« Older Entries | Newer Entries »
Ontario to allow people on social assistance to keep part of emergency benefits
Tuesday, April 21st, 2020
More than 960,000 Ontarians rely on social assistance, but only about 75,000 report earned income, according to provincial data. Ottawa began issuing CERB payments April 6 for workers who lost their jobs or are earning less than $1,000 a month due to the pandemic and have earned at least $5,000 in the past 12 months. Payments are expected to continue for four months… The clawback is estimated to be worth about $30 million a month, according to a provincial government official.
Tags: budget, disabilities, ideology, jurisdiction, participation, poverty
Posted in Social Security Delivery System | No Comments »
How to restore Canada’s Employment Insurance program
Tuesday, April 21st, 2020
If we hadn’t already spent most of it, the EI surplus could have been used to pay for the entire cost of the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) program, currently estimated to cost $24 billion, and much of the $71 billion to support the Federal Wage Subsidy Program. The fact is, a strong, comprehensive and robust EI system that provides for all workers could have avoided the need to develop any overlapping programs.
Tags: economy, ideology, participation, standard of living
Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »
Ontario tells social assistance caseworkers to reinstate benefits to those who lost them after receiving emergency relief payments
Saturday, April 18th, 2020
On April 13, Carla Qualtrough, the federal minister of employment, workforce development and disability inclusion, urged all provinces not to claw back CERB benefits “to ensure vulnerable Canadians do not fall behind.” … Ontario has yet to say how it will treat the CERB. But Lockridge said Minister Todd Smith “had a productive discussion” with Qualtrough on Friday and will be providing more information “in the coming days.”
Tags: budget, ideology, jurisdiction, participation, poverty
Posted in Social Security Delivery System | No Comments »
Millions of Canadians are now collecting a state-funded income. But what happens after the pandemic ends?
Saturday, April 18th, 2020
The advent of UBI in its pure form is unlikely. It has its champions today as never before, but UBI is likely to fade as the pandemic does. To start, the federal finance ministry, no fan of UBI, prefers to create targeted rather than universal programs. And never mind the streamlined efficiency of universal programs like Medicare… the issue isn’t affordability. It’s culture. People either embrace or reject paying the freight for ensuring that everyone has a decent, dignified way of life.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, ideology, standard of living, tax
Posted in Policy Context | 1 Comment »
Let’s have dignity in life as well as death
Saturday, April 18th, 2020
Working together we can push governments and businesses to build a more inclusive economy that offers full-time jobs with decent wages and benefits. We can repair the frayed social safety net. This crisis has already demonstrated that governments — provincial and federal — can quickly alter policies and programs to better suit the needs of Canadians when they are highly motivated to do so.
Tags: economy, ideology, Indigenous, participation, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Inclusion Debates | No Comments »
Ontario seeks more information from Ottawa on how to treat CERB for people on social assistance
Friday, April 17th, 2020
… until the province determines how to treat the CERB, case workers have been told not to record the income in Ontario’s computerized benefits system, where the extra cash may trigger automatic clawbacks and even termination of benefits, including drug and medical coverage… A coalition of more than 130 health-care workers, community agencies and Ontarians living in poverty … [are] urging Queen’s Park to boost social assistance rates and not to claw back the CERB from those on OW and ODSP.
Tags: budget, disabilities, ideology, jurisdiction, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Debates | No Comments »
Doug Ford didn’t protect long-term-care facilities from COVID-19. Neither did the rest of us
Thursday, April 16th, 2020
We could and should hold the current government to account — for falling behind the rest of Canada on testing, for lagging on nursing-home care, for fobbing off responsibility on to public health officials. But there is enough blame to go around — for politicians past and present, public servants and the public… Our premier has put his best face forward in recent weeks, but he still has much to answer for.
Tags: budget, disabilities, Health, ideology, jurisdiction, pharmaceutical, poverty
Posted in Child & Family Policy Context | No Comments »
COVID-19 has exposed decades of elder neglect. Here’s how we can start to fix it
Thursday, April 16th, 2020
it is painfully obvious that we, as citizens, failed to speak up for Canada’s seniors at budget time, election -time, indeed most of the time. But in midcrisis, the imperative is to fix what we can and to vow not to let the long-term sector fall off the radar screen again, when this pandemic has passed.
Tags: budget, disabilities, Health, ideology, jurisdiction, standard of living
Posted in Child & Family Delivery System | No Comments »
Ontario must stop the spread of COVID-19 in long-term-care homes
Tuesday, April 14th, 2020
Personal support workers, who provide the bulk of the daily care in long-term-care homes, are badly underpaid and overworked on normal days, let alone in the midst of a pandemic. And the way the system has been allowed to operate means these workers are often held to part-time hours, forcing them to cobble together jobs at multiple homes just to make a living. Ontario cannot afford to let this go on any longer.
Posted in Child & Family Delivery System | No Comments »
Ottawa to the provinces: Don’t claw back CERB for workers on social assistance
Tuesday, April 14th, 2020
“Our government believes the CERB needs to be considered exempt by provinces and territories in the same way as the Canada Child Benefit to ensure vulnerable Canadians do not fall behind” The statement comes as some Ontarians on social assistance who have lost their poverty-level jobs are receiving as much as $3,500 in CERB payments to cover wages lost in March and April… While Ontario considers what to do, the B.C. government on April 2 exempted EI and CERB from social assistance clawbacks…
Tags: budget, ideology, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Policy Context | 2 Comments »
Recent Comments