Posts Tagged ‘disabilities’

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Advocates urge Senate to improve national accessibility law

Tuesday, December 4th, 2018

Currently, the legislation sets no timetable for Ottawa to meet its goal of a “barrier-free” Canada and nothing in the legislation compels the government to act… Federally regulated entities are required to develop accessibility plans, but the law does not require those plans to be good or even implemented… And the law wrongly splinters the power to make and enforce accessibility standards across numerous federal agencies, [which] will make it less effective and more confusing, complicated and costly.

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Posted in Inclusion Policy Context | No Comments »


Making sense of Ontario’s social assistance reforms

Sunday, December 2nd, 2018

Under 2018 budget measures, since scrapped by the Ford government, those on OW would have been able to work themselves well out of poverty before losing their benefits. But under the changes, a person on OW will still be almost $6,000 below the poverty line when their earnings make them ineligible for welfare… Currently, a single person on ODSP can work himself out of poverty while still receiving social assistance, but under the changes would be almost $4,000 short when becoming ineligible.

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Posted in Social Security Policy Context | No Comments »


Welfare in Canada 2017

Thursday, November 29th, 2018

The Welfare in Canada reports look at the total incomes available to those relying on social assistance (often called “welfare”), taking into account tax credits and other benefits along with social assistance itself. The reports look at four different household types for each province and territory. The reports are a continuation of the Welfare Incomes series originally published by the National Council of Welfare

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Posted in Social Security History | No Comments »


Ontario’s social assistance reforms hint at direction, offer few specifics, and have problematic implications

Thursday, November 29th, 2018

What was entirely missing from the government’s announcement was any rationale for this change in incentive structure. We’re left to wonder whether there is any good reason to change the pattern of incentives so those working fewer hours are better off, but those working more hours are worse off… Only the tiniest fraction of ODSP recipients could possibly ever work under the proposed new definition, so the higher exemption levels will likely apply to almost no one.

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Posted in Social Security Policy Context | No Comments »


There are danger signs in Ford government plans to reform welfare

Saturday, November 24th, 2018

The biggest change is redefining disability to more closely align with federal guidelines… This change will make it harder for new people to qualify for the Ontario Disability Support Program. And the obvious underlying suggestion is that there are people on the program now who shouldn’t be… once the changes take effect, every person who can be ruled ineligible for disability amounts to hundreds of dollars in monthly savings to the government

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Posted in Social Security Policy Context | No Comments »


PCs take Ontario back to bad old days of political fundraising

Tuesday, November 20th, 2018

… buried within the… Restoring Trust, Transparency and Accountability Act… are a set of changes that would at the least loosen, and potentially eviscerate, the province’s new campaign finance regime… What urgent public imperative requires that corporations and unions be allowed to donate to political parties — and not openly but surreptitiously?… there’s no reason parties need to spend anything like as much as they do, and lots of reasons to prefer they should spend less…

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Posted in Governance Policy Context | No Comments »


New report Welfare in Canada, 2017 looks at latest welfare rates and how they compare to poverty measures

Tuesday, November 6th, 2018

The report looks at how welfare incomes varied across every province and territory for four example households in 2017… the report describes the components of welfare incomes, how they have changed from previous years, and how they compared to low income thresholds. The amounts vary in every province and territory

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Posted in Social Security History | 1 Comment »


Labour leader says Pay Equity Act should also address income disparity in minorities, disabled

Friday, November 2nd, 2018

… research shows that visible minorities – the term Statscan uses – earn almost 20 per cent less, on average, than Canadians who are not visible minorities. That gap widens further for women of colour, who earned, on average, 70 per cent of what a man who is not a visible minority earned… research considered factors such as education, experience and hours worked. “After controlling for all characteristics that may drive earning gaps, we still see some gaps that then we can say that’s discrimination”…

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Posted in Debates | No Comments »


What Ontario can learn from the UK on reforming social assistance

Wednesday, October 31st, 2018

Over the past decade, the UK embarked on a series of welfare reforms with similar aims — to cut red tape while getting more long-term welfare recipients into sustained work. This paper summarizes the assessments of independent reviewers and auditors on the impact of those reforms and their value for money. It aims to identify lessons for Ontario as it pursues the same goals.

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Posted in Social Security Policy Context | No Comments »


Resources don’t match need for surgery

Friday, October 5th, 2018

We have just eight full-time neurosurgeons and four orthopedists serving the regional referral population of 2.4 million. Everybody has an elective wait list one to two years long. It is months before we can look after acutely disabled people. None of us in this province operates as much as we could under the resource restrictions of a system that has failed to match the simple growth of the population for decades, never mind the growth of technology and care options.

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Posted in Health Delivery System | No Comments »


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