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Ontario Coalition Against Poverty is a direct action anti-poverty organization that fights for more shelter beds, social housing, and a raise in social assistance rates.
poverty, homelessness, housing, social assistance, ontario works, odsp, anti-poverty. ocap. ontario coalition against poverty, shelters,
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November 22, 2018 In Defeat Ford, Homelessness, Raise the Rates, Social Assistance

Response to Ford’s Social Assistance Reforms

Ford Government intensifies attack on Ontario’s poorest people

The social assistance reforms that the Ford Government announced today can well be described as the new Doug Ford Poor Laws. As expected, they’re making Ontario Works (OW) and the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) significantly more restrictive and precarious.

The basic intention is to refine the system as a tool to push people into the lowest paying and most exploitative jobs on offer. It is entirely in line with the attack they have already carried on the minimum wage, workers’ rights, and job protections. Forcing people off social assistance while depressing working conditions in the midst of a housing crisis won’t move people out of poverty but will make the Progressive Conservative’s bankrolling base of business executives and owners even richer.

The reforms will divide people on social assistance into those deemed the most severely disabled and those who must join the scramble for jobs. The kind of “compassion” that severely disabled can expect from this Government is made clear from the fact that the social services Minister, Lisa McLeod, would offer no comment on whether any increases in social assistance rates can be expected over the next three years.

Those presently on ODSP will be grand-parented into the new system but new eligibility rules will use the more narrow federal definition of disability. Many who could get onto ODSP under the existing rules will be forced to try to live on OW, including having to look for work even when they are too unwell to do so.

All those who are deemed capable of working will be expected to comply with “individual action plans” and the Government’s “Open for Business” website will draw the most unscrupulous employers directly into the process. Local municipalities will be encouraged to compete with each other in the development of punitive and intrusive practices designed to hound people into scrambling for the worst jobs. The door is certainly open to the privatization of delivery and services.

The government also signalled that supplementary benefits accessed by people on social assistance will be moved from being mandatory to discretionary. These benefits will likely differ from municipality to municipality. So we’ll be left with a patchwork of benefits with no access to the Social Benefits Tribunal to appeal denials. Outright elimination of particular existing benefits remains a possibility.

People on OW will only be able to earn $300 monthly without claw backs, up from the current $200, but less than the $400 it was supposed to go up to this December. Earnings above $300 will be subject to a 75% claw back, which is worse than the current 50%. The earning exemption for ODSP changes to $6000 annually, but is again subject to the increased 75% claw back beyond that limit.

Over the next eighteen months the full viciousness of the Doug Ford Poor Laws will emerge but it is already clear that, for the Tories, social assistance is a weapon in their war on the poor.

October 30, 2018 In Defeat Ford, Events, Social Assistance

Townhall on OW & ODSP Cuts

Wednesday, November 14 | 6pm-8pm | St.Luke’s Church (353 Sherbourne St.)
Dinner Provided. Wheelchair Accessible Space
Facebook Event

The Ford government is getting ready to announce a series of changes to social assistance. The announcement was originally due by November 8 but has been delayed to November 22. It is widely expected to introduce sweeping cuts to OW and ODSP.
 
Since coming to power, Doug Ford has already cut the rate increase to OW and ODSP in half and suspended a series of positive changes that were scheduled to come in this fall.
 
Join us to break the isolation and talk about how we’re going to fight back.
October 24, 2018 In Defeat Ford, Events, Homelessness, Ontario, Social Assistance

Stick It To Ford: Defend Our Communities

Saturday, November 17 | 1pm | Deco Labels & Tags (28 Greensboro Drive)
Lunch Provided. Register for Buses Here.
Facebook Event

On November 17, the Ford Conservatives will further their gruesome vision for Ontario at their party convention. Their government “for the (rich) people” has already attacked social assistance, job protections, minimum wage, healthcare, education, and environmental safeguards. They’re not finished. In two weeks, they’ll announce a series of sweeping cuts to Ontario Works and Ontario Disability Support Program.

