The ODSP Action Coalition has created a lobby kit for advocates to use in meetings with their MPPs on the Social Assistance Review. The Coalition is a provincial group advocating for people with disabilities on ODSP and considers the Social Assistance Review the most important opportunity in decades to improve ODSP so that people with disabilities can live with dignity. Unfortunately, the Coalition is increasingly worried that any restructuring that comes out of the review will be more about reducing the costs of ODSP than improving the lives of people with disabilities.
Social Assistance Reform
ISAC Response to the Commission’s Second Discussion Paper
To create a response that addresses the issues that affect groups that deal with the most disadvantage in our economy and in society, we’ve been working with partners in the community legal clinic system and community partners with concerns around the impact of social assistance on people with disabilities, women, members of racialized communities, and newcomers. We are still hosting meetings with our community partners, but have reached the point at which we can share draft elements of our submission to the Commission.
Positive or Punitive: What will Reform Mean for People with Disabilities?
We must state at the outset that this kind of understanding of the needs and reality of life for people with disabilities did not come through in “Approaches for Reform”.
The Social Assistance Review: It Doesn’t End with Drummond
Abandoning the Social Assistance Review process due solely to Drummond’s recommendations would be deeply counterproductive. Now is the time for people on social assistance, their advocates and allies to fight even harder for the kind of system that can and must be built in Ontario. But it’s going to take efforts in two distinct areas to get the job done.
The Options Paper: What Does It Say and What Does It Mean? (webinar and backgrounders)
In this webinar, Jennefer Laidley of the Income Security Advocacy Centre presents information that will help groups and individuals understand and respond to the Commission’s Options Paper. The webinar explains where the review process is now and what some of the problems with the paper are, gives a brief overview of the current political and economic context, dissects the paper to construct a picture of what is actually being proposed, and goes through some of the implications.
Webinar Series: Preparing for the Options Paper (with toolkit)
In this webinar series, Jennefer Laidley and Dana Milne of the Income Security Advocacy Centre (ISAC) present information on 3 different options expected in the Commission’s Options Paper and offer a variety of tools to help groups across Ontario organize consultations in their communities and make submissions.
Racialized Communities Consultations Report
Colour of Poverty/Colour of Change (COP-COC) is a province wide campaign made up of individuals and organizations working to build community-based capacity to address the growing racialization of poverty and the resulting increased levels of social exclusion and marginalization of racialized communities – both First Peoples and peoples of colour – in Ontario. COP-COC sees …
Including the Voices of People on OW and ODSP
The Income Security Advocacy Centre (ISAC), the ODSP Action Coalition and the Schizophrenia Society of Ontario created a Workshop Facilitator’s Guide for advocates to use to hold discussions with people on social assistance. A number of groups across Ontario used the Guide to conduct workshops in their community, and wrote submissions to the Commission based …
Submission to the Commission for the Review of Social Assistance in Ontario
This submission examines why the current Ontario Works (OW) program cannot reach objectives consistent with poverty reduction under its current policy framework. It will also look at the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP). While ODSP shares many of the same problems as OW with respect to financial eligibility, unlike OW it has promising legislative objectives that have been given effect in judicial decisions at the highest level. While these objectives have not been fully realized, the program nonetheless has some important features that should not be discarded but instead built upon.
An Activation Agenda for People with Disabilities on ODSP
We determined that it would be helpful to outline the Coalition’s ideas for ODSP reform within a framework that we call an “Activation Agenda”. This model of employment-related supports is made up of four key elements that we believe are the foundation for an Ontario Disability Support Program that would actually meet the objectives it was set out to achieve.
