Ontario Premier Doug Ford Stigmatizes Ontario Works/ODSP Recipients — Don’t We Deserve Better from a Premier?
My Letter to Premier Ford following Reporting by Jack Hauen:
June 28, 2023
TO: Premier Douglas Ford, MPP
Hon. Michael Parsa, Minister of Children, Community and Social Services
RE: Remarks at the Empire Club on June 19, 2023
Dear Premier and Minister Parsa,
The comments made at the Empire Club earlier this month were reprehensible, callous, and clearly demonstrated a lack of understanding about the people who receive assistance via Ontario Works or the Ontario Disability Support Programs. The vast majority are not people shirking work responsibilities or feigning disability. I encourage you to meet with those government staff persons seeing OW/ODSP clients each day, so you may better understand the average recipient’s life situation. I know a few personally. A failure to do so, especially after your remarks, frankly would demonstrate a lack of empathy or willingness to learn.
Per reporting by Jack Hauen, the majority of Ontario Works recipients are single parents. Many are described as leaving abusive relationships. One third are disabled waiting years for ODSP applications to be approved. If his reporting is not accurate, then you have a responsibility to explain the usual demographics of Ontario Works recipients. Are they really shirking work or is this just a popular talking point?
Waiting years for an ODSP application review, if accurate, requires Minister Parsa to follow up immediately. What is your government doing to ensure ODSP applications are more fairly and rapidly adjudicated? Years is not an acceptable wait time by any yardstick. ODSP is reserved for persons with severe disabilities who have exhausted nearly all their life savings and do not have eligibility through CPP Disability programs. Often these are individuals disabled early in their lives before making major contributions to CPP, without private or group disability insurance coverage, and have severe disabilities such as Multiple Sclerosis, Spinal Cord Injury, Schizophrenia, or Inflammatory Arthritis. When I became disabled early in my career as an Oncologist from a spinal cord injury, I learned of several physicians in receipt of ODSP benefits since they had failed to secure disability insurance and were disabled early in their careers. It can happen to anyone. Current ODSP benefits are 20–50% below Canada’s poverty level. So many years without cost of living adjustments have caused benefits to lag real living costs such that recipients are reliant on food banks. Many plead for donations on social media. This is nothing to take pride in: Ontarians deserve better. The large government surplus you have reported should be used to improve funding for ODSP and OW, given the high food inflation over the past few years. Please provide a food gift card program alternatively, if you are concerned about fraud. Give every single ODSP recipient a $250 food gift card each month from Loblaws or Metro or Sobeys with delivery included (since most recipients cannot afford transit after paying rent and utilities). Even such a gesture would still leave the most impacted recipients (single individuals) well below Canada’s poverty level.
We often employed the cancer centre pharmacy compassionate use fund (from local donations) to support ODSP/OW recipients whose medications were not funded via the Trillium program/Ontario Drug Benefits Formulary. That shouldn’t be necessary. Ontario Works/ODSP are not programs celebrated amongst its recipients — It’s a last resort.
We need more compassion, more empathy, less cruelty, and a willingness to learn about the social benefit programs in place. Comments made at the Empire club only establish a rationale for the failures of current social assistance programs and stoke unjustified suspicions of fraud. It also stigmatizes receipt of such benefits by the most vulnerable amongst us, such as single mothers leaving abusive relationships. I know you are capable of a more responsible dialogue and compassionate action. People with disabilities already have a terrible experience in Ontario. Please work to improve their condition.
Sincerely,
Christopher Leighton MD, FRCPC
