Ford’s reversals just the start
Editorial, Toronto Star4 Oct 2019

For the first year or so of his government, Ontario Premier Doug Ford seemed happy to run around like a bull in a china shop.
No matter the policy or program, if the former Liberal government had a hand in it, he was determined to break it. No matter the chaos that followed, particularly in the lives of poor and vulnerable Ontarians who rely on the provincial programs he was so keen to upend.
More recently, Ford’s china shop routine has been replaced by his cabinet ministers running along with brooms, dust pans and big vats of glue trying to put much of this mess back together again.
The government has already reversed funding cuts to everything from public health to autism services to a Frenchlanguage university. Now, in two more major moves, the government is reversing course on its changes to social assistance and cuts to children’s aid societies.
The province is reinstating the $67-million Transition Child Benefit, which helps some families feed and clothe their children. The government is also scrapping the changes it made that would have reduced how much someone on welfare can earn through a part-time job before getting kicked off the system.
(It’s still unclear if the government has decided to reverse course on its truly terrible plan to alter the definition of disability for those receiving benefits under the provincial support program, which will force more people into even deeper poverty on welfare.)
The Ford government has also cancelled its $28-million budget cut to children’s aid societies. Indeed, it’s topping up provincial transfers by $23 million. But, when all the complicated budgeting calculations are complete, the association that represents Ontario’s societies says those agencies aren’t really any better off.
Doing no greater harm is certainly better than making things worse. But these government reversals just mean everyone is back to where they were before. And that’s not much cause for celebration.
Ontario’s social assistance system keeps nearly one million people living in abject poverty. It offers far too few pathways out of it. And the government has not reversed some of its other changes that have made decent low-skill jobs even harder to find. Ford kept Ontario’s minimum wage from rising to $15 an hour, as it was scheduled to do, and rolled back labour reforms designed to improve the lot of workers who need the most protection.
So things may not be getting worse, but they’re also not improving as they should be.
And, of course, there still may be another shoe to drop with the government promising to, yet again, conduct a broad review of Ontario’s social assistance system.
Let’s hope it’s not a repeat of the one led by the former minister, Lisa MacLeod.
During that one, people receiving welfare were told to feel lucky that the “compassionate” province let them have about $10 more a month, half the increase scheduled under the previous government.
Now, according to the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services, the new minister, Todd Smith, and associate minister Jill Dunlop think their “first priority is to listen and learn.”
To think what grief might have been avoided if that had been the Ford government’s first instinct and not one that took months of chaos, disastrous governing and declining popularity to arrive at.
But, at least for now, nearly a million Ontarians struggling to get by on cheques that are clearly inadequate given the costs of food and rent, and children’s aid societies struggling to care for some of this province’s most vulnerable people are back to their regular level of despair
And, by the standards of Ford’s Progressive Conservatives, that actually counts as a win.
How depressing is that?