[homeles_ot-l] Fwd: Ontario’s Social Assistance System: 100 days to fix it or to break it?

[Bill Dare]

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From: Income Security Advocacy Centre <isac at lao.on.ca>
Date: Friday, 17 August 2018
Subject: Ontario’s Social Assistance System: 100 days to fix it or to break
it?
To: bill.dare at gmail.com


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Ontario’s Social Assistance System: 100 days to fix it or to break it?

This post, by Jennefer Laidley at ISAC, originally appeared on the Advocacy
Centre for Tenants Ontario (ACTO) blog on Thursday, August 16, 2018

Eleven years ago, I started work at the Income Security Advocacy Centre, a
legal clinic advocating for improvements to the income benefit programs
available to low-income Ontarians, with social assistance as a primary
focus. It didn’t take long before I realized how counterproductive
Ontario’s social assistance system is and how much of a disservice it does
to the people who are forced to rely on it, and to our society at large.

A healthy social safety net is vital to a productive and just society. It’s
one that properly supports people when a good job is out of reach. When a
crisis like violence, illness or family breakdown have struck. When
education hasn’t properly prepared people for a changing labour market. Or
when family or charity can’t be relied on for support.

When everyone can afford to properly feed and clothe themselves and pay the
rent, all of us are healthier, our communities are more resilient and the
enormous financial costs of poverty that we all bear (in health care,
justice, and lost opportunities like greater tax revenue) are greatly
reduced.

19 Improvements to Ontario’s Broken System

Twenty years after its introduction in 1998, Ontario’s social assistance
system was finally starting to shift to a more supportive, rational model.
But a recent announcement by Lisa MacLeod, Ontario’s new Minister of
Children, Community and Social Services has put that progress in doubt.

The announcement generated a lot of public outcry, which focused on the
negative impacts of eliminating the Basic Income Pilot Project and cutting
in half a planned hike to social assistance rates. These moves are
distressing, but there’s another story that isn’t being told. Even more was
lost.

19 improvements to Ontario Works and the Ontario Disability Support Program
were scheduled to come into effect this fall, based on years of advocacy by
community members and recommendations in a non-partisan, evidence-based
stakeholder report called the Income Security Roadmap for Change.

These improvements would have met many of the goals that Minister MacLeod
said she wants the system to produce. Like helping people get off of
assistance and into employment, decreasing the amount of time caseworkers
spend on paperwork, and reducing poverty and improving quality of life,
with compassion.

The Ford government’s announcement means that these improvements and others
in the Roadmap are in jeopardy of being lost. They include:

Doubling the amount of money people can keep when they work (from $200 to
$400 each month), which was supposed to start this December. As an
incentive to work – for people who can – that increase makes sense. And
reducing an irrational three-month waiting period before people newly on
Ontario Works can take advantage of that incentive also makes sense. As the
government surely will agree, the faster people are allowed to benefit from
income from employment, the more equipped (both financially and mentally)
they’ll be able to engage in paid work over the longer term.

Allowing people to keep TFSA and RRSPs, financial gifts from family and
friends, and payments to people with disabilities from trusts and life
insurance policies would end the practice of forcing people into
destitution before providing support. It would encourage saving and ensure
better financial security for the future. Critically, however, this change
would also give caseworkers a break from having to chase down each and
every penny that people on OW and ODSP get – which accounts for a lot of
the 75-90% of their time on administration that Minister MacLeod rightly
wants to see reduced.

Treating people who live together the same as any other common-law couple
in Ontario – by having them assume financial responsibility for one another
after three years of living together, instead of the current three month
requirement – would also reduce administration. But crucially, it would get
government out of the way of newly-forming relationships, which have the
potential to improve quality of life and allow people to leave the system
over time.

Increasing and expanding an allowance for people living in remote areas and
the North, where food and other costs are so much higher, and providing
more support for families with adult children who are forced to live
together in dismal housing conditions on reserve. These changes – which
would primarily benefit First Nation communities – would provide the kind
of poverty-fighting, family-supporting, rights-enhancing support that a
government for the people surely wants for us all.

The promised 3% rate increase was far from what’s needed. People on OW live
on incomes that are nearly 50% below the poverty line. People on ODSP get
incomes about 30% below. However, that 3% was a much-needed boost to a
benefit system that suffered deep cuts in the 1990s that were never
restored through 15 years of the previous government’s rule. Now, even that
extremely modest increase has been cut in half to 1.5%.

The 19 first steps would have started to address the issues that people on
social assistance experience with the current system. They would have
addressed the deep poverty that the system perpetuates, the daily worries
about finding food and paying rent that prevent people from taking steps to
make change in their lives, the intrusion and invasion of privacy, the
punishment meted out for infractions large and small, and the vast amounts
of paperwork required to meet the system’s 800 rules. The changes would
have taken us toward a much better, more humane, more compassionate and
supportive system.

So what’s next?

On July 31, Minister MacLeod also announced that her government would bring
in a new direction for social assistance. After a 100 day review, she’s
promised to announce “a sustainable Social Assistance program that focuses
on helping people lift themselves out of poverty”.

Critically, the Minister signalled that the 19 improvements may not be
completely off the table. The “pause” placed on these changes may mean some
or all are still under consideration. And rightly so, given how rational
these improvements are and how aligned they seem to be with her
government’s interests and direction.

As we’ve seen over the last twenty years and in countless jurisdictions
around the world, lifting yourself out of poverty is virtually impossible
without enough money to end the vicious cycle of reliance on food banks and
substandard housing. And a system of supports that doesn’t punish you for
being poor but instead encourages and supports both your social and
economic inclusion.

We’ve seen other jurisdictions introduce measures that simply make existing
systems worse, like failed policy ideas that limit the amount of time
people on social assistance can collect benefits or forcing people to take
unpaid work in order to claim their benefits. Failed policies like rolling
a diverse set of allowances that serve different needs into one singular
amount that is more difficult to access. Going down a route like this would
simply further entrench the poverty that people on OW and ODSP already
endure, and result in increased desperation, increased homelessness and
increased costs.

If the Minister and the Ford government are truly interested in a
compassionate approach to social assistance reform that accomplishes the
goals they’ve set, they will revisit these 19 improvements and others in
the Income Security Roadmap for Change. They’ll take an evidence-based
approach to their reforms. And they’ll speak with the people who will be
directly affected by any changes they make, before they make them.

Twenty years ago, a Conservative government created Ontario’s current
social assistance system. The current Conservative government now has the
opportunity to do what the previous government didn’t – reform and invest
in the social assistance system for the better. Here’s hoping the next
eleven years will see positive improvements, and not more breakdowns in a
system that everyone agrees is already broken.

Jennefer Laidley is Research and Policy Analyst at the Income Security
Advocacy Centre. Jennefer has been with ISAC since fall 2007, working on
policy analysis, government relations, community outreach, communications
and public education. Social assistance reform has been a primary focus of
her work for the past eleven years.

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