Published in the Toronto Star
October 1 could have been a celebratory day for Ontarians concerned with the struggles of low-income residents. After all, it’s the day the minimum wage will nudge up – following behind inflation, sure – but up nonetheless. But if you’re living on Ontario Works, or what used to be called welfare, the date will carry a more bitter significance. It will have been a full six years since any increase in the amounts for basic needs and shelter.
In that time, inflation has worked its ugly powers and the price of everything has gone up. There has been a 20-per-cent hike in the cost of living for the typical Ontario family, hitting the basics like food and housing especially hard.
If you happen to be surviving on an Ontario Works (OW) income, you’ve felt that sting deeper than most. The cost of living at the provincial poverty line has gone up 22 per cent. This isn’t just inflation doing its usual damage. No, the source of the pain runs deeper, rooted in a 1995 decision when Mike Harris slashed welfare by 22 per cent. Now Doug Ford has done the same, just more slowly and quietly. No need for a flashy cut when the grind of inaction does the job for you.
By freezing Ontario Works at its 2018 levels, Ford’s government has delivered a stealthier, yet no less painful blow. A single recipient in Toronto is now $435 further below the poverty line than they were six years ago. You don’t need to squint to see the impact: Food insecurity has shot up and food bank usage is skyrocketing. Homelessness and pressures on an overburdened shelter system continue to mount. Since 2018, social assistance indexation – increasing OW benefits to increase along with price inflation – would have meant a combined basic needs and shelter allowance of $882 a month. This would be $149 more than the current amounts – money that would surely make a big difference in the lives of many of the poorest people in the province.
The real kicker is that this didn’t need to happen. Before Ford, the Liberal governments never found the resolve to restore the original cuts to OW, but they did tie increases to inflation, the kind of basic economic policy that, like progressive income taxation, everyone agrees on.
The province, however, has ignored Ontario Works, while continuing to index many other things such as child benefits, income taxes and the minimum wage, for example. It also increased Ontario Disability Support Program amounts in 2022 and commenced indexing in 2023. The Guaranteed Annual Income System – a program aimed at low-income seniors – started indexing in 2023. These are positive moves that ensure that some of the poorest didn’t slide backwards with every price hike.
Yet here we are with OW recipients suffering under a rising cost of living while the government watches from a distance.
As if that weren’t enough, the rules around working while on Ontario Works haven’t changed either. You can earn up to $200 a month before the benefits start getting clawed back. But that $200 has been frozen since 2013. Back then, that threshold got you nearly 20 hours of work in a month at minimum wage. After October 1, one can only work 12 hours before exceeding the limit. If that amount had risen with the times, it would be $332 now – a change that would let people work more and live better without losing benefits. But again, nothing moves, nothing adjusts, and the so-called incentives to work become more inadequate every year.
What we’re left with is a situation in which life that is harder for the poorest citizens as the province cuts their safety net inch by inch.
The Ford government can still change course. The province has recently come around to indexation for low-income seniors and people with disabilities. It is time to extend this good policy to Ontario Works recipients and give those struggling Ontarians a fighting chance.
Brian Lewis is a Senior Fellow with the C.D. Howe Institute and Munk School for Global Affairs and Public Policy. He is the former provincial Chief Economist.
