The International Day to Eradicate Poverty occurs every year on October 17. Adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1992, reflecting on the aspirations of the declaration today brings mixed feelings.
Poverty in Canada dipped during the pandemic years due largely in part to direct income transfers provided by the federal government in the form of CERB, CESB, CRCB, and CRB. These were not perfect income support programs as they excluded many who needed support at the time, like people with disabilities who didn’t have income, unpaid caregivers, and those working in cash-based economies, but even so these programs had a major impact on reducing poverty levels nationally.
Since these programs ended years ago, poverty rates have begun to climb again, and the poverty gap has increased. Many who accessed temporary emergency pandemic benefits continue to be hounded by the CRA to prove eligibility for temporary income support benefits like CERB and CRB, years after the benefits were delivered and spent. Five years after the pandemic started, this continues to be an issue for many low-income Ontarians who are clients of the community legal clinic system, to the point where we highlighted the issue of aggressive recovery of pandemic benefits in our latest federal budget submission.
Providing this type of debt relief is only one way that the federal government can immediately improve the lives of people living on low incomes across the country. They could also make several improvements to the new Canada Disability Benefit, including broadening access to the benefit, as well as improving the adequacy of and access to Employment Insurance.
Canadian governments of every order must work harder to make their poverty reduction strategies more meaningful and actionable so that the worrying trends of increasing poverty are reversed for good.
Ontario will be revising its 5-year Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) this fall, and the government has just opened up its consultation on the upcoming PRS. The flaws with the current PRS are numerous, but as we pointed out in this recent article published by the CCPA, “the major problem with the current strategy is that it relies heavily on employment as the primary poverty reduction tool, while ignoring everything else that makes gainful employment possible, like stable housing or affordable transit.”
Substantially raising the minimum wage, along with indexing Ontario Works rates to inflation and doubling the $733/month benefit would go a long way to immediately creating stability for Ontarians living on social assistance and who struggle on low wages.
We have highlighted more cold hard facts about the impact of low social assistance rates on poverty in our ongoing Fix OW letter-writing campaign:
- Two in three people receiving Ontario Works are under 39 years old. With a provincial youth unemployment rate of 16.5%, raising OW rates is an anti-poverty measure for young Ontarians who are barely scraping by.
- Increasing OW rates is also a gender justice measure, as 25% of OW recipients are single parents, the majority of whom are women.
- And there are countless numbers of people with disabilities who have tried to access ODSP but who end up on OW instead. The UN estimates that the cost of living for people with disabilities is up to 30% higher than for people without disabilities, due to costs associated with disability.
Income benefits for both OW and ODSP need to be doubled in order to ensure that people who can’t work, whether temporarily or permanently, are not punished and instead can obtain stability and dignity, and leave poverty for good.
The solutions to reducing and ending poverty are achievable and easy to find. On Thursday, October 23, a coalition of community groups will head to Queen’s Park to loudly remind policymakers that the solutions are right in front of us.
There is no time to waste – 33 years is long enough.