The welfare reform plan Ontario’s Community and Social Services Minister Lisa MacLeod unveiled Thursday points in the right direction, but it’s so lacking in detail that it’s difficult to assess the likelihood of the PCs accomplishing their goals.
MacLeod’s plan attempts to reduce the $10 billion annual cost of welfare and disability payments by an unspecified amount, while at the same time offering a better level of service to people receiving payments. That can be done, but it will mean blowing up a rules-encrusted social service bureaucracy and getting far more efficient at moving people from welfare to work.
The PCs have certainly identified an area ripe for change. The jumble of rules, bureaucracy and disjointed services that characterizes the current approach seems to have no defenders.
Despite years of studies, the results are dismal. MacLeod’s plan says the number of Ontarians on social assistance has increased by 55 per cent over the past 15 years. While the welfare program’s goal is to get people back to work, it is mostly failing at that. There are 255,000 people in the Ontario Works program and the exit rate is only one per cent per month. Half the people who leave welfare return, 80 per cent of those within a year.
The PCs envision a new approach that will radically reduce rules in the system and transfer decision-making authority to case workers employed by municipalities. Not every town and city will have to do things the same way. That sounds good, but it’s far easier to say than do. Striking a balance between local autonomy and accountability for spending will be difficult. Getting the many ministries that provide services to the poor to co-operate will be challenging, too.
The goal is to transform the welfare program into the job-connection service it is supposed to be. Potentially, that has big benefits for the poor, the economy and the provincial treasury.
The increase in the minimum wage to $14 and the PCs’ new plan to eliminate provincial income tax on low-wage earners ought to make work more attractive to people receiving social assistance. MacLeod’s plan makes work more appealing still by allowing people to earn $300 a month without reducing their welfare payments. The current limit is $200. People receiving disability support will be allowed to earn up to $6,000 annually without a claw back, rather than just $200 a month. They will have to report that income once a year, not monthly. Those are good changes, but similar to what the Liberals had already promised, and for welfare recipients, a bit less generous.
Helping people find work benefits individuals, but the economy needs their help, too. The government says there are 200,000 unfilled jobs in Ontario and a labour shortage is hurting Ontario’s businesses.
MacLeod is not promoting her plan as a cost-saving measure, but any government with a $14.5-billion deficit always needs to think about costs. A 10-per-cent reduction in the number of people on welfare would save the government about $300 million.
Money is where the PC plan falls short, although there is precious little detail about it. The government literally can’t afford the high cost of poverty, and it shows in some of the changes the PCs are making.
In its last budget, the previous government finally corrected a counterproductive approach that required people seeking welfare and disability supports to bleed their assets down to next-to-nothing before they could qualify. It appears the PCs have dumped that smart change.
They are also going to move toward a stricter definition of disability for new recipients, one that is in line with that of the federal government. The province believes people are migrating from welfare to disability because the payments are higher. It’s a justifiable change, but not a generous one.
Then there is the meagre size of the monthly payments. While the overall bill for welfare and disability is large, individual payments are cruelly small and will remain so. A single person on welfare gets up to $733 a month and a person on disability support receives $1,169. These are not sums on which a person can live. The Liberals had promised three-per-cent increases in both payments for three years. The PCs have increased them 1.5 per cent and have no commitment to do more.
Boil it down and what we are left with is an assertion that the PCs can make the welfare bureaucracy more effective, combined with spending that will benefit the poor less than what the Liberals would have done. That’s not a lot to cheer about.
Randall Denley is an Ottawa commentator and former Ontario PC candidate.
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/randall-denley-with-welfare-reform-plan-ontario-pcs-identify-an-area-ripe-for-change
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