Three Weston residents have interesting articles in the news this week. Celia Chandler wrote about York South–Weston residents voting against their own self interest in Rabble.
The nurse up the street has a blue sign on their lawn. Yet, Bill 124, passed by the Ford government in 2019, has long-lasting damaging effects nurses and and other health-care professionals. Houses with basement suites have them too. The creators of those blue sign have decimated the Landlord and Tenant Board by failing to fill vacancies, creating delays of more than a year.
Even the couple who wheel around the neighbourhood in their matching mobility scooters, three dogs sitting on the platform, are rooting for Ford. He who overlooked Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) in the April 28 budget but nonetheless promises to hike the monthly payments by five percent if elected (inflation is at almost seven percent).
Bob Murphy and Chiara Padovani wrote about falling social assistance payments in NOW Magazine.
After the past two decades of Liberal and Conservative governments, people on social assistance are now worse off than in the 1990s when Harris first cut social assistance.
After Harris’s cuts, social assistance support was frozen. And under the four premiers since Harris, in the few years when social assistance was increased, the meagre increases were quickly outstripped by inflation. Now, adjusted for inflation, a person surviving on ODSP is actually $264 poorer each month than in 1996.