Income assistance ‘stagnant’
The numbers are stark.
A non-disabled single person on welfare in Nova Scota will get only $9,739 this year, more than $18,000 below the poverty line in Halifax. A single parent with a twoyear-old child will get about $22,650. That is $16,500 short of poverty cutoff.
Those were some of the statistics that human rights lawyer Vince Calderhead presented to a committee reviewing legislation enacting the provincial budget Monday. For the third straight year, the government released a budget with no increase to welfare rates.
At the same time, budget documents tabled last month projected the cost of living would go up by 2.7 per cent. That means a single mom, with a toddler, on welfare will see her real income drop by more than $30 a month, Calderhead told the law amendments committee.
He is urging the province to pass a law that requires income assistance levels to match Canada’s official poverty line and that calls for increases to track Nova Scotia’s inflation rate.
He said the government is deliberately sinking disabled people further into poverty and violating its human rights obligations to provide Nova Scotians with an adequate standard of living.
Calderhead pointed to Statistics Canada data showing that since the last rate increase, inflation in Nova Scotia has jumped by more than 13 per cent. Food prices alone have risen by 21 per cent and shelter costs have increased 19 per cent.
While the budget offered no help to welfare recipients, it did give a break to other taxpayers in the form of raising the amount of income that is taxed at the lowest rate.
Calderhead called it “completely scandalous.”
The province did increase the rate for people with disabilities on assistance. Beginning in April, the new disability supplement will provide $300 per month more to those who cannot work and who in the Disability Support Program. They represent 60 per cent of people on income assistance.
But even with the increase, Nova Scotians with disabilities relying on income assistance still fall $11,489 below the poverty line.
Earlier this year, the province said it would send out a one-time payment of $150 to those on social assistance who don’t qualify for the disability support.
Calderhead said the province’s “shameful rates” implicate not just politicians but more broadly, us as a society.
Maytree, an Ontario nonprofit foundation that works to eradicate poverty, estimates 43,000 Nova Scotians can no longer cover basic necessities of life, such as food and shelter. The organization submitted a report to the province in advance of the budget, urging an increase to income assistance rates that are among the lowest in the country.
“Data on Canada’s Official Poverty Line, which goes back as far as 2002, tells us that the depth of poverty of Nova Scotians has remained stagnant for at least the last two decades,” the report said. “This means that the Government of Nova Scotia has allowed a generation to go by without sufficient investments to lift people out of poverty.”
Quebec, Yukon, Alberta, New Brunswick, and Ontario already tie welfare rate increases to inflation.
The Chronicle Herald asked Community Services Minister Brendan Maguire whether he planned to increase social assistance rates to match inflation. Before crossing the floor to join the Conservatives, he had supported the change.
On Tuesday, he said he would answer. Later, a spokesperson sent an email repeating what the minister said on budget day: that it’s a complex matter and that there is more work to be done.