Ford’s vision for Ontario is a grim one for ordinary people: where we are paid less but must pay more for services; where business executives and owners get richer by forcing the rest of us to work with fewer job and unemployment protections; where the rich unite in their quest to exploit and pit the rest of us against each other in a struggle to survive.

On November 17, we will demonstrate that attempts to “open Ontario for business” on this basis will be blocked. To make sure Ford gets the message, we’ll start with an action at Ford’s own business: Deco Labels and Tags.

It’s time to defend our communities. Join us.

October 12, 2018 In Defeat Ford, Events, Homelessness, Speaking Series

Gathering Forces: Fighting Austerity Beyond Elections

Thursday, October 18 | 6pm – 8pm | CRC, 40 Oak St.
[Free event with meal, childcare, wheelchair access and tokens]
Facebook event | Download Flyer | Audio Archive

With the elections rigged in favour of the wealthy, the real power to successfully stop
cut backs rests with social movements. With dramatic cuts to social assistance, min wage, healthcare, transit, and more expected, it’s time to gather our forces.

So come hear from movements that are fighting to defend our people.

Speakers: John Clarke (OCAP), Anna Willats (RadTO & thecitywefightfor initiative), Em Carl (Toronto Overdose Prevention Society), Andrew Peters (No One Is Illegal-Toronto), Edgar Godoy (Ontario Health Coalition), and Anna Lermer (TTCRiders).

John Clarke is an organizer with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, a poor people’s direct-action organization fighting to win since 1990.
Anna Willats is member of RadTO, which just launched the visionary thecitywefightfor platform for the kind of city we must fight to build, regardless of who wins the municipal elections.
Em Carl is a member of the Toronto Overdose Prevention Society, which has been engaged in a gutsy and lifesaving fight to address the overdose crisis.
Andrew Peters is a member of No One Is Illegal-Toronto – an immigrant justice organization that is mobilizing to block attempts by white supremacists Steve Bannon and David Frum to speak in Toronto.
Egdar Godoy is the campaigns manager at the Ontario Health Coalition, which is organizing a province-wide mobilization at Queens Park next week.
 
Anna Lermer is with the TTCRiders – an organization fighting to expand access to transit and stop its privatization.

 

The monthly Speakers Series is where we gather to discuss issues that are critical to the success of poor people’s movements. It’s where we build our capacity to fight to win. 

September 20, 2018 In 214-230 Sherbourne, Events, Gentrification, Homelessness

Rally: Expropriate 214-230 Sherbourne!

Download Flyer | Download Poster | Facebook Event

214 – 230 Sherbourne are 7 adjacent properties located at the southwest corner of Dundas and Sherbourne. For at least 50 years, three big houses on this lot provided housing for poor people. About 10 years ago, two of the houses were demolished, leaving just one 30-room house whose residents were then pushed out.

A decade later the lot remains empty and the house vacant. Meanwhile, the church across from it struggles to shelter the escalating numbers of people dumped on the streets by Toronto’s deadly housing crisis. The neighbourhood desperately needs housing that poor people can afford. So when the properties were listed for sale earlier this year, OCAP mobilized to get the City to purchase them. But the owners took the properties off the market, preferring to sell to condo developers willing to pay more than the already inflated market price.

If the owners won’t sell to the City, the City must take the properties over – expropriate them – and build social housing. The owners still get paid but the end result is housing for poor people, and not another gentrifying condo. 27 organizations have signed an open letter calling on the City to expropriate. It’s time.

Join us on October 11, and let’s fight to win!

September 14, 2018 In Defeat Ford, Solidarity Actions

Support the Fight for $15 and Fairness in Ontario this Saturday!

The Fight for $15 and Fairness campaign won a major victory in the fall of 2017 with the introduction of Bill 148: an immediate jump in minimum wage to $14/hr with a further increase to $15/hour scheduled in January 2019, paid sick days, equal pay for equal work provisions for contract and temp workers, and fairer scheduling rules, to name just a few gains. Taken together, these gains represent the most significant progress for low-wage workers in this province in decades.

