The following are remarks by Shelley Martel, MPP for Nickel Belt and NDP Critic for Community, Family and Children's Services, in the Ontario Legislature on May 10, 2001 for the debate on a Resolution during Private Members’ Public Business.
WORKFARE
Mr Bart Maves (Niagara Falls): I move that in the opinion of this House the Ministry of Community, Family and Children's Services must fulfill the Blueprint commitment to move forward with the expansion of the Ontario work-for-welfare initiative by having every ministry, government agency, board and commission take a number of workfare placements. As promised during the 1999 campaign, the work-for-welfare system should also be expanded by encouraging municipalities to undertake more workfare programs. Remarks during Debate –
Ms Shelley Martel (Nickel Belt): Let me begin by saying that it won't come as a surprise to anyone that New Democrats will not be supporting this resolution, because it seeks to expand what is really a flawed and punitive program into other workplaces with absolutely no guarantee that workfare is indeed leading to long-term, gainful employment for workfare recipients and no guarantee that the public sector and the private sector, because the government has extended workfare to the private sector, aren't in fact getting rid of, shedding, full-time employees in order to cash in on free labour of workfare recipients. There is no support for those parents who actually need adequate child care as part and parcel of taking on their placement. Finally, there is no guarantee, after the bribes that the government set out for municipalities, that this year municipalities are not going to be hit with a huge cost directly as a result of the call centres that this government has set up for Ontario Works.
Let me deal with each of these points in turn.
First, with respect to there being no guarantee that workfare is leading to gainful employment, I remember my former colleague from Algoma, Bud Wildman, standing in this House just after workfare had been implemented in Algoma to point out that the first workfare project in Algoma was one where workfare recipients were painting picnic tables during the summer. There is nothing long-term about that placement; it's not going to lead to long-term, gainful employment. The question is, how many other placements like that exist that workfare recipients are having to deal with?
I remember one of the first and probably very embarrassing -- I use that word very specifically -- workfare projects in my own community, in the same summer as the government was trying to ram through legislation to forbid workfare recipients from being part of trade unions. That project was re-greening work that used to be done by summer students, funded through the federal government and the former UIC. Those summer students would be put all around our community. They would be up on the rocks in our community spreading lime to try and deal with some of the acid in the soil, so that we could actually recapture some of the soil to grow something in our community. This is the legacy left us from two mining companies that used to roast their ore outdoors.
That was a federal program for 18-year-olds that had its funding from the federal government cut off, and the municipality then stuck workfare recipients into it -- nothing gainful about that employment, nothing long-term about that employment. It was a quick fix to throw people into when some other money from some other level of government got cut off, and it was embarrassing. I think it's interesting that the government so cleverly ties its workfare numbers into its numbers of how many people are coming off the social assistance rolls. Wouldn't it be interesting if the government actually tracked and made public what is really happening to those who are coming off the welfare rolls?
Because I don't think workfare has much to do with those changes in numbers. I'd be interested in knowing how many of those people who left the welfare rolls actually left the province, or how many of those people who left the welfare rolls are actually now living in homeless shelters -- whole families crowded into motels down on Kingston Road here in Toronto. I'd like the government to track how many of those people who left the welfare rolls are single moms with kids who actually returned to an abusive relationship because the money they were getting on social assistance was not enough to support their families.
It would be very interesting if the government undertook such tracking, because I think we would clearly see that many people leaving the welfare rolls are finding themselves in the three situations I just outlined, and that workfare has nothing -- or very little -- to do with people leaving the welfare rolls. It's interesting that that government is not making public that kind of tracking. I suspect they don't want to, because they would rather have people assume that people leaving welfare are actually benefiting from workfare, when there's no guarantee whatsoever that that's happening.
Wouldn't it be interesting as well if the government actually broke down the workfare programs and made public the following categories of workfare: the number of individuals who are actually involved in resumé writing; the number of individuals in workfare now who are actually involved in upgrading; the number of individuals who are in actual placements in our community; and finally, how many individuals in real placements actually got hired for full-time permanent work?
That would be a far more concrete and realistic evaluation of workfare, because I continue to believe that the bulk of people involved in workfare right now are in two categories: (1) in upgrading -- they are not in work placements at all -- and (2) in work placements but not placements that are going to lead to full-time permanent jobs, which is what the government claims this program was all about.
I didn't hear the parliamentary assistant talk about any of those categories. How many people actually involved in workfare now are in any of those categories? As I said earlier, I continue to believe the majority of people aren't on their way to full-time, permanent work. They're stuck somewhere in upgrading or they're stuck in a placement that will not lead to full-time work, like some of the placements I referred to earlier.
A second concern is that there is no guarantee whatsoever that those private and public sector employers are not shedding or laying off or getting rid of their permanent employees in order to get free labour from workfare clients. I listened last Thursday to the minister and his comments on mandatory drug and literacy testing, which was an appalling statement. He spoke of the government exceeding its target for workfare in the public sector by about 300 placements. I wonder if the minister is prepared to table in this House those positions that those workfare recipients are assuming at this time, because I suspect that if we had a chance along with OPSEU to take a look at those positions, we would find that many of those positions had had permanent, long-term employees who were laid off by this government when they were so busy getting rid of people in order to have money for the tax cuts, and that those positions are now being replaced by people on workfare.
