So now we know there are no limits to how low Doug Ford’s government will go to find his promised $6 billion in savings.
On Tuesday, it found $150 million toward that total on the backs of the poorest among us by cutting next month’s planned 3 per cent welfare increase in half.
It also scrapped a $50-million-a-year basic income pilot program midway into its three-year run. The program’s aim was to discover a better way to help people get back on their feet.
In lines seemingly straight out of Alice in Wonderland, Social Services Minister Lisa MacLeod described these moves as “compassionate.” She said the system is hurting the very people it is supposed to help and they simply can’t let that go on.
We’re to believe, then, that giving individuals on welfare about $10 a month more instead of the $20 they were supposed to get will somehow help them?
MacLeod went on to claim that the pilot program of 4,000 people — seeking answers to the question of whether more government money upfront would lead to better outcomes — wasn’t working. She offered no data to prove that.
These are ideologically driven, deplorable reductions that will create more suffering for the poor, and surely lead to higher costs in the long run as the price of poverty inevitably falls to health care, shelter and justice systems.
“This was supposed to be a government for the people,” said 61-year-old Patricia Smiley, who has a master’s degree but depends on disability support because of mental illness.
“Are we not people too?”
Indeed, one can only wonder which people Ford’s actions will help. It won’t help nearly one million Ontarians who already can’t afford to house and feed themselves. Welfare currently pays a maximum of $721 a month, while disability support tops out at $1,151.
And it won’t put money back into the pockets of taxpayers, as the premier is so fond of saying. The savings from these changes are paltry compared to the billions in ongoing costs associated with poverty, and ultimately borne by taxpayers.
But we’ve seen this short-sighted strategy before.
In fact, those who depend on social assistance have never recovered from the 21.6 per cent cuts the last Progressive Conservative government made to welfare rates. Even if the rates had been raised by the 3 per cent budgeted by the previous Liberal government, they would still be lower in real dollars today than they were when former premier Mike Harris cut them back in 1995.
MacLeod even used a line right out of the Harris playbook to defend her actions saying, “Let me be clear: the best social program is a job.”
So why, then, cut a basic income program that was helping people go back to school to train for jobs, giving them enough money to use transit to get to a job interview, and helping them pay rent so they have an address to put on a job application?
During the election campaign, the Progressive Conservatives had even promised to keep the pilot going. But now that they’ve changed their mind, years of public investments into the study and its implementation will go down the drain. Now, we will never know if this basic income program improved health, employment and social outcomes for the poor.
MacLeod has also promised to deliver a full set of social-assistance reforms — something governments spend years on — within the next 100 days.
None of this makes sense; at least not when judged from a good policy standpoint. But when judged by a different measuring stick — politics — it is easier to see the motivation.
As Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner warned on Wednesday, these reforms further demonstrates that the Ford government intends to govern “by ideology rather than evidence.”
And that is bad for everyone, not just the poor.
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2018/08/01/cutting-a-planned-increase-for-welfare-recipients-by-half-and-axing-a-basic-income-pilot-program-is-misguided-and-a-false-economy.html
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