Feedback Submission on

“Income Security: A Roadmap for Change”

to the Minister of Community and Social Services

December 15, 2017

Income Security Advocacy Centre (ISAC)

and the Ontario Community Legal Clinic System’s

Steering Committee on Social Assistance

1500 – 55 University Avenue

Toronto, ON M5J 2H7

Steering Committee on Social Assistance

Representing Ontario Community Legal Clinics

advocating on social assistance issues

1

Thank you for the opportunity to providefeedback on the recommendations of the “Income Security: A Roadmap for Change” report. Please accept this as a joint submission from the Income Security Advocacy Centre and the Ontario community legal clinic system’s Steering Committee on Social Assistance.

The Roadmap is the first report in 30 years that recommends major investments in and improvements to income security programs that affect the lives of hundreds of thousands of low-income people in Ontario. It reflects a long-overdue paradigm shift in approach to the provision of income supports and other services to low-income people in Ontario.

We urge government to embrace and endorse the Roadmap’s vision for change and to immediately begin implementation of its important recommendations for action. We also urge government to make a strong commitment to the plan for change by making significant investments in Budget 2018. Our specific feedback and recommendations are below.

The Income Security Advocacy Centre (ISAC)

The Income Security Advocacy Centre is a provincially incorporated specialty legal clinic funded by Legal Aid Ontario to advance the rights, interests and systemic concerns of low-income Ontarians with respect to income security and employment. Founded in 2001, we are the only legal clinic in Ontario wholly devoted to systemic advocacy on income security issues. We carry out our law reform mandate through test case litigation, policy advocacy, community development and public education.

We are governed by a community Board of Directors representative of all regions of Ontario and composed of low-income individuals, advocates with particular expertise in issues of income security and poverty, and academics working in this policy area. Our fifteen Board members include legal clinic caseworkers and people who identify as low-income, with representation from Indigenous communities, racialized communities, people with disabilities and recipients of income support benefit programs.

We work closely with theSteering Committee on Social Assistance, as well as with sixty local legal clinics who work every day with the challenges faced by low-income people relying on Ontario’s income security programs. We also work in coalition with other advocacy groupsandorganizations. Our analysis and recommendations are informed by ongoing consultation with our partners.

As you know, ISAC’s Director of Advocacy & Legal Services, Mary Marrone, was a member of one of the three working groups that contributed to the Roadmap. ISAC has been working toward transformation of Ontario’s social assistance programs and reform in income security for more than ten years.

The Steering Committee on Social Assistance

The Steering Committee on Social Assistance is a provincial inter-clinic organization representing social assistance advocates in Ontario community legal clinics. The Steering Committee has a representative structure made up of members from each region of the community legal clinic system in Ontario. It has a mandate to undertake direct advocacy with government on social assistance issues, to assist legal clinics with and coordinate clinic law reform activities, and to share information and resources relating to clinic practice on social assistance issues. The Steering Committee’s sub-committees meet regularly with government and with the Social Benefits Tribunal on a number of issues of common concern around a variety of policy-related issues. ISAC and the Steering Committee have worked together on many systemic issues.

The Problem: A flawed and inadequate income security system

The Roadmap clearly outlines the problems associated with poverty and income insecurity in Ontario, for low-income people, their families and communities, the economy, and society at large. It provides important information on increasing labour market precarity, the growing gap between income and the ability to pay for essential needs, decreased economic mobility, an increase in the incidence of disability and its social and economic impacts, negative impacts of poverty on health and well being, and entrenched inequity due to systemic racism and discrimination.

We would highlight the Roadmap’s discussion of the current state of Ontario’s income security system, which is based on outmoded thinking about who and what is responsible for the creation and maintenance of poverty and how it operates in people’s lives, and on outdated models of service delivery and program administration. The social assistance system, for example, was designed in the late 1990s to be deliberately inadequate, punitive and coercive. Ontario Works presumes that everyone is employment ready, and doesn’t recognize barriers to employment such as caregiving, racism, trauma, family violence and the many other factors that leave people economically vulnerable and socially isolated. ODSP is very difficult to access.No support is provided to people applying for ODSP, which requires completion of a lengthy application package and verification of disability by often numerous medical professionals. People can spend upwards of two years proving their disability, given the difficult initial application process and the very common situation of denial, internal review, and appeal to the Social Benefits Tribunal.This lengthy and alienating process damages self-esteem, makes people sicker, and increases their distance from the labour market, undermining their ability to enter or re-enter the workforce. And neither OW nor ODSPprovides adequate services to support people’sindividual ambitions and goals, whether those goals are related to work or to other kinds of activities.

