 6,600 fewer disability days every two weeks.
Tags: economy, Health, participation, poverty, rights, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Policy Context | No Comments »
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