Ford’s Tories are doing the poor no favours

If powerful leaders can be judged by their treatment of the powerless, Ontario Premier Doug Ford stands condemned today by two of his own particularly meanspirited actions.

In total violation of a spring election-campaign promise, Ford’s Progressive Conservatives this week killed a basic income pilot project being run in Hamilton, Brantford, Lindsay and Thunder Bay. In so doing, they pulled the rug out from under 4,000 participants who were depending on that income to fight their way out of poverty.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, Ford and the Tories cut in half the three-per-cent increase in welfare payments that the previous Liberal government had promised to hundreds of thousands of low-income Ontarians. Ford gave no indication he’d do this when he was running for election, either.

We’re all in favour of Ford rooting out government waste and reining in government spending. But this time he’s saving money on the backs of the poor. And that’s simply wrong, both morally and in terms of public policy. The basic income pilot program was a humane and reasoned attempt to find a new and better way to assist the unemployed, the unemployable and the working poor.

It offered single participants up to $16,989 a year and couples up to $24,027, less 50 per cent of any earned income. And it won support both from those on the right of the political spectrum who thought it might prove a more efficient use of taxpayers’ money and those on the left convinced it would benefit not only the poor but society as a whole.

In an era with well-founded fears about growing economic inequality and how new technologies, especially artificial intelligence and robotics, are making redundant many traditional jobs, other jurisdictions, including in Finland, have also been exploring a basic income.

We can’t conclude Ontario’s pilot project blazed a path to a golden future. Perhaps it would have proven too expensive or delivered mediocre returns.

What we can say is that participants in this project praised it for allowing them to pay their bills, return to school to upgrade their skills or secure better housing for their families. We can also say — without hesitation — that Ford should have let this three-year pilot program run its course instead of axing it at the halfway mark.

Rather than rejoice in whatever dubious savings this decision will bring, Ontarians should be furious that Ford has in many ways wasted the money that has been spent on the pilot project so far.

Three years of data from such a project would have revealed whether a basic income could affordably get more people working again, improve their health while saving public dollars or even reduce layers of government bureaucracy. Now we’ll never know, which is infuriating.

Just as troubling is the government’s decision to increase payments to welfare recipients by just 1.5 per cent instead of three per cent.

Ontario Works currently pays a maximum of $721 monthly while the Ontario Disability Support Program pays up to $1,151 a month. We defy anyone — PC or otherwise — to label that excessive or overly generous, especially for people trying to survive in the province’s increasingly expensive big cities.

Ontario Social Services Minister Lisa MacLeod deludes herself when she describes her 1.5-per cent increase as “compassionate.” Not when the province’s annual inflation rate is running above two per cent. Thanks to her, welfare recipients won’t be treading water — they’ll be sinking.

All in all, a bad week for Ontario’s low-income residents. And a further damning judgment on the real Doug Ford.