Ontario Campaign 2000’s Report Card on Child and Family Poverty: Your Input is Needed by Nov.12, 2013

In the following letter, Anita Khanna – Coordinator, Social Reform/Ontario Campaign 2000 – is asking Canadians living in low income or working with families in low income to send input as quotes or statements to anitakh@familyservicetoronto.org by November 12, 2013.

The quotes or statements will be included in Ontario Campaign 2000’s 2013 report card on child and family poverty, which will be will be released on November 26, 2013.
- Campaign 2000 is a national, non-partisan network of 120 national, provincial and community partner organizations committed to working together to end child and family poverty in Canada.
- Ontario Campaign 2000 is a provincial partner with 67 member organizations across the province.
- Ontario Campaign 2000 Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) Submission, October 4, 2013 (pdf), gave the following statements to the government of Ontario:
  - “Today, nearly 1 in 7 children in Ontario continue to live in poverty with their families.
  - The next PRS should continue efforts towards reducing poverty among children and families and expand its framework to reduce overall poverty in the province – including among children and families – by 50% before the end of 2018.
  - Ontario should eradicate deep poverty in the province by 2018 and implement targeted programs to address the disturbing trend of women, Indigenous and racialized people, people with disabilities and newcomers being more vulnerable to poverty than others in the province.”

“Hello All,

We are writing to ask partners, living in low income or working with families in low income, to send us quotes or statements to include in Ontario Campaign 2000’s 2013 report card on child and family poverty. The report card will be released on November 26, 2013. We often report statistics and policy changes, but with your help we can also tell the story of how poverty affects people’s everyday lives to help us press for effective policy changes.

If you are interested in contributing quotes, we would appreciate a response to anitakh@familyservicetoronto.org by November 12th, 2013. If you decide to share a quote, we will respect your privacy by not sharing your name (unless you request otherwise). Due to limited space in the report card, we cannot include all the feedback we receive. We may also have to edit your words into 1-2 sentences, if they are included. Thank you for your understanding about this.

Below are some topics/questions on work, social assistance, anti-poverty advocacy and life post-recession that you may care to respond to to help write your statements. Please feel free to respond to one or all of the questions or to write your own statements. Thank you for sharing your time and ideas.

1) How are you and your family doing 5 years after the recession of 2008? Do you feel like you have recovered financially and emotionally?

2) What is your biggest challenge your family has faced over the last 5 years? (ex: finding work, hunger, housing, debt, medical/dental expenses etc).

3) What kind of challenges do you face in relation to working or trying to find work? How is your family impacted by part time, seasonal or contract-based work?

4) What would an increase in the Ontario Child Benefit, allow you and your family to do or access?

5) What does poverty look like within your community? In your home?

6) How is poverty addressed in your community? Are you involved in any anti-poverty advocacy? If so, why is it important to you?

7) What has been the most helpful thing to you, in moving forward as you experience poverty or as you work with someone who experiences poverty?

8) Social assistance: What are your thoughts on the changes to Ontario Works: liquid assets have increased from $606 to $2500 (double that for couples) and one can now keep up to $6000 worth of cash gifts without a seeing a reduction in benefits.

9) Social Assistance: How would lone parents with children benefit if they could choose whether or not to pursue child support? What would it mean for lone parent families if they could keep at least 50% of child support?