However, national government continues to be crucial in shaping the parameters for reform.
One of the most important steps for the reform of Ontario's welfare was made in 1995, when the Progressive Conservative (PC) party was elected after promising to transform welfare through a "Common Sense Revolution." The hart of the reform was represented by the welfare replacement program, Ontario Works. The program focuses on finding a job for every participant in the program, thus driving participants away from welfare and into workfare. The focus of OW is on supporting as few people as possible through welfare and providing participants with training and jobs that would allow them to support themselves.
Despite the success that was presented to be OW, data confirms that Ontario's government does not have sufficient proof to state that the program actually improved dramatically the lives of the poor in the region of Ontario. In fact, welfare contraction began before OW was adopted because despite the focus on supply-side activation, reform outcomes remain dependent upon local demand for jobs. Ontario's government presented OW as a great success, stating that more than 500,000 people found work and left welfare. The truth is that the figures are exaggerated, as they show only those that have left welfare, failing to present the right number of people that got a job, instead of moving and so on.
Even more important than the number of people leaving welfare for workfare is the actual experience of those that obtain a job. These people often find themselves in the situation of earning very few money and having increasingly insecure jobs. A new social category was created formed of the "working poor," namely the people that have a low income job and that are increasingly poor as their period of low earnings gets longer. These people are underpaid and often have to settle for whatever job. Many of the jobs they take are not fulltime, year-round, meaning fewer earnings. The government is no longer obliged to cover welfare, but these people can not support themselves only through their jobs and fall deeper into poverty.
Those that still remain on welfare are facing similar difficulties as their income can only offer them little support considering the huge differences between the prices of house rents and every day spending and the money received on welfare. "Disturbingly, the removal of support services is putting increasing numbers of women at risk, with over two thirds of Ontario's emergency shelters and transitional houses reporting battered women returning to abusive relationships because they could not survive independently on welfare."
Social reconfiguration in Ontario has focused on two areas: reducing welfare services and tightening eligibility. There is indeed a caseload reduction, but it is not clear how much of it is because of the OW program. Welfare services were greatly reduced, the recipients having to live on benefits that buy less than they did prior to the OW program. There were other parts as well of the reconfiguration program that were placing an even greater burden on the poor: ending a great deal of community support programs, decreasing the funding for community services, canceling the construction of housing units. "Eligibility for welfare has been tightened. The provincial government has simply disqualified people, changing the rules relating to 16 and 17-year-olds, post-secondary students and common-law spousal relationships. Under this socalled 'spouse-in-the-house' legislation, women in common-law relationships are prohibited from receiving welfare in their own right. Other measures have increased the complexity and reduced the scope of the appeals procedure, drastically cut asset limits, and greatly increased the type of information needed to sustain a claim."
Considering the new criteria for eligibility, more and more people find themselves with no support from the state and are bound to increase their poverty level because they have low paid jobs. The eligibility issue represents a real problem because many people find themselves in the impossibility of applying for welfare although their income is low. The social reconfiguration in Ontario is affecting mostly those that have low incomes because they are the ones that are facing tighter eligibility norms, that are bounded to live on a low welfare, that are forced to accept temporary low paid jobs. For these people, poverty is becoming more and more a reality that they can not escape from.
The Ontario government created a joint "Business Transformation Porject" (BTP) with Andersen Consulting, setting a redesign of social assistance programs, which has led to the introduction of new technologies to support welfare reform. The project is focused on reducing caseloads, introducing two stages to welfare eligibility. First, there is a telephone prescreening mechanism and all welfare applications in the province will be directed through just seven call centers. This alternative generates even greater bureaucracy, not to mention that it is discriminatory towards illiterate or mentally disabled citizens that will find it difficult to comply with the new request. Second, recipients undergo a rigorous and ongoing review of every aspect...
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