Webinar Series: Preparing for the Options Paper

January 2012 | Income Security Advocacy Centre

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.

MPP Lobby Kit

January 2012 | ODSP Action Coalition

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. This Lobby Kit lays out the Coalition’s key messages to MPPs and also provides helpful lobbying tips and templates.

Including the Voices of People on OW and ODSP

September 2011 | ISAC

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

September 2011 | ISAC

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

September 2011 | ODSP Action Coalition

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.

Analysis of Commission Discussion Paper

July 2011 | ISAC

The Income Security Advocacy Centre (ISAC) has prepared this document to highlight some of the key issues in the Commission’s Discussion Paper, summarize what the Discussion Paper says, identify some of the opportunities it presents, and signal some of the risks. We hope that this document will be of use to people who are making a submission to the Commission or who are responding to the questions that the Commission asks in its Workbook.

Responding to the Review of Social Assistance

July 2011 | ISAC

ISAC, together with many community and social policy partners, have been calling for an overhaul of social assistance since the government announced its commitment to developing a poverty reduction strategy. We did this because Ontario Works (OW), as a “work first” program, is not meeting its stated objectives: it has failed as a program to provide income supports effectively, and it has failed as a program to promote labour market attachment. Ontario Works in particular undermines the values and policy framework of Ontario’s Poverty Reduction Act, and Poverty Reduction Strategy. While the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) certainly needs improvement, it is OW that needs transformation.

Key Messages from the ‘Bringing in Women’s Voices’ Project

July 2011 | ISAC and Ontario Campaign 2000

The ‘Bringing in Women’s Voices’ project, initiated by Ontario Campaign 2000 and the Income Security Advocacy Centre (ISAC) has the goal of ensuring that the voices of low-income women (especially lone mothers) are heard in the public discussion of economic security issues that affect their daily lives, including the Social Assistance Review.

Principles Behind Poverty Reduction

July 2011 | ISAC

This document lists some of the major principles and commitments that have been articulated by government in the Poverty Reduction Strategy, the Poverty Reduction Act, and the Terms of Reference for the Commission for the Review of Social Assistance in Ontario.

Facilitator’s Guide for a Workshop on the Social Assistance Review

July 2011 | ODSP Action Coalition

Interested in organizing in your community around Ontario’s Social Assistance Review this summer? Not sure where to begin or want some support? You’re not alone! That’s why the ODSP Action Coalition, with support from the Income Security Advocacy Centre (ISAC) and the Schizophrenia Society of Ontario, have developed a Facilitator’s Guide for a workshop on the Social Assistance Review.

Overview of International Welfare to Work Models

July 2011 | ISAC

This report summarizes the presentations and discussion from the IPPR’s Welfare to Work symposium held in London, England in March 2011. This conference was an important contribution to ISAC’s ongoing research into policy recommendations for improvements to Ontario Works and ODSP within the context of the provincial government’s Review of Social Assistance in Ontario. [...] One of the most crucial messages taken from the symposium, however, is that the “work first” approach, pioneered in the 1980s and 1990s by governments anxious to move people off welfare caseloads and into the labour market, has had very limited success and has created a number of other problems that must now be addressed.

Organizing for the Social Assistance Review

July 2011 | ISAC and SCSA

This workshop by the Income Security Advocacy Centre (ISAC) and the Steering Committee on Social Assistance (SCSA) provides an early analysis of issues in the Social Assistance Review and discusses organizing strategies with community legal clinic workers attending the annual meeting of OPICCO, the Ontario Project for Inter-Clinic Organizing. Videos from the workshop are below: [...]

Dignity, Adequacy, Inclusion: Rethinking the Ontario Disability Support Program

July 2011 | ODSP Action Coalition

If we were redesigning an income support program for persons with disabilities we would start from these principles:
- Persons with disabilities have the right to be treated with dignity;
- Income support levels should adequately support the needs of people with disabilities;
- The capacities of persons with disabilities to participate and contribute to economic and civic life should be recognized and nurtured; and,
- Provincial income support programs should be aligned with other programs and policies of government (provincial and federal), to the greatest extent possible and without disadvantaging the people they are intended to serve.

Commission’s Consultation Calendar

June 2011 | ISAC

The Commission for the Review of Social Assistance in Ontario will be travelling around the province talking to people in eleven communities. The chart below shows the communities the Commission will be visiting, the date of their visit, and who you can contact for more information. We will update this calendar as more information becomes [...]

