Ontario's Poverty Reduction Strategy

Recently The Ontario Liberal Party introduced the "Child Poverty Reduction Strategy" which boasts a twenty-five percent reduction in child poverty over a period of five years. This strategy, as the name infers, applies mostly to children and families, but does nothing to address those in poverty who do not have children. This may be a moot point however as the Ontario government has pointed out that this strategy, limited in scope as it is, will still fail under the current economic conditions. The strategy hinges on the belief that the parents of poverty stricken children will be able to find new jobs, and being in a recession there are fewer and fewer of those to be had.

What we need in Ontario is a real plan to do something about poverty. We don't need a watered down "strategy" with an uplifting name which is doomed to failure. We need a plan which will help eliminate poverty in our generation, not the next. What we need is a plan which will provide us with affordable housing in decent condition and more public shelters. We don't need to just increase the minimum wage, but refine its definition. The minimum wage needs to be dynamic and increase with inflation rates. We need to stop treating the homeless like criminals and repeal laws like the Safe Streets Act which do just that.

A Poverty Reduction Strategy designed to alleviate poverty in decades is a flawed endeavour. We need to focus on eliminating poverty now and we can't wait however many years for this economy to pick up to do it. We're about to be faced with even larger amounts of people living in poverty, even larger amounts of people who will require social assistance. We need to meet the needs of these people and ensure that we all have the essentials we need to survive; shelter, clean water and food. This recession simply stresses the need for social services that this province has been neglecting for years. We need a plan to address all poverty in this province and we need to follow through on it as soon as we possibly can.