Toronto council launches 20-year war on poverty — with funding feuds on the horizon
City needs to invest now or pay later to put Band-Aids on social wounds, Mayor John Tory says.

TheStar.com
Nov. 5, 2015
David Rider

Toronto councillors unanimously launched a landmark 20-year war on poverty but acknowledged they will fight each other over how to fund it.

With Councillor Pam McConnell’s rallying cry for equality of opportunity — “Never let it be said that it cannot be done” — ringing in their ears, all 40 councillors endorsed TO Prosperity: Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy.

The 48-page report commits the city to 24 recommendations and 75 “actions” on five themes: housing, city services, transit, food access, and quality jobs and living wages.

They include creating incentives for construction of low-income housing, expanding dental care for the poorest Torontonians, helping food banks provide nutritious meals and lobbying the province and Ottawa for help.

“What’s in this report are a series of measures to let people be the best that they can be,” Mayor John Tory told council, adding that unemployed, underemployed and marginalized people need to be offered “a hand-up.”

“We have the choice of investing now, to the extent we can, or we can pay later in a way that is trying to remedy and put Band-Aids on things that are wounds that really gnaw at the social fabric of this city and sap our city.”

The problem is clear — booming Toronto has a growing gap between rich and poor. One in five adults lives below Statistics Canada’s after-tax low-income measure, while one in four children live in poverty — the highest rate in Canada.

What is not clear is where city council will find the money to fulfil its commitments, expected to total $39 million next year, up from $26.1 million found for various anti-poverty measures in this year’s budget.

Several councillors warned they won’t support cutting other areas to fund the strategy and will fight Tory’s request that city departments cut spending by 2 per cent and campaign commitment to keep property tax hikes around the rate of inflation.

Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam argued that endorsing the strategy is rejecting those austerity initiatives, and the real test will come in January, when council passes the 2016 budget.

“That’s going to be the vote that really counts, and in every subsequent year afterwards we’re going to have to have the courage to do it over and over and over again,” she said.

Councillor Gary Crawford, the budget chief, defended the Tory administration’s hunt for “efficiencies,” while acknowledging difficult debates are ahead.

“There are priorities we’ll have to decide, don’t kid yourself,” he told council. “It’s going to be difficult and challenging to get there,” funding the poverty-fighting measures.

Crawford said he supports the strategy and offered, as an example, a staff recommendation to increase the frequency of grooming public beaches as something he would sacrifice to help fund the war on poverty.

While Tory is fully supportive of the strategy, his deputy mayor Denzil Minnan-Wong called some of its measures “job killers” that will disadvantage employers.