and here we go again, the ontario government breaking the budgit.

So as I posted
yesterday
I’m dealing with more financial problems and could write a friggen book about it.
Now, we see the ontario government has decided that
causing even more upheavel
is the order of the day.

Carey Lynn Asselstine, who brought daughter Natalie to Queen’s Park on Tuesday, expressed disappointment the Ontario budget did not include new money to address rising child-care fees.

RENE JOHNSTON/TORONTO STAR
Laurie Monsebraaten
Social Justice Reporter
For Toronto welfare recipient Tracy Mead, the one per cent increase in social assistance announced in Tuesday’s provincial budget was a “slap in the face.”

“They say they are giving us a raise, but it’s not. It is barely keeping up with the cost of living,” says the 45-year-old woman who was forced to give up her overnight security job three years ago due to ill health.

About 550,000 Ontarians on social assistance, including about 260,000 on Ontario Works and 290,000 on the Ontario Disability Support Program are expected to receive the increase next fall, according to the budget.

The meagre increase amounts to an extra $6 for Mead who now gets the maximum $592 a month on Ontario Works. A single person on the Ontario Disability Support Program who currently receives up to $1,053 per month will get an additional $11.

Mead is one of thousands of Ontarians who have been urging Queen’s Park to “put food in the budget” by introducing a $100 monthly healthy food supplement for people on welfare.

The lack of new measures to help the 1.3 million Ontarians living in poverty was “disappointing,” for anti-poverty activist and former welfare recipient Mike Creek.

However, he said activists are grateful the province earlier this month reversed its 2010 budget decision to scrap the Special Diet Allowance of up to $250 per month for people on welfare with food-related health issues.

Low- to moderate-income families and single people will get help to better manage household budgets through a consolidation of three quarterly tax credits into a single monthly benefit, the budget said.

The new Ontario Trillium Benefit, worth about $2.4 billion annually, combines the Ontario Sales Tax Credit, the Ontario Energy and Property Tax Credit and the Northern Energy Credit.


The new monthly benefit will take effect in July 2012.

Eligibility for the credits remains the same, but it will “smooth out the bumpy quarterly payments” into a single monthly benefit to be delivered by cheque or bank deposit, said a provincial official.

For example, a single parent with one child and a net income of $20,000, paying $629 per month in rent, would see eight payments totalling $936 annually converted to a monthly benefit of $78.

A senior couple with a net household income of $35,000, paying $1,200 per month in rent, would receive $82 per month under the scheme.

Social policy expert John Stapleton praised the new monthly payments as “the beginning of a core base benefit outside the welfare system for single people.”

About 530,000 low-income families with children under 18 already receive the monthly Ontario Child Benefit, worth up to $92 per month, per child.

Child care advocates were disappointed the budget did not include new money to address rising fees, service cuts and daycare closings as a result of chronic underfunding and the introduction of full-day kindergarten.

“There is a limit to how much a young family can afford to pay for child care,” said new mother Carey Lynn Asselstine, who brought her 4-month-old daughter Natalie to Queen’s Park Tuesday.

Asselstine, who will return to work in September, will be paying $60 a day or $15,000 annually for licensed child care.

“We want a high quality program, but my husband and I question whether we could ever afford to have a second child,” she said.

Now you people wonder why I want a job and the fuck off the government checks?
1% increase…. that’s maybe $10 if your lucky, and that’s pushing it.



Mirrored from shane and krista's rantings and musings..