PC social assistance pivots decried at rally
Cutting three per cent hikes to 1.5 will ‘deepen poverty’
Terry Williton considers himself lucky. After renting a vermininfested dump for years, he, his wife and daughter were offered a social-housing unit.
“It was a miracle call,” Williton recalled Thursday.
The 64-year-old, now a widower, says he and his daughter, 30, scrape by on their combined Ontario Disability Support Program payments and a little bit of Canada Pension.
“If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t be able to do it,” says Williton, noting they pay $715 a month for a rent-geared-to-income unit on East Avenue. He receives about $1,000 a month.
Scraping by — or not getting by at all — were familiar themes during a rally outside King Street West government offices Thursday to protest the province’s scaling back of social assistance increases and ending the Ontario Basic Income Pilot program.
The demonstration, organized by Hamilton ACORN, culminated with a throng of participants leaving a letter with a civil servant to deliver to Social Services Minister Lisa MacLeod.
It asks the Progressive Conservatives to restore the previous Liberal government’s plans to increase ODSP and Ontario Works by three per cent — rather than 1.5 per cent.
“It’s going to deepen the poverty level more and create more homelessness,” said Mike Wood, chair of Hamilton ACORN, about the Progressive Conservatives’ set of reforms.
Wood said an increase of 1.5 per cent doesn’t keep pace with the province’s set annual rate for rental increases of 1.8 per cent. This will force more people to choose between putting food on the table or keeping a roof over their heads, he said.
ACORN, which has chapters across Canada, held similar rallies in Toronto and Ottawa Thursday as the new provincial government’s pivot on social assistance and basic income continued to fuel debate at Queen’s Park.
“Doug Ford’s axe has fallen on the most vulnerable in Ontario,” NDP Leader Andrea Horwath argued, saying the changes will drive more to food banks, homelessness and “dire poverty.”
The three-year basic-income pilot was being tested in three locations in Ontario, including Hamilton, providing 4,000 participants with a guaranteed income of up to $17,000 a year for individuals and $24,000 a year for couples, less 50 per cent for income earned.
Horwath, MPP for Hamilton Centre, said as of Monday, 15,000 people had signed a petition calling on Ford to “reverse course” and maintain the three-year pilot. MacLeod says the government plans to “wind down” the pilot “in a thoughtful, responsible way.”
She also called the Liberals’ social assistance approach a “disjointed, patchwork system” that took no account of whether it yielded results.
“Our plan will help get people back to work and help them keep working. It will support people with disabilities to work when they are able and participate in their communities,” said MacLeod said, without sharing any details.
Anthony Easton, who was at the Hamilton rally, says the focus of the conversation is all wrong.
“There’s this neo-liberal thought that poverty is a moral problem,” said Easton, who receives a little more than $1,100 a month from ODSP. “And that poverty needs to be punished.”
Easton, who is on the autism spectrum and has severe depression, pays $450 a month for a basement in a Mountain home he shares with two other tenants. Three more live upstairs.
The 37-year-old says he relies on credit cards and pay from freelance writing gigs to try to bridge the gaps. He called the PC’s reforms “an act of cruelty.”
The Income Security Advocacy Centre, a community legal clinic in Toronto, says a 1.5 per cent increase rather than three per cent “will take approximately $150 million out of the hands of people who are among the most vulnerable in Ontario.”