Raise the Rates
Under the Harris Tories and McGuinty Liberals, hundreds of thousands of people in Ontario have seen the spending power of their social assistance cheques fall by 40% People can only pay their rent by going without proper food. They can only put food on the table by facing the threat of eviction from their housing. The Liberal government has failed to address this; their meaningless “raises” to assistance totaling 5% in the last four years do not even cover the rise in the cost of living during the Liberal term in office. We demand an immediate increase of 40% to welfare and disability. We are in this together; let’s act like it.
Housing
Seventy percent of low income families with children live in unaffordable housing where shelter costs consume more than 30% of their income. In Toronto, a single parent must have a job that pays almost three times the minimum wage to afford rent for the average two bedroom apartment. Over 122,000 households are on the waiting list for social housing where rent is geared to income. Eighty percent of these households earn less than
$20,000/year and cannot afford market rents. However, wait times range from 5-12 years across the province.
Parents struggle with the lack of affordable housing in different ways: squeezing several families into one apartment, or skipping meals and other necessities to pay the rent. In 2005 a record high 64,864 tenant households faced eviction in Ontario because they could not pay their rent.
We demand that the Ontario Government release the $392 million received from the federal government in 2006 for affordable housing, and to dedicate these funds to build new permanent affordable housing. This investment would allow the Liberal government to meet its election commitment to build 26,600 new units of affordable housing.
The Province should develop a comprehensive package of funding and housing tools which would see overall provincial housing spending reach $1.9 billion annually in order to meet growing housing needs.
*this has been adapted from the Campaign 2000 Report Card for Ontario, http://www.campaign2000.ca/rc/pdf/ontarioreportcard2006.pdf
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
Poverty disproportionately affects immigrants, refugees, and people of colour. People without status are further marginalized by lack of access to public services. There are over 500,000 people living without status across Canada, most of whom live in Ontario. Therefore we demand that the province implement a don't ask don't tell policy. The policy would prevent all public service workers from:
asking for immigration status and,
sharing that information with immigration authorities
The policy would ensure that all residents without status can access public services such as health care, education, social services, housing and labour standards without fear of deportation. Exclusion from these services contributes to the poverty that many people without status face everyday.
Minimum Wage
We demand a $10 minimum wage NOW!
The current minimum wage of $8/hour is not a living wage. A single person living in a large city, for example, who works full-time, full-year at the minimum wage will only earn enough to reach 70% of the poverty line.
We join with other organizations in demanding $10 NOW!
Disability Action Group
1. Remove all barriers to independence from ODSP. This includes all disincentives towards work, savings, marriage and common law partnership as they constitute a direct attack on disabled Ontarians independence and freedom.
2. Lift the arbitrary caps placed on direct funding for attendant care. There are only 700 spots for disabled people to get direct funding but way more than seven hundred disabled people in Ontario that require and have the right to it.
3. Provide assistive devices and personal aid devices to all low-income people, without prejudice.
4. Make Accessibility Legislation mean something. In particular, the government must pay special attention to building more accessible affordable housing and take immediate action to ensuring that all public transportation is barrier free.
5. Stop psychiatric abuse. The government must immediately stop participating in and carrying out abusive policies on persons with disabilities. The use of electroshock must be immediately ceased, putting Ontario in line with its human rights responsibilities. All community treatment orders must be rescinded. The government must no longer continue with forcing persons on disabilities to take drugs against their will. Redirect funding from institutions to psych survivor initiatives.
