Ontario’s current Poverty Reduction Strategy, Building a Strong Foundation for Success: Reducing Poverty in Ontario (2020–2025), is nearing its end without having delivered meaningful or lasting reductions in poverty. Despite its stated ambition, the strategy has been undermined by a narrow, almost singular focus on employment activation and labour-market integration that has left the core drivers of poverty unaddressed: inadequate social assistance rates, punitive welfare rules, wages that no longer cover basic needs, and critically, an unprecedented housing and homelessness emergency that now touches every community in Ontario.
The human toll of this failure is unmistakable. At least 81,515 Ontarians experienced homelessness in 2024. The increase has been particularly pronounced in smaller communities. 5,377 individuals experienced homelessness within Northern Ontario communities, an increase of 70% over the last 5 years and over 200% since 2016.
In the past year alone, Ontario food banks recorded 7.7 million client visits, a staggering 77% increase from 2022. In Toronto, the province’s largest city, food-bank visits reached an all-time high of 3.42 million, representing a 125% surge in just two years. At the same time, child poverty in Ontario rose by 3.5 percentage points between 2021 and 2022, the largest single-year increase ever recorded and the sharpest provincial jump in the country, pushing more than 100,000 additional children below the poverty line.
With the current strategy expiring, Ontario has a critical opportunity and obligation to adopt a new approach that puts poverty reduction at its core. A successful strategy must confront the structural drivers pushing more Ontarians into precarity: stagnant social assistance rates, punitive benefit clawbacks, a fractured and inadequately funded support system, insufficient protections for workers, and a housing system that no longer provides affordable or secure homes for low- and moderate-income residents.
Against this backdrop, the following recommendations outline the core policy actions required to move Ontario toward a future where all residents can live with dignity, stability, and real opportunity.
Recommendations
Income Security
A. Make Social Assistance a Real Pathway Out of Poverty
Recommendation 1: Index Ontario Works (OW) to inflation and significantly increase both OW and Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) rates, so they rise above the poverty line with a binding commitment to cut the OW/ODSP poverty gap by at least 50% by 2030.
Recommendation 2: Eliminate punitive clawbacks and inadequate post-earnings exemptions by (i) raising the OW earnings exemption to at least $1,000 per month; reducing the ODSP clawback on earnings above the exemption to 50%; and extending the $1,000 exemption to non-disabled spouses; and (ii) ending dollar-for-dollar deductions of federal benefits, including EI and CPP-D, from OW and ODSP.
B. Ensure social assistance modernization strengthens client stability and equitable access to supports.
Recommendation 3: (i) Fully proclaim and fund life-stabilization services and (ii) reform Integrated Employment Services to prioritize client needs by ensuring equitable access; strengthening coordination between ministries and service providers; and preventing vulnerable recipients from being pushed into work before they are ready.
C. Strengthen Wages and Worker Protections to Build a Poverty-Proof Economy
Recommendation 4: Immediately raise the minimum wage to $20 per hour, with annual increases indexed to inflation.
Recommendation 5: Amend the Employment Standards Act, 2000 to include 10 employer-provided paid sick days annually, with an additional 14 paid days during declared public health emergencies.
Affordable and Secure Housing
A. Prioritize investment in affordable housing
Recommendation 1: Invest in the development and acquisition of social housing and non-profit housing.
Recommendation 2: Ensure surplus land is preserved and only provided to non-profit and/or public housing projects.
B. Set clear and measurable targets and invest resources needed to end chronic homelessness
Recommendation 3: Make significant, long-term investments to end chronic homelessness and provide housing solutions as viable alternatives to encampments.
Recommendation 4: Develop clear, measurable goals and targets to end chronic homelessness.
Recommendation 5: Develop a provincial encampment protocol to ensure that human rights are upheld.
C. Implement full rent control and improve security of tenure for tenants
Recommendation 6: Repeal Section 113 (Vacancy Decontrol) of the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006 and Sections 6.1 (2), 6.1 (3), 6.1 (4), 6.1 (7) (2018 Exemption) of the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006.
Read the full joint submission produced by ISAC and the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario (ACTO) below, by scrolling through the embedded document or clicking on the link below the embed window: