In the 2007 Provincial general election, millions of Ontarians voted to elect a government that promised that it would seriously look at the social assistance situation in the province. In response, the Ontario Liberal government promised to “Raise the Rates” for social assistance to individuals with the highest need in our province.
I am pleased to say they did keep this promise: the government of Ontario did increase the funding by a few extra dollars a month. However, I am equally displeased to say that, in doing so, they also cut the annual funding for “back to school allowance” for the very same social assistance-dependant recipients. In this fashion, any material benefit for struggling families was rendered ineffectual.
On Tuesday September 2nd, Kingston City Council heard a recommendation from the Arts, Recreation & Community Policies Committee and from City Staff that would provide a one-time funding allowance for persons receiving Ontario Works (OW) assistance. This payout would provide $175 per child to help families cope with the cutbacks to the school allowance. The city proposed to pay 20%, with the other 80% coming from the province.
Unfortunately, a number of Kingston families in financial need - those who receive social assistance from the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) - were excluded from this recommendation. City staff also noted that they only expected 70% of OW recipients to step forward and apply for funding due to the lack of public knowledge and publicity about this program, and an unwillingness of some to ask for handouts.
To their credit, four councillors: Steve Garrison, Robert Hutchison, Robert Matheson and Vicki Schmolka, fought valiantly to not only increase the funding to $250 per child, but also to provide “blanket coverage” for people on OW and ODSP.
I will grant that the increase of $75 and the addition of ODSP recipients would have resulted in an increased cost to the city. But I would argue that it this is absolutely necessary to provide the basics for younger children who are going back to school. This would provide parents with the ability to adequately clothe and feed their children, ensuring they are given a good start to each school day. The idea behind social assistance is that we provide people who are disadvantaged with the basic necessities to be successful in our society.
Having been one of those children reliant on social assistance myself, I can clearly remember times when my dad would starve himself so that my brother and I would have enough food to eat. I can remember that turning 18 meant an end to benefits and brought with it the uncertainty of bills not being paid and food not being on the table.
In a time where the economy and inflation have taken so much from middle and lower class families and economic uncertainty is becoming certain, taking away the smallest bit of benefits that help provide a staple existence for children is shameful and ruins the chances that we all want to provide for the next generation. As a society, we should be demanding more from our leaders to help make ends meet for those who actually need the help.
It is of note that Kingston City Council at the very least passed the recommendation to provide for members of our communities on OW - with the knowledge that about 70% would step forward to access this program. However, one can’t help to wonder how many children whose parents are obtaining assistance from ODSP or whose parents will not come forward are shamefully being left behind.
Council Members voted Against the motion to increase that assistance to everyone:
Mayor Harvey Rosen
Councillor Lisa Osanic
Councillor Ed Smith
Councillor Bill Glover
Councillor Joyce MacLeod-Kane
Councillor Mark Gerretsen
Not Present:
Councillor Sara Meers
Councillor Lenore Foster
Councillor Dorothy Hector
Jamie Masse
Kingston
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Media Release
The Evidence Is In
Poverty’s Smoke and Mirrors, Part 2
To see part 1 http://www.special-need-child-canada.com/povertys-smoke-and-mirrors.html
The article above went out to the main media and approximately 65 other print news media starting September 21 2008. It was also put on the World Wide Web.
To my knowledge it was only printed in 3 Ontario news papers in the Letters to the Editor section.
1) Hamilton’s, Mountain News
2) Hamilton’s, Stoney Creek News
3) London’s, The London Free Press
Thank you to these three papers for caring enough about people that live in poverty to print this article.
As of today November 06 2008 the Ontario government has only posted old outdated directives dated Sept 2001.
http://www.mcss.gov.on.ca/mcss/english/pillars/social/directives/ow_policy_directives.html
Obviously these directives are of no use to anyone simply because of the fact they are outdated and the ministry is now using the July 2008 up to date directives but has not shared them with the public.
You may remember Welfare Legal was so offended by this abuse we offered $100.00 to anyone that could produce a copy of the latest Ontario Works directive 7.4.
