OCAP heads to allan gardens this weekend for another of the org’s legendary mass feed-ins to press for an increase in social assistance rates.
Not that it, or any other anti-poverty group, has had much luck. Assistance levels have been allowed to fall stunningly behind over the years: single people currently receive $592 a month, a living wage when Lester Pearson was prime minister. Singles on the Ontario Disability Support Program get $1,042.
Problem is, don’t look for a discussion on rates in the upcoming election the Liberals have neatly tucked the issue away in their social assistance review process. Struck last November, the review is being led by two highly respected figures: Frances Lankin, past president and CEO of United Way Toronto, and Munir Sheikh, former chief statistician for the feds, the civil servant who quit on principle over the long-form census affair.
But call it the Hudak factor: the Libs have crafted the review so that the final report isn’t due until June 2012, missing the election fracas by a country mile. And while Lankin has stated publicly that tinkering won’t fix the system and that “fundamental reform [is] required,” many in the policy community are unimpressed by the timing.
“The [Liberal] political arm,” says U of T policy analyst Ernie Lightman, “has basically taken a step back because of the election and has left it to the bureaucrats. They’ll come up with some recommendations, but they’ll be very incremental.”
Incremental is not what poverty experts think is in order, but the seemingly entrenched government position on keeping rates low has generated a wide debate over tactics on the anti-poverty front.
“Social assistance is a bad brand,” says John Stapleton, a policy analyst and former senior civil servant in the Ministry of Community and Social Services. He points out that until the Harris Tory regime, welfare rates for singles steadily rose, from $491 in 1989 to $663 in 1993 under the Bob Rae NDP government. If subsequent governments had pegged rates to inflation, the welfare rate today would be $932 a month.
Stapleton is pessimistic that politicians of any stripe will ever increase payments again. “Through good times and bad, social assistance has been reduced relentlessly for the last 18 years, and the question is, can you do something outside of social assistance to adjust poverty?”
Sure enough, poverty activists are trying to finesse their way around this brick wall – but they aren’t all on one page.
Some, like Stapleton and Gail Nyberg, executive director of the Daily Bread Food Bank (where Stapleton is on the board), are pushing what they perceive as a more saleable option: a shelter benefit for all low-income people, even those who are working.
They advocate a monthly $103 housing benefit for low-income tenants via the tax system. It would cost a little over $200 million and target 66,000 families or 129,000 individuals across the province.
“The NDP is interested, the Liberals seem to be interested and even, to my surprise, the PCs wanted to know lots about it. I can’t tell you if it will be in their platforms, but we will be out there lobbying,” Nyberg says.
That’s one strategy. But there’s another one prioritizing food over shelter. The Put Food In The Budget campaign seeks to increase the monthly food portion of the social assistance cheque by $100.
Nyberg, albeit in the poverty food biz, has concluded that the food supplement issue just won’t fly. That campaign, she says, after a little more than two years has failed to make an impression on the Liberal government. “I have not heard one government member address the issue of poverty and hunger,” says Nyberg.
The foods vs shelter divide, says Peter Clutterbuck, a consultant with the Social Planning Network of Ontario, represents quite different political evaluations. While supportive of a housing benefit in theory, he believes it would take too many months to implement.
Faster to establish, he says, would be an additional $1,200 yearly for food purchases added to the social assistance cheques of Ontario’s 580,000 welfare recipients and the 391,443 on disability. “We think that morally, in terms of no longer tolerating hunger in our wealthy society, and economically, in terms of health care cost savings, introducing the supplement now is the only responsible policy decision.”
What complicates the prospects of both wings of the movement is that they face a reinvigorated Ontario Conservative party. Stapleton notes that the PC platform contains echoes of the Mike Harris years, like reinstitution of the lifetime ban for welfare fraud (undefined).
However, Sylvia Jones, speaking for the Conservative Party, says her party supports the social assistance review and is “studying” the proposal for a housing benefit.
At the moment, it appears that none of the three major political parties is vying for the poverty reduction crown, though the NDP is most likely to buck that trend. NDP MPP Michael Prue has been deeply immersed in the poverty file and has endorsed the Put Food In The Budget campaign. But he ruefully acknowledges the public opinion shortfall.
“I have asked hundreds of questions in the last 10 years on this topic [at Queen’s Park] and have never once been quoted in a newspaper. Nobody has been interested. The NDP is standing back and asking, ‘Do we run on a patform when there is no public interest?'”
Before the recession took the wind out of Liberal sails, they had established a new child benefit program, and all three parties had endorsed a poverty reduction strategy. Nevertheless, the Ministry of Community and Social Services’, Charlotte Wilkinson says, “we know that there is more to do – which is why our government launched the largest review in 20 years.”
Yes, but it’s late – and besides, will they be around to heed the results?
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