Further,the current system of income security benefits for low-income working people in Ontario reflects a time when the labour market could be largely depended on to provide adequate, family-supporting incomes, with steady, full-time employment and extended medical benefits, an employment insurance system that worked to fill in gaps in work, and a workers’ compensation system that would respond adequately to work-related injury. This is simply no longer the reality for many workers in Ontario. Government has moved to meaningfully improve working conditions through Bill 148, which will have a positive impact on millions of Ontario workers. However, the reality is that many will still end up relying on social assistance because of failures in the current EI and WSIB systems. Those who don’t will still need help with health-related costs not covered by OHIP, the rising cost of housing, and other supports and services that are needed outside the social assistance system, as outlined in the Roadmap.

The problems with the current income security system for First Nations are embedded in the colonial relationship between governments and First Nations. Most importantly, the current income security system fails to recognize the sovereignty of First Nations over the design and delivery of social service programs. For example, First Nations administer Ontario Works but not ODSP by virtue of the 1965 social services cost-sharing agreement between Ontario and Canada, which excluded First Nations. This has created often insurmountable barriers to accessing ODSP for First Nations people with disabilities who live in reserve communities. And for Indigenous people who do not live on reserve, social assistance programs perpetuate the impact of colonization and systemic racism.

We stress that acknowledging and working to resolve the systemic problems faced by those disproportionately impacted by poverty – Indigenous peoples, women, people with disabilities, people from racialized communities, newcomers, and other historically disadvantaged groups – must be a driving force behind reforms being enacted in Ontario’s income security system. This is reflected in the report’s insistence that a “human rights-based equity lens” must be applied to all reforms being contemplated for Ontario’s income security system.

Why Act Now

Implementing the Roadmap’s recommendations has the potential to create better outcomes for all low-income people in Ontario by providing the right supports when and where they need them, in a manner that gives them dignity, recognizes their unique needs and respects their autonomy. With better outcomes, people will gain personal agency, feel a stronger sense of belonging, acceptance and recognition in their communities, and be better able to participate in the economy, in whatever ways they can. Better outcomes will have ripple effects in other areas, such as reducing high health care and justice system costs that result from persistent poverty, improved mental health, increased housing security, and a number of other personal, social and economic benefits.

The Roadmap aligns with and supports many other important policy prioritiesto whichthis government has committed. These include Ontario’s mental health and addictions strategy, the First Nations health strategy, First Nations reconciliation and self-governance, improving conditions for workers and particularly for the working poor through improvements to the employment standards and labour relations legislation, and, of course, Ontario’s Poverty Reduction Strategy. The goals of these and many other areas of government action won’t be meaningfully achieved without dealing with problems in Ontario’s income security system.

The reality is that even if government took no action, Ontario’s income security system would cost an additional $2 billion by 2020. But the system would continue to impoverish people, keep them in poor health, increase their distance from the labour market, make it harder for them to participate in their communities, and limit their options and opportunities to build a better life for themselves and their families. Now is the time to endorse the Roadmap and invest in transforming the system – it isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s the smart thing to do.

Vision and Guiding Principles

Of primary importance are the Roadmap’s vision statement and guiding principles. Together they constitute the basis for the paradigm shift that needs to occur in Ontario’s income security system. In order to move current programs away from their punitive, coercive,inadequate and insufficient character and towards a system that provides adequate incomes and is built on a culture of trust, collaboration and problem solving, reforms must align with the Roadmap’s vision and principles.

The Vision statement describes a system that puts people and their needs and rights at the centre. It speaks of a system that focuses on ensuring that people are able to reach the goals that they set for themselves, rather than those expected of them by government, through an approach that provides adequate incomes as well as comprehensive supports and services, with a particular emphasis on recognizing and meeting the unique needs of Indigenous peoples. Treating people with the respect and dignity that they deserve is at the core of this vision. We urge government to commit to this vision for income security in Ontario.

