Ontario Liberals had 15 years to fix poverty, but didn’t

If you think Ontario’s Conservative government just did a bad thing to the province’s poorest people with its revamp of social assistance this week, think again.

There’s a compelling argument to be made that the previous Liberal government let them down even more.

Let’s start with a little history. When Conservative Premier Mike Harris took power in 1995, his radical government wasted no time slashing welfare payments by more than 21 per cent.

Eight years later, Ontario voted for Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals. The new government talked about alleviating poverty without doing much about it.

Those devastating cuts to social assistance rates were never restored. A generation lived in grinding poverty.

In 2012, a little over halfway through the 15-year Liberal mandate, a major review of the social assistance system was completed by former New Democratic Party cabinet minister Frances Lankin and former Statistics Canada leader Munir Sheikh.

Its thoughtfully drawn conclusions recommended an immediate $100-month increase in welfare rates for single adults (who then were living on $599 a month), a streamlining of the system, and more equal treatment of people working lowincome jobs to those on social assistance. But those reforms were never made.

Time passed. Kathleen Wynne replaced McGuinty as premier. She didn’t restore social assistance rates either.

She started a project involving a guaranteed basic income. A study recommended a monthly minimum of $1,320, with $500 more for people with disabilities. Even if you were working, you would be topped up to this amount.

Meanwhile, people on welfare were worse off than when the Liberals first took office. Between 2003 and 2017, monthly cheques for people on disability and welfare had risen 20 per cent. Inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, had risen by 25 per cent.

Today, individuals on welfare receive up to $733 a month, and those on disability, $1,169.

The number of people on social assistance has ballooned by 55 per cent over 15 years to almost a million today. The system costs $10 billion a year. Half of people who leave welfare (now ironically titled Ontario Works) return to the system, while the number on disability has been soaring.

This spring, after yet another study, the dying Liberal government promised $2.3 billion for welfare increases plus other benefits like prescription drug coverage for all low-income people. Welfare rates would rise by three per cent in 2018. The basicincome idea was in a pilot study.

The Conservatives won the election this year, and didn’t implement that planned three per cent increase. They approved a 1.5 per cent increase instead. They cancelled the basic-income pilot project.

It’s disappointing, but they are Conservatives. Their idea of helping people is to remove restrictions that impede progress, not to give out more money that the government doesn’t have.

It makes perfect sense that the Conservatives are allowing people on social assistance who find work to keep significantly more of their earnings. Disabled people can earn $300 a month more than the previous Liberals allowed, without their pension being touched.

This encourages vulnerable people who can’t compete for demanding jobs, but who can work part-time, or from home at their own pace.

Further details of the Conservative plan have yet to be rolled out, so it’s hard to judge it. But one thing is clear:

The Liberals had 15 years to restore dignity to Ontario’s poorest people.

They didn’t, because it wasn’t important enough to them.