By: Shannon Balla
On March 22, a bus filled with anti-poverty organizers from Ottawa will head to Toronto to join the mobilization against the Ontario Liberal Party (OLP) Convention. Activists are demanding an increase to social assistance rates and minimum wage. They claim that the current standards leave people in deep poverty, having to choose between shelter and food.
Organized by Poverty Makes Us Sick (PMUS) and the Raise the Rates Coalition, the Ottawa contingent of the mobilization is made up of poor people and their allies, including long-time activists, labour allies, front-line community workers, and first-time protesters.
Raise the Rates was launched by the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) and CUPE-Ontario, and is being supported in Ottawa by labour and community groups.
The core demands of the campaign are an immediate 55 per cent increase to the Ontario Works (OW) and the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) rates. This would return rates to the levels of funding in place before the Mike Harris government in Ontario. The campaign is also demanding an increase in the minimum wage to $14 indexed to inflation, and full restoration of the Special Diet Allowance and the Community Start-Up and Maintenance Benefit. It is also seeking to ensure there is no merger between OW and ODSP, as was proposed in a Liberal government 2012 Social Assistance Review Commission report.
On Feb. 5 PMUS and other local organizers held an inaugural action for the Raise the Rates campaign. The group briefly occupied the constituency office of Yasir Naqvi, Minister of Labour of Ontario, in solidarity with Toronto-based doctor Roland Wong. Wong’s license was suspended for professional misconduct because he was assisting people on social assistance gain additional access to the Special Diet Allowance.
PMUS organizer Ian Stumpf said “there are so many folks and organizations already making amazing contributions to the Raise the Rates campaign in Ottawa. I think we’ve arrived at the right time to, just maybe, offer a bit more structure and spark some new momentum.”
Stumpf added that “for many of us, these demands are a matter of life and death. Poverty Makes Us Sick looks forward to continuing to grow ties…It’s really important that that the Raise the Rates campaign is growing [because] so is the reach of the apparatus that oppresses us.”
In May, the Coalition will be holding a public launch in Ottawa, featuring guest speakers from OCAP and the UK-based organization Disabled People Against the Cuts. Recent policies adopted by the Cameron government in London have forced thousands of poor people living with disabilities into the labour force and resulted in many others having their benefits cut.
The Raise the Rates campaign identified the possible merger between OW and ODSP as one of the gravest threats facing poor people in Ontario.
This article first appeared in the Leveller Vol. 6, No. 6 (Mar/Apr 2014).
