Ontario scraps basic income pilot project, limits welfare increase
Tories to revamp social assistance programs in 100 days
The new Doug Ford government is cutting a planned three per cent welfare increase in half and scrapping a basic income pilot program the Progressive Conservatives promised to keep during the spring election campaign.
Social Services Minister Lisa MacLeod said Tuesday the increase scheduled by the defeated Liberal government will be reduced to 1.5 per cent, while the PC administration embarks on a 100-day revamp of social assistance programs serving almost one million Ontarians.
“They spent money the province didn’t have,” MacLeod said of Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals, whose ill-fated budget projected a multi-billion-dollar deficit this year.
Ford’s Tories did not mention any plans to trim the welfare rate increase during the campaign but did pledge $6 billion in spending cuts.
MacLeod described the 1.5 per cent increase as “compassionate” and said the basic income pilot program in three locations across the province was “quite expensive.”
“It was certainly not going to be sustainable,” she told reporters, promising details soon on how the program will be wound down. “Spending more money on a broken program wasn’t going to help anyone.”
MacLeod evaded a question on whether the government would consider a return to a work-for-welfare program, which the Mike Harris PCs implemented in the 1990s.
“The best social program is a job,” she said, paraphrasing Harris, adding “for those who can get one.”
NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said cutting the “meagre” three per cent increase “pushes those already at a disadvantage even deeper into poverty.”
Ontario Works now pays a maximum of $721 monthly, while the Ontario Disability Support Program pays up to $1,151 a month.
Toronto resident Patricia Smiley, 61, who has been struggling to survive on ODSP since 2009, said she was “stunned” the planned three per cent increase was halved given rising rent costs.
“This was supposed to be a government for the people. Are we not people, too?”
The government also “paused” regulatory changes that would have boosted the amount of money people on social assistance can keep from part-time jobs to $400 from $200 a month before seeing their benefits reduced by 50 cents on the dollar.
For Claude Wittmann, 54, who receives ODSP benefits and works part time as a bicycle mechanic, being able to keep more of what he earns would have provided “peace of mind.”
“Now I am deeply confused about the future,” said Wittmann, who holds a PhD in molecular biology but was unable to continue working in academia due to mental health challenges.
“I feel it is abusive to want to redesign the social assistance in 100 days without any apparent efforts to reach out to us,” he said. “Are we subhuman?”
Tom Cooper of the Hamilton Roundtable on Poverty Reduction, who had helped the previous Liberal government recruit people for the three-year basic income pilot project, said he was “deeply disappointed” by the announcement.
Some participants moved into better housing that they won’t be able to afford if they are forced to return to welfare, while others went back to school, he added.
“The decision today by the Ford government is shameful, short-sighted and it’s a betrayal of those people they promised would be able to continue on the pilot,” Cooper said.
Also put on hold are changes that would have removed caps on the value of gifts or other voluntary payments received by people on social assistance, along with plans to allow recipients to keep money in RRSPs and tax-free savings accounts.
The changes are particularly gutting for former judge George Thomson, who helmed a twoyear working group on income security for the Liberals that recommended sweeping multiyear changes last fall.
Many of those reforms, including rule changes and welfare rate increases, were reflected in the former government’s March budget, which earmarked $2.3 billion over three years to begin to streamline and simplify social assistance.
“All of the members of the working group were quite excited about the changes that were coming in September, particularly because they represented a very different approach to programs like social assistance,” Thomson said in an interview.
“We had hoped that any government being elected would see the value of that as a much better way to spend their money.”
The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives was aghast at the changes. “How the minister can claim that cutting planned social assistance rate increases and a basic income pilot for Ontario’s poorest is an act of compassion is beyond me,” said spokesperson Trish Hennessy.