Income Delivery Architecture: Where Does Your Cheque Come From?

June 2011 | ISAC and SAAC

Several proposals have been made in the last few years about how to change the way income supports are delivered to people in Ontario. Why are people proposing a different “delivery architecture”? What problems would a different system help to resolve? What are some of the options for different kinds of systems? What do they look like, and how would they work?

Transforming Ontario Works: An Information Symposium

May 2011 | ISAC and SAAC

Many people in Ontario agree that Ontario Works needs to be fixed. One of the ways it could be fixed is to give people more help to get a job, so they can get out of poverty and the trap of social isolation. Some people call this fix ‘opportunity planning’. Others call it ‘human capital development’, or a ‘personalized [...]

Gender Equity & the Review

May 2011 |

Women – and especially women from racialized groups – experience poverty differently from other people, and have particular concerns that should be addressed in the course of the Social Assistance Review. In November 2011, a group of women wrote to Minister Meilleur and Minister Broten encouraging them to ensure that Ontario’s review of social assistance [...]

“Tell Your Story”: The Online Stories of OW and ODSP Recipients

February 2011 | ISAC

These are powerful stories, interwoven with themes of fear and desperation, of shame and frustration, of dignity and resilience. The stories raise the need for more appropriate education and training, for more sensible treatment of income, and for rules that are easy to understand and designed to encourage people rather than break their spirits. They highlight the punitive nature of the current social assistance system, and the need to break down the systemic barriers that keep people trapped in poverty.

From ‘Social Assistance Review’ to ‘Income Security Review’: Why it Matters for Low-Income Ontarians

September 2010 | Income Security Advocacy Centre

The Social Assistance Review Advisory Council issued a report on June 14, 2010. In this report, the Council calls on the provincial government to conduct an Ontario Income Security Review.
The Council’s report is important, because it gives the government a roadmap for how to review social assistance and other income security programs in Ontario. But it’s also important because it expands the focus of the discussion.

Rethinking the role of Social Assistance within a Poverty Reduction Strategy

July 2008 | Income Security Advocacy Centre

It’s time for a paradigm shift in how we think about social assistance, its objectives and its role. Social assistance programs must incorporate an explicit objective to move people out of poverty, by offering meaningful support opportunities for those who can work and ensuring that those who cannot are able to live with dignity.

“If it’s Still Broke, Fix It”

July 2008 | Income Security Advocacy Centre ODSP Action Coalition

We strongly believe that a system that has been documented to be broken needs to be fixed. This government’s commitment to poverty reduction gives us hope to believe that, finally, ODSP can become the income security system that it was intended to be – one that truly supports people with disabilities and gives them the means to get out of poverty, rather than continuing to condemn them to a life sentence of living in poverty and despair.

Racialized Communities Consultations Report

October 2011 | Colour of Poverty - Colour of Change

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 [...]

What stops us from working?

May 2011 | John Stapleton, Stephanie Procyk & Lindsay Kochen

This report, commissioned by The Dream Team, Houselink, and CAMH, makes the case for reform of ODSP practices that discourage recipients from working.

Working Better: Creating a High-Performing Labour Market in Ontario

May 2011 | Tom Zizys The Metcalf Foundation

This new report presents a fresh accounting of the state of Ontario’s labour market and calls for a strategic overhaul. Written by Tom Zizys, a Fellow at the Metcalf Foundation, the report takes a look back over the past thirty years, describing a profound alteration in our labour market system. A thorough historical review and present-day analysis underline a significant change in the thinking and practices that define how work is organized and managed. Zizys’ research indicates that the current system is not serving anyone.

Recommendations for an Ontario Income Security Review

June 2010 | Social Assistance Review Advisory Council

REPORT OF THE ONTARIO SOCIAL ASSISTANCE REVIEW ADVISORY COUNCIL

May 2010

There is deep and continuing dissatisfaction with the existing approach to social assistance from all quarters: community groups, business, labour, policy makers, the people who run the system and those who receive its benefits.

Ontario’s core social assistance programs – Ontario Works and the Ontario Disability Support Program – together with the other programs that make up Ontario’s income security system, continue to fall short in providing an economic safety net for individuals and families as well as promoting opportunity to ensure everyone can contribute to the long-term prosperity of the province.

Why Don't We Want the Poor to Own Anything?

