"For people on welfare our goal should be straightforward: to help them rebuild their lives, develop employable skills and advance from the welfare system to new opportunities and stable work. But few people will say Ontario’s current social assistance programs are succeeding in that goal."
- Ontario PC Party's Welfare to Work White Paper
What a simple, common sense, straightforward idea!
Over 475,000 Ontarians, or just under 4 percent, are on welfare. That number is unacceptable. It's not quite the 1.3 million Ontarians who were on welfare under Bob Rae's socialist experiment, but it's unacceptable none the less.
We spend $10 billion per year on welfare, or about $21,100 per person receiving welfare.
Who would be against such a noble, essential platform statement, except of course the Toronto Star and CBC, and their allies in the NDP and Liberal Party?
Clearly, the only response to such a necessary and practical policy change is misdirection and deliberate misrepresentation of what the Ontario PC's and Tim Hudak are actually saying.
Welfare is Ontario Works. The purpose of OW, or "welfare" is "temporary financial assistance to those most in need." Keyword, obviously, being temporary. (And that's entrenched in law.)
Welfare is NOT the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP). The purpose of that program is providing "persons with disabilities" with "income and employment supports." That definition, too, is entrenched in law, and it rightly responds differently to the different challenges faced by those with disabilities.
Nor is welfare employment insurance (EI), the federal government program which provides "temporary financial assistance to unemployed Canadians who have lost their job through no fault of their own, while they look for work or upgrade their skills."
Three separate programs, but two of them are intended to be temporary relief measures while disability is a separate, sensitive case. That's why ODSP is largely unchanged in Hudak's Welfare platform, other than to change the back-logged bureaucracy behind it. Welfare is welfare; disability is disability.
So the next time you hear someone flabbergasted about why Hudak is suggesting that a temporary relief program be - wait for it - temporary - you'll know the answer to give them.
When volunteering for my local Conservative candidate in a previous campaign, I was dropping off literature from door to door, I hit several houses that had dozens (that is correct plural) of welfare cheques in the mailbox in a fairly well-to-do neighbourhood. I just wonder about the magnitude of welfare fraud.
ReplyDeleteWhat were you doing snooping in peoples mail?
DeleteYou are being very naive Daniel. This is not what the PCs mean. They want to integrate the two programs into one.
ReplyDeleteIt was done that way in the UK to terribly disastrous results. Check out this link for starters.
I will fight the PCs with every breath I take if they continue with this nonsense. Strangely, there seems to be no institutional memory. The current OW system was put in place by the first Harris gov't and I was part of that process.
If the two systems become one, your assumption of welfare being welfare and disability being disability would be wrong, very wrong.
Think about it. ODSP recipients make nearly double what welfare is. Join them together and what then? Down to welfare rates to save money. On the backs of the most vulnerable who don't have unions behind them.
No, my friend. Read between the lines and don't buy the spin.
Thank you for the feedback Sandy. Clearly, I did not read the statement on page 9 which states Ontario Works AND Ontario Disability should become one program. I completely agree with you that this approach should NOT be undertaken; they are two very different programs with very different purposes (as I laid out above).
DeleteIF, and I recognize that's a big if, they're trying to say they will streamline benefits delivery and reduce the bureaucracy behind those programs in order to best support BOTH programs, then I do agree. If, for instance, the Minister of Community and Social Services administered both ODSP and Ontario Works through the same section to reduce bureaucracy, that could make sense.
Creating one criteria for both benefits and actually making two programs the same is not the way to go. My support for the latest White Paper came from the broader goals, such as reducing costs, getting those who can work back to work, and targeting fraud and misuse of money.
In case I made an error adding my link re the UK situation, it is here.
ReplyDeleteFYI I have put up a post in complete disagreement with you. I am appalled at your smugness.
ReplyDeleteinteresting article
ReplyDeletehttp://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/1280032--frances-lankin-and-munir-sheikh-give-ontario-an-affordable-plan-to-modernize-social-assistance-goar
From the two articles it looks like NDP and Liberals are in agreement on changes that Tim Hudak announced
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely, the combination of the two programs would be an unmitigated disaster, something I don't want to re-fight. The separation of the two programs was one thing that I recall that Harris was very careful in doing. While I don't believe the programs were completely separated, as ODSP still has some very welfare-like rules, but proposing integration of the two programs can only mean serious problems for people with disabilities.
ReplyDelete