I thought it was interesting that the parliamentary assistant talked about the Ministry of Natural Resources exceeding their target by 706%. Isn't it interesting that it's the Ministry of Natural Resources that so exceeded its workfare targets that had the biggest cut in staff under this government since this government was elected? The biggest cut in staff was at the Ministry of Natural Resources. Isn't it so convenient, such a coincidence, that it's the same ministry that has the highest level of workfare recipients? How many of those workfare recipients are taking jobs from people laid off by this government so this government could have savings for its tax cut?
I say that because we got a call as well last Wednesday from North Bay, from a public servant, to let us know that just the day before, people in her unit were asked to welcome a new employee who was a workfare recipient. Isn't it interesting that that new workfare recipient was taking the position of a staff person who had had permanent, full-time employment in that ministry and who was laid off two years ago by this government? That's what I am convinced is happening in our workplaces, that we have many people losing full-time employment because it's cheaper for the government, and it's certainly cheaper for the private sector, to get the free labour of workfare recipients.
That is what's happening.
What's worse is that, because of this resolution the PA is promoting here today, the government sends a clear message to the private sector that it's OK to shed your employees, to get rid of them, to lay them off and replace them with workfare recipients. There's a real incentive for employers in the private sector to do that because they're not paying the wage costs for those individuals. As those individuals continue to receive their social assistance, there is virtually no cost to employers in the private sector to have them in their workplace. So what you set up is a really vicious cycle of workfare recipients being brought in, working for a period of time in a private sector place of employment, and being let go so the employer can turn around and start it all again.
That employer benefits from having free labour and driving his or her wage costs down. That's insidious, and that's the kind of program we have in place, because there's nothing to guarantee that's not happening. In fact the government, by replacing permanent staff in the public sector, sends a message to the private sector that it's OK to do just that. I think that's exactly what they are doing.
Our third concern deals with child care, because there is a huge lack of support for parents who need child care if they have to participate in placements. We know, because KPMG did a study for this government in 1998, that the government would need to make a massive investment in child care to make workfare work. The reality is that between 1995 and 1998, this government cut regulated child care by 15%. The government is spending $43 less per child per regulated space than they were in 1995. The government has also downloaded 20% of all the costs of child care on to municipalities. We know that any spaces that were created in the community came from full-fee-paying parents, not because this government was doing anything constructive, because this government was in the process of cutting child care through that whole period.
This leads to two problems in our communities with respect to workfare. You've got two pots of money that a municipality can access to deal with child care. You have a pot for subsidized spaces to help low-wage working parents who are trying to remain at work but need help with child care to do that. This government has capped its contributions to subsidies for working parents in our communities who need subsidized child care. You've got the scenario that the city of Toronto, for the third year in a row, has set aside $3 million in its budget to try to reduce its subsidized spaces and this government refuses to do its 80%, so the waiting list in Toronto has now grown from 13,000 to 14,500.
You've got a second pot of money for child care. The government established about $65 million for spaces for workfare recipients to access regulated child care. The problem is that when municipalities can't find any more of that $65 million for an Ontario Works client, because that pot is so small, then the municipality turns to its other pot of subsidized money, the pot that's supposed to be for low-wage working parents who need some assistance in order to keep working and have their kids in child care.
You've got the scenario now where in many municipalities workfare recipients are going to the top of the subsidized waiting list ahead of other working parents who have been sitting, waiting for child care. There is nothing fair about that. The reason municipalities do this is because the government penalizes municipalities if they don't reach their target with respect to workfare placements. They are now in the process of doing whatever they can to get whomever they can into whatever kind of placement they can so they'll not be penalized by this government and lose money. The municipalities have been forced into this position of pitting OW clients against low-wage working families who have been on a waiting list for a subsidized space for a long time. There's nothing right about that.
In Welland my colleague Mr Kormos and I heard from a woman who was on a waiting list -- 600 people on the waiting list for a subsidized space in Niagara. We had a young woman, Marnie McLean, who was working in a nursing home, not making very much money. She needed a subsidized space to ensure her kids had a safe place to go before and after school. Marnie McLean and other families in Niagara were clearly told, "If you were an Ontario Works client, you'd be at the top of the list like that and you'd probably get a subsidized space." Marnie McLean is not an OW client. She's a hard-working woman trying to look after her two kids by herself on $300 a week. Marnie McLean had to quit her job because she couldn't get access to a subsidized space. She would like to go on workfare, but now she's penalized because she quit her job so she can't even get that for three months. That's how ridiculous the system is. That's because this government did nothing to make sure there would be adequate child care. Nothing in the government's announcement last week, as they talked about extending workfare, talked about increased funding for welfare either. We don't support this resolution. This whole thing has been flawed. It is punitive, and there's no guarantee people are getting real live jobs.