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Sarnia

Inn Dismayed By PC Welfare Cuts

The Inn of the Good Shepherd's Executive Director is disappointed in the Tory government's plan to overhaul the province's social assistance programs.

The PCs say they'll start by reducing a planned increase to the Ontario Disability Support Program and Ontario Works rates.

Myles Vanni says on average about 1,800 people visit the Inn Food Bank every month. He anticipates that further cuts to social assistance programs could push that number even higher in the future.

"It will have an impact on a lot of our other programs that we do in addition to the food bank too," says Vanni. "I expect we'll probably see a higher need for back to school kits or winter coats. If families are devoting all their resources just to food and shelter, then when it comes time for birthday's, back to school or winter coats they're tapped out and don't have anything for those needs."

The provincial government also announced it will wind down the basic income pilot project, which provided payments to 4,000 low-income people in communities including Hamilton, Brantford, Thunder Bay and Lindsay.

"We had the sense that they were in favour of the pilot project," says Vanni. "To see that being reversed doesn't look very favourable for potential reforms to social assistance in the future. Cutting the assistance rates, the increase to half doesn't even help to bring the folks up to a reasonable assistant rate. We're way behind where we were 20 years ago and it's just keeping people in poverty."

Meanwhile, a source involved in the pilot project, says it had not been active long enough to generate the data required to gauge its success. The project launched in April 2017.

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