From My Bottom Step

“Based on some proposals on social assistance reform, that had come out in 1988, but had never been acted upon by the Ontario government…poverty lawyer Craig Foye recently finalized draft legislation for the creation of a social assistance rates review panel… Last week, in a symbolic yet important move, McMeekin…” [editor's note: Ted McMeekin is Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough-Aldershot MPP] “…introduced the Ontario Social Assistance Rates Act 2007 as a private member’s bill, mere hours before the legislature shut down for the summer…It died on the order paper when the MPPs recessed and returned to their ridings across the province.”

“Individuals on Ontario Works (the old welfare) receive $545 a month. People on the Ontario Disability Support Program get higher benefits.

But for both, the figures are arbitrary numbers. They are determined by governments — based not on actual costs of food, rent or utilities in given communities, but upon far more superficial political considerations.

Rates are cut or raised on the whim of those in power.

To help alleviate extreme poverty most social assistance recipients endure, Foye proposed creating an expert panel that would make recommendations to government on benefit rates based on the actual costs of living.

The expert panel would review costs of a healthy food basket, rents in various communities, and other necessities of life, and make a determination — based on evidence — as to what a minimum social assistance rate should be set at.”

Foye’s proposal is “an important message to the Liberal provincial government about the importance of establishing a non-partisan process to make determinations on rates, to give our most vulnerable the opportunity to succeed.”

sources:
“Social assistance act is little bill that could“; Tom Cooper; Hamilton Spectator; 2007/06/12