Ontario government scraps basic income pilot project, limits welfare increase to 1.5 per cent

Thestar.com
July 31, 2018
Rob Ferguson

The new Doug Ford government is cutting a planned 3 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.

Ontario’s Children, Community and Social Services Minister Lisa MacLeod attends question period at Queen’s Park on Tuesday. At a later press conference, MacLeod announced changes to the province’s welfare program.

“They spent money the province didn’t have,” MacLeod said of Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals, whose ill-fated budget projected a multibillion-dollar deficit this year.

Ford’s Conservatives did not mention any plans to trim the welfare rate increase during the election 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” 3 per cent increase “pushes those already at a disadvantage even deeper into poverty.”

Cutting the rates by 1.5 per cent will take approximately $150 million out of the hands of people who are among the most vulnerable in Ontario, added the Income Security Advocacy Centre, a legal aid clinic.

Ontario Works now pays a maximum of $721 monthly while the Ontario Disability Support Program pays up to $1,151 a month.

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Toronto resident Patricia Smiley, 61, who has been struggling to survive on ODSP since 2009, said she was “stunned” the planned 3 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 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?”

Green party Leader Mike Schreiner, the MPP for Guelph, said the PCs are “breaking a promise” to keep the basic income pilot and leaving other welfare recipients short-changed.

“People can barely survive today on social assistance rates.”

MacLeod said the current welfare systems design means “too many people are being trapped … it holds them down.”

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, was “deeply disappointed” by the announcement.

Some participants moved into better housing 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,” he said.

Also put on hold by MacLeod’s announcement are regulatory changes that would have removed caps on the value of gifts or other voluntary payments people on social assistance could receive, along with plans to allow recipients to keep money in RRSPs and tax-free savings accounts.

The changes are particularly gutting for former family court judge George Thomson who helmed a two-year working group on income security for the Liberals that recommended sweeping multi-year changes last fall.

Many of those reforms, including rule changes and welfare rate increases, were reflected in the Liberal’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.

The goal was to reduce the poverty gap for people in deepest need, improve health, employment and social inclusion outcomes, and help provide a better quality of life for Ontarians, including Indigenous peoples, he said.

“We had hoped that any government being elected would see the value of that as a much better way to spend their money,” Thomson added.

“They wanted a new direction for social assistance and in my view the working group gave them one,” he said. “I’m particularly disappointed in the very low rate increase.”

The Liberal government reduced the rate increase to 3 per cent from 10 per cent for Ontario Works and 5 per cent for ODSP, the working group recommended, he noted.

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 spokeswoman Trish Hennessy.

“Not only is this government breaking its promise to let the basic income pilot project complete its course, it is also making it harder for people on social assistance to make ends meet. And it will make it harder for Ontario’s poorest to plan ahead, because they don’t know what the next 100 days will bring.”