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Social Planning Network of Ontario

Moving to a Poverty Free Ontario

The Social Planning Network of Ontario (SPNO) plans to launch an initiative to build cross-community support for a Poverty Free Ontario by the end of this decade.

Social planning councils have a long history since the 1930s of advocating for low income people, whether welfare recipients or working poor. In recent years, the SPNO and its organizational members have assumed a lead role in urging the Ontario Government to adopt a poverty reduction strategy for Ontario. Specifically,

In the summer-fall of 2007, SPNO mobilized cross-community support for poverty reduction in Ontario and released a report on “Ontario as the Child Poverty Centre of Canada”, which prompted Premier McGuinty prior to the October 2007 election to commit to the development of a poverty reduction strategy within one year of his Government’s re-election.
SPNO strengthened its cross-community mobilization on poverty reduction by developing a Policy Framework and Blueprint for Poverty Reduction and by conducting two tours of the province visiting 30 communities prior to the release of the Ontario Poverty Reduction Strategy in December 2008.
Since 2009, working with community leadership in Toronto and across the province, SPNO has focused on the Put Food in the Budget Campaign (PFIB), promoting the adoption of a benefit increase of $100 a month Healthy Food Supplement for all adults on OW and ODSP as the first step towards adequacy in benefit levels to enable all Ontarians to live with health and dignity.
Partnering with The Stop Community Food Centre and guided by the PFIB Steering Committee, the SPNO has provided organizing and field support for the use of the on-line Do the Math survey tool (9,000 completed) and has engaged 20 communities across the province in the Do the Math Challenge.

Root causes of inequality and poverty

Response to Toronto Star editorial

Re: Welfare Reform: Breaking the cycle of poverty, Editorial, Dec. 4

In her announcement of the social assistance review, Social Services Minister Madeleine Meilleur unfortunately refers to reform that will “empower low-income Ontarians, including social assistance recipients, to break out of the cycle of poverty,” which the Star picked up as the title of its lead editorial.

The notion of a “cycle of poverty” suggests poverty that is transmitted from generation to generation and implies something inherently deficient in poor people rather than placing a focus on basic living conditions, which are the root causes of inequality and poverty in our society.

It is misleading to suggest that intergenerational poverty is the primary source of poverty in Ontario and Canada. Research evidence is clear that, compared to the United States and even the United Kingdom, the rate of poverty passed from one generation to the next in Canada is very low.

The structural conditions that produce high rates of poverty are:

Income support programs that provide woefully inadequate benefits for those unable to work.
Wage levels that keep people in poverty and the lack of good jobs.
The lack of affordable housing and other social supports such as child care.

If governments would address these conditions with investments and action and not just long-term studies and plans, they could take credit for acting to end poverty rather than trying to explain it away in intergenerational terms.

Peter Clutterbuck, Social Planning Network of Ontario

People Rally to Put Food in the Budget

Tuesday, 16 November 2010 00:00

PFIB Rally Toronto, Ont. – Just hours before a report released yesterday showed food bank usage climbing to an all-time high across Canada, one hundred and fifty people attended a rally to Put Food in the Budget at the Wychwood Barns at 601 Christie St. in Toronto. Monday night’s crowd heard from some of the community leaders that completed the “Do the Math Challenge” and lived for a week on a diet similar to that of many people in Ontario receiving social assistance.

Fred Hahn, President of CUPE Ontario told the capacity crowd that taking the challenge had “strengthened our union’s solidarity,” with every Ontarian who lives with an inadequate diet. “The truth is there are low waged, part time or temporary workers, some of them union members, who also have to rely on food banks. When we build solidarity in our communities between those on social assistance, workers, church groups, and people concerned for fairness and social justice, politicians can no longer ignore poverty in our province.” Anglican Archbishop Colin Johnson said “This campaign has underscored for me the urgency of tackling the root causes of poverty. Many other Anglicans feel the same as me. Following their poverty diet, they are organizing meetings with their MPP, writing to their MPP, expressing their concern about the tragedy of widespread poverty and calling for action, starting with the $100 per month increase in social assistance.”