Ignoring The Needs of the Poor: the McGuinty budget

McGuinty has again brought down a budget that is supposed to help bring back up to par items that were cut during the Harris era. Left out of this in all of his budgets have been the cuts to social assistance.

When I began reading today about the budget I noticed a bit that newspapers seemed to be throwing in, as an aside sometimes, but not discussing. The paltry increase to social assistance recipients. Which when added to the cuts in the special diet program mean that the amount recipients can receive has gone down quite a bit, and not even kept up with inflation since McGuinty became premier. Not to mention that there were no increases for inflation in his first budget.

I believe in transit. It's cheaper and better for the environment and good transit means more equal access across a city for all citizens. But transit and infrastructure aren't the only things that need dealing with in Ontario.

An editorial from the Toronto Star does a good job of discussing one of weakness of the budget (it talks of others if you go and read the whole piece, but about half of the editorial is here.) That is the paltry 2% increase for social assistance recipients...especially when there is obviously money for other things. It's not that i don't believe in improvements to infrastructure, but it isn't the only program that needs repair after the years of the Harris government.

Editorial: Budget delivers on infrastructure

Mar. 24, 2006. 01:00 AM

...While Duncan deserves praise for starting to repair the infrastructure deficit, he still must address another deficit left behind by the previous Conservative government - the huge social deficit that has been borne entirely by Ontario's poorest residents.[emphasis mine]

For those living on social assistance, Duncan increased welfare benefits by just 2 per cent. While any hike is good, the small increase still leaves social assistance recipients struggling to pay for rent and food following the 21.6 per cent cut in 1995 by the former Tory government. As with the 3 per cent increase in last year's budget, this year's 2 per cent increase will just cover inflation, leaving the poor with no real increase in buying power.

At the same time, Duncan announced little in his budget for affordable housing, which requires a massive cash infusion around the province.

Since taking power in 2003, the Liberals under Premier Dalton McGuinty have systematically started to repair the damage caused by past Tory governments in health care, education and now infrastructure.

As McGuinty looks toward the next election in October 2007, the final big deficit he must tackle is social assistance, where the Liberals have only begun to address Harris-era cuts that hurt thousands of needy families.

At that point Duncan could truly claim that "the people we are privileged to serve are, one by one, being lifted up" after years of neglect.

To this I would add, the social assistance rates weren't increased to deal with inflation while the Harris government was in parliament (no surprise) had never increased the rates to keep up with inflation. Inflation can be really nice for governments (like the Harris government) which would have liked to cut social assistance even more. As well as minimum wage (which was not increased at all during while the Conservatives were in power in Ontario). Social housing has also been ignored by the McGuinty Government.

In an upcoming article I'll look at just how much inflation pulled out of social assistance over the years (including the McGuinty's paltry increases) as well as how the way the funding is set up makes the impact of inflation even larger. In fact McGuinty has brought in an overall cut to social assistance rates, in the way he cut the special diet available, in social assistance. P