October 2009 | John Stapleton Metcalf Foundation

We all tend to think things were tougher in the past. We walked to school in the snow. We made less money. Welfare was harder to get. Wasn’t it?

As a matter of fact, when we look at the asset limitations on the four programs in Ontario that still have them – Ontario Works, disability support, subsidized housing, and legal aid – the limits for eligibility are the harshest they have ever been.

The 'Ball' or the 'Bridge': The Stark Choice for Social Assistance Reform in Ontario

May 2009 | John Stapleton Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA)

Think about a small ball of string that you keep at home. Every time you have a loose piece of string, you wrap it around the ball and poke each end into the ball. You keep up the practice for years until you have an unkempt ball of string that is as big as a basketball. In your mind’s eye, think of taking that large ball of string and immersing in a large vat of crazy glue. Take it out and let it dry until it is hard. Then think of handing it to a friend and saying “Your job is now to unravel the ball”.

A Blueprint for Economic Stimulus and Poverty Reduction in Ontario

February 2009 | Sheila Block, OFL 25 in 5 Network for Poverty Reduction

As the economic crisis deepens in Ontario and the provincial government prepares to release its 2009 Budget, 25 in 5 has released a plan to kick start the economy while reducing poverty at the same time. A Blueprint for Economic Stimulus and Poverty Reduction in Ontario – the result of consultations in 30 communities across Ontario – recommends investments that will reduce child poverty in Ontario by close to 20% while simultaneously providing a much needed boost to the province’s faltering economy.

A Housing Benefit for Ontario: One Housing Solution for a Poverty Reduction Strategy

November 2008 | FRHPO, ONPHA, GTAA, DBFB, Metcalf, Atkinson

Hundreds of thousands of poor people in Ontario – whether they work or receive social assistance – spend more than half their income on shelter. This is a proposal to address this feature of poverty in Ontario by designing a new housing benefit. A broad coalition from the rental housing industry, the non-profit housing sector, the community-based sector, as well as two private foundations, came together to develop these ideas.

Disability Should Not be a Life Sentence to Poverty

July 2008 | ODSP Action Coalition

It’s time to think again about the real impacts that ODSP has on real people. It’s time to think about how ODSP could be improved – and how much real peoples’ lives would improve as a result. This document outlines the ODSP Action Coalition’s initial recommendations for making ODSP a program that actually meets the challenge of providing supports for people with disabilities in Ontario.

Why is it so tough to get ahead?

November 2007 | John Stapleton Metcalf Foundation

We cannot claim to have people-centred government policies. Not when an 18 year old, lone parent refugee is considered to be an adult under four policies, a child under two, a student under a third policy, a dependent adult under two others, a non-resident under two, and a legal resident of Canada under four more. And as far as government is concerned, it is her job to sort all this out.

Towards a New Architecture for Canada’s Adult Benefits

June 2006 | Ken Battle, Michael Mendelson and Sherri Torjman Caledon Institute of Social Policy

Canada must modernize its social security system to meet the heavy demands of our changing economy, society and political system. Conceived in the 1930s and 1940s and built largely in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, our social programs require radical rethinking, reconstruction and (because some parts were never built) construction: We need a new ‘architecture’ of social policy for the 21st century.

What Next in Welfare Reform?

April 2006 | Dean Herd, PhD Toronto Social Services

Recent years have seen a new consensus emerge around welfare reforms…. This report highlights a number of these “next steps” in welfare reform which reflect the types of services and supports necessary to move clients away from unemployment and poverty.

From Welfare to Work in Ontario: Still the Road Less Travelled

September 2005 | TD Economics

A few years ago, TD Bank Financial Group laid out a goal for Canadians: to raise the country’s standard of living above U.S. levels within 15 years. In 2002, the bank hosted the TD Forum on Canada’s Standard of Living, which brought together Canadians from all walks of life to develop practical suggestions for how to translate the standard of living challenge into reality. And, in support of that goal, TD Economics has produced a series of reports on the issue, focusing on the needs of Canada’s urban areas – the locus of economic activity and population growth in the country, and the main battleground where the standard of living challenge will be won or lost.

Social Assistance in the New Economy

December 2002 | Social Assistance in the New Economy (SANE)

The Social Assistance in the New Economy (SANE) project, established in 2002, is a multi-year, multi-disciplinary inquiry into the changing nature of social assistance in Ontario and its relation to precarious employment and health in a globalizing economy.