#onelxn

TORONTO STAR (April 26th, 2013):

It’s time to end the erosion of public assistance in Ontario

Welfare has eroded to the point that it would take a 56-per-cent rate increase to bring the single rate back to where it was in 1993.

By John Stapleton

"The year was 1993... the last time social assistance in Ontario increased in real (inflation-adjusted) terms.

"For the record, the Rae [NDP] government established a single welfare rate of $663 a month in 1993 — the high water mark. He then froze social assistance rates in both 1994 and 1995, the first two-year freeze since 1973. Mike Harris cut rates by 21.6 per cent, establishing a single rate of $520 a month and let it stay there until Dalton McGuinty took over eight years later. That low $520 single rate, if adjusted for inflation, would now be $617 a month but the current rates stands at just $606 a month."

For the last 20 years, social assistance has eroded to the point that it would take a 56-per-cent rate increase to bring the single rate back to where it was in 1993.

"For a single person with disabilities, a 22.2-per-cent increase would be required to restore purchasing power to levels paid in 1993. Harris and Eves did not cut rates for people with disabilities but they didn’t raise them either."

The 1993 Ontario NDP set the (inflation adjusted) $1,729 amount paid to people living with disabilities.

Even if you think it's reasonable to paying Ontario Works (OW) recipients less than they need to live on (either to punish them because you think they are lazy, or perhaps trying to defraud the system, or because you think it will give them an incentive to get a job), such Dickensian attitudes of blaming or punishing people for their own poverty should not extend to people living with disabilities.

No amount of fortitude, resilience or incentives will lift people out of disability.

Whether genetic or the result of illness or accident, disabilities are not a choice. There is simply no possible rationale or justification for forcing people whose disabilities prevent them from working for a living to live far below the poverty line.

The unequivocal Green commitment to raising ODSP rates during this 2022 Ontario election campaign pushed the other major parties to raise their own platform commitments, with the NDP agreeing to follow the Green lead by doubling ODSP in the 2nd year.

This ability to push the envelope is a powerful reason to elect Greens. No matter what the composition of the Ontario Legislature looks like after this election, the more Greens we send to Queens Park, the better.

If we are very lucky, Ontario voters will deliver a minority government. If you care about our social safety net, you will agree that our best hope lays with electing more Green and NDP MPPs.

Election Day in Ontario is June 2nd, 2022. Please Vote. And encourage non voters to vote, too.

(Almost twice as many eligible voters didn't vote as voted PC in 2018!)

And please: don't encourage so-called "strategic voting" which only props up the status quo and helps FPTP suppress the vote.

Don't waste your vote by voting for what somebody else wants.

Vote for what you want.

Way to go Ontario 

A Toronto Star Opinion Piece by Martin Reg Conn desperately tries to justify the Ontario election result in "Get Over It: Doug Ford's Victory was an example of how democracy is supposed to work."

But is it really?

The purpose of Democracy is to give people a say in our own governance. In a Direct Democracy that would mean citizens themselves directly make laws and government policies. As in a referendum.

But ours is a Representative Democracy, which means citizens choose representatives to represent us when making laws and policies in Parliament.