However, the Ford Conservatives are set on repealing many of these gains, including blocking the raising of the minimum wage to $15. It is no coincidence that this attack on workers is progressing alongside the recently announced cuts to social assistance rates and the additional sweeping changes to OW and ODSP expected later this fall.

How better to roll out the red carpet for big business exploitation than to keep minimum wage workers and those on social assistance as poor and precarious as possible. Corporations and their executives make massive profits on the backs of poor workers – take for example Galen Weston Jr., the CEO of LoBlaws, who has a net worth of $8.82 billion. Unsurprisingly, he is also one of the people leading the charge against the minimum wage increase.

We need to be organizing with all we’ve got to defeat Ford’s cuts to welfare and workers’ rights. The Fight for $15 & Fairness is organizing a day of action this Saturday, September 15 with actions across Ontario, and we encourage everyone to join in. Details can be found on their website here.

September 7, 2018 In Events, Gentrification, Homelessness, Speaking Series

Speakers Series: Rent Strikes, Expropriations & More: Resisting Gentrification

Rent Strikes, Expropriations & More: Resisting Gentrification
Thursday, September 20 | 6pm – 8pm | CRC, 40 Oak St.
[Free event with meal, childcare, wheelchair access and tokens]
Facebook event | Download Flyer | Audio Archive

Bringing together struggles against gentrification unfolding in neighbourhoods in Toronto and Hamilton, this Speakers Series will profile successful models of resistance people are using to push back and win. Join us!

Speakers: Julia Manzo, Linda Habibi, Bjarke Risager, , and Gaetan Heroux

Julia Manzo is a resident of Parkdale, and one of the organizers of the successful rent strike in Parkdale last year. She is also a member of Parkdale Organize.

Linda Habibi is a tenant and strike captain in the Stoney Creek Towers in Hamilton, where tenants are currently on a rent strike. Details about their rent strike can be found here: facebook.com/hamiltontenantssolidarity/ and here: hamiltontenantssolidarity.ca

Bjarke Risager is an organizer with the Hamilton Tenants Solidarity Network.

Gaetan Heroux is a member of OCAP and has worked and fought for housing in the downtown east end of Toronto for over three decades.

The monthly Speakers Series is where we gather to discuss issues that are critical to the success of poor people’s movements. It’s where we build our capacity to fight to win. 

July 31, 2018 In Defeat Ford, Disability, Raise the Rates, Statements

Response to the Ford Governments Changes to Social Assistance

The Provincial Conservative government of Doug Ford announced three significant changes to social assistance today:

  1. They are cutting in half the 3% increase in social assistance rates scheduled to come into effect in September this year. Progressive changes to regulations scheduled to be implemented this fall have also been “paused,” and will likely be canceled.
  2. The 3 year basic income pilot program, which started last year, is now being canceled and “wound down.”
  3. A series of sweeping changes to social assistance are currently under review and will be announced within the next 100 days.

We have three things to say in response:

  1. The scheduled 3% increase passed by the Liberals was woefully inadequate, but it would have marked the second time in almost a quarter century that social assistance income would have risen above the rate of inflation. Instead, the 1.5% cut will yet again plunge social assistance below the rate of inflation, making social assistance recipients even poorer.
  2. We have been critical of the Basic Income pilot project, but canceling the pilot a year after it was underway demonstrates a reckless disregard for the lives of nearly 4000 people on the pilot who planned their lives on the assurance of having a set income for 3 years, and who must now scramble.
  3. The sweeping changes to social assistance that are being ominously hinted at are likely to be the same brand of ruthless right-wing reforms we saw under Mike Harris. We can expect dramatic restructuring of social assistance that cuts supports, forces those on social assistance, including disabled people, into the most exploitative jobs, and increases punitive surveillance and “fraud” crackdowns of the poorest people in this province.

Clearly, this is the war on the poor component of the Doug Ford agenda of neoliberal austerity. The Tories are forging a punishing regime of social abandonment that creates misery and utter desperation. It is the cutting edge of their attack and a compelling reason why we must unite and build a movement to defeat this Government and all it stands for.