As of this date no one has collected the $100.00. Welfare Legal now has a copy of the new directives that the government has not shared.
We take the position that this is the most serious kind of abuse by our government to implement new policies but not allow those most in need to have access to them. The only reason the government has given for this abuse is that the Ontario Government has not prepared a French version of these directives.
This is a Human Rights violation, among others, to implement a secrete version of the directives and not share them with the public and not to have a French version available.
As we have stated before the Ontario government has in fact been cutting the benefits of Ontario Works, (OW) and the Ontario Disability Support Program, (ODSP) recipients without letting the general public aware of these cuts.
The latest cuts that have become public are the cuts to benefits to grandparents that are caring for their own grandchildren, who many had, have been apprehended by the Children’s Aid Society (CAS). The grand parent’s complaints were heard loud and clear the government seems to have withdrawn these policy changes.
The new directive 7.4 and others shows more cuts that the public is not aware of yet.
One of these cuts shows that the Ontario government no longer supports volunteering here in Ontario. In the old outdated directives dated September 2001, the government used to give a small benefit to those recipients that had to do volunteer work as a condition of eligibility for OW. These cuts also affect those who wish to do volunteer work and are disabled on ODSP as well.
Are volunteers no longer needed here in Ontario?
These cuts which are ongoing, have been made to help pay for the meager increases to OW and ODSP of 2%. They are also part of the government’s bigger plan, to upload the cost of OW and ODSP from the municipality to the province and to pay for its poverty reduction strategy.
At the end of the day the government will save millions of dollars in benefits that the former Mike Harris Tories said people on OW and ODSP were entitled to. Does this make sense to anyone?
This story gets much, much worse. It turns out that the aboriginal community in Ontario had the foresight not to allow its members to be subjected to the policies and procedures put in place by the Mike Harris government, when they bought the draconian computer program from Anderson Consulting now Accenture. The cost of that program was $400 million and rising. This program was designed to cut people off of benefits automatically, with no human contact. There seems to be 2 classes of people being governed differently here, and what are the costs?
It would seem they were allowed to have their own computer program made up by a private company called AD Morrison.
http://www.admorrison.com/
A private professional researcher contacted Welfare Legal in an attempt to collect the $100.00 offered for the latest Ontario Works directive 7.4 and alerted us to a Pandora’s Box. You will see on the home page of AD Morrison’s site there is a link to “Latest Directives”. This link contained a third set of OW directives that was not available to the general public.
After Welfare Legal contacted the ministry to see if this in fact was the latest and new directive 7.4, the ministry contacted us with a reply that had nothing to do with our request. Then out of the blue this link was taken of the site.
After gathering all the evidence we soon learned that the Ontario government had not been keeping these new directive from the public since July 2008, they had in fact been hiding them starting in December 2005 and no one new about it. At least no one that has come forward so far.
There has been no response from any legal clinic or private paralegal in Ontario showing that they new about this breach of the Human Rights Code by our provincial government. If anyone was aware of this why didn’t they take it to the media? Does nobody care about this abuse? Does nobody care about eliminating poverty?
It is interesting to note that the government has even changed the directive numbers to confuse us even more once we were allowed to become aware of them.
September 2001 shows directive 31.0, the out dated benefits that we all are aware of.
December 2005 shows
7.3 is EMPLOYMENT AND PARTICIPATION BENEFITS
7.4 is COMMUNITY START UP AND MAINTENANCE BENEFIT
July 2008 shows
7.4 is EMPLOYMENT AND PARTICIPATION BENEFITS
7.5 is COMMUNITY START UP AND MAINTENANCE BENEFIT
For a copy of these directives
http://owcorruption.blogspot.com/
How can the Ontario government say it is attempting to alleviate poverty when it is secretly cutting the benefits of those most in need? (Reverse Robin Hood)
Ron Payne
Welfare Legal
Hamilton, Ontario
Phone 905-253-0205
E-mail welfarelegal2004@hotmail.com
Blog http://welfarelegal.blogspot.com/
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