The Roadmap’s guiding principles are the lens through which the implementation of reforms must take place. They must inform all steps along the path to transformation, to determine the details of what the future system will look like and how it will operate. The guiding principles are:

  • income adequacy;
  • the realization of rights;
  • reconciliation and respect for Indigenous peoples;
  • easy access to comprehensive, culturally safe and trauma-informed services;
  • economic and social inclusion;
  • equity and fairness, including the recognition of differential experience of poverty and the role of historical systemic disadvantage and structural racism in the creation of poverty;
  • sustainability of investment by government and respectful systems of accountability; and
  • ensuring all people are treated with respect and dignity.

A commitment to these guiding principles will ensure that future reforms will create the system envisioned in the vision statement, and the conditions in which low-income people in Ontario can live in health and dignity, and reach their full potential for both economic and social inclusion. We urge government to embrace and endorse the Roadmap’s vision and principles.

ActionAreas

The Roadmap’s Action Areas respond to the problems that are outlined above. We urge government to commit to the specific actions that are recommended.

Achieving income adequacyis a critically important recommendation to which government must commit. Making such a commitment is long overdue. The Roadmap’s recommendations for how government can make good on that commitment, through adopting a benchmark for adequacy (the Low Income Measure initially, with a 30% addition for people with disabilities), making necessary investments over time, and tracking progress through the introduction of a made-in-Ontario Market Basket Measure, are more than achievable.

Engaging the whole income security systemthrough the provision of benefits outside social assistance willhelp all low-income workers in Ontario.The Roadmap recommends new supports that will provide low-income workers with extended health coverage andallow them to better afford the rising cost of housing. The Roadmap also recommends a number of steps to provide better supports for children, including those in the child protection system. In addition, the Roadmap highlights the need to work with the federal government to improve and enhance the Working Income Tax Benefit, which is even more achievable now given the recent federal commitment of an additional $500 million for the WITB starting in 2019. And, given the importance of the growing quantum of child benefits in terms of reaching and maintaining income adequacy for families with children, the Roadmap recommends improving access to child benefits for parents with precarious immigration status, as well as a better dispute resolution process for benefits that are delivered through the income tax system. Together, these steps will respond to growing labour market precarity in a way that is appropriate and aligns with the government’s goal of creating more opportunity and security for workers through improvements in the Fair Workplaces and Better Jobs Act.

Transforming social assistanceas recommended in the Roadmapwill require removing punitive sanctions that endanger the health and well-being of low-income people who are already struggling day-to-day, and realigning the role of the caseworker with the goals of problem-solving and collaboration. It will mean giving people effective access to financial supports, treating them with respect and dignity, giving them personal choice and more opportunities, and providing the services they need to move ahead in their lives in ways that make sense for them. It will mean making sure that accessing help is not seen as a personal failure, but rather as an opportunity for the social safety net to respond to individual needsin a meaningful way. It will mean re-orienting social assistance to respond to the unique needs and experiences of Indigenous peoples, which includesensuring that both social inclusion and economic engagement become stated goals of the programs, that a wide range of services be made available to support these goals, and that the programs focus on ensuring the physical, spiritual, mental and emotional well-being of the individual, family and community. Transforming social assistance will require a new legislative framework, which will set the foundation for a culture of trust, collaboration and problem solving.

The Roadmap also recommends that ODSP be continued and strengthened as a distinct and separate program for people with disabilities, informed by their rights under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Maintaining the current definition is critically important, given that the definition considers disability in the context of the whole person. Providing people with disabilities the supports and accommodations they need to apply for ODSP benefits, and continuing to work with stakeholders to improve the application process and decision-making in the Ministry, are cornerstones of improvements to ODSP. The Roadmap’s recommendation to move to an “assured income”program for people with disabilities will reorient the system away from a welfare model and toward a new regime that has the potential to improve life for all low-income people with disabilities in Ontario. We agree that such a program must be co-designed through an inclusive process that engages people with a range of disabilities, as exemplified in the disability rights movement slogan “nothing about us without us”, as well as experienced advocates and caseworkers.