Raise the Rates!
by Judy Koch

The Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) is waging a campaign to raise welfare rates in Ontario. OCAP has been fighting poverty since 1990 and is made up of unemployed and employed workers united in this cause. The Raise the Rates Campaign is asking for a 40 percent increase in welfare and disability benefits.

In 1995 the provincial Conservative government cut welfare rates by 21.6%, reducing the monthly income for a single person to $520. Since that time, both disabled people on Ontario Disability support and other social assistance recipients on Ontario Works have had no increase until this year.

This translates into a roughly 40% loss of spending power, which is hardly dented by the miserly 3% increase announced by the new provincial Liberal regime of Dalton McGuinty in its May 2004 budget.

There was a rally on April 17 in Toronto held outside the luxury condo of the Ontario Minister Responsible for Welfare, Sandra Pupatelo. The demonstration demanded that the Liberals honour their election campaign promise to raise the welfare rates.

On June 11, Raise the Rates campaigners demonstrated at a welfare office in downtown Toronto, while over 100 people protested at the Ontario Ministry of Labour to demand that workers who are owed back wages be paid. Some small firms shut down and then re-open under a different name to avoid paying what they owe their workers. Workers caught in this scheme, including immigrants from Iran and the Caribbean, addressed the crowd—among whom were representatives from the Ontario Federation of Labour and other union organizations.