Learning from our mistakes: Ontario needs more than an employment strategy to address rising poverty

Ontario’s 2020-2025 Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) has failed. The government’s theory of poverty reduction – that employment can and must be the path out of poverty for everyone – is misguided and not rooted in evidence. The province must learn from its past mistakes in designing a new PRS. 

The policy brief argues that employment is not a viable path out of poverty unless policy interventions first address the barriers that prevent work and create a labour market that offers decent jobs. A successful poverty reduction strategy must also speak to the needs of those who will never work enough to escape poverty.  

A poverty reduction strategy built on a rights-based approach would recognize the systems that create and sustain poverty and take evidence-based steps to address each of them. This would entail comprehensive reforms to education, housing, child care, health care, labour markets, income security, and more. 

Not to do so would continue a pattern of ideology over evidence that will harm thousands of low-income Ontarians.  

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Related

• Consultation: Poverty reduction strategy
  The Ontario government’s information page about its PRS consultation. Closing date is November 30, 2025.
• Poverty rising: How Ontario’s strategy failed and what must come next
  Maytree’s first policy brief on Ontario’s 2020-2025 Poverty Reduction Strategy.
• Underserved: Ontario’s employment services are failing those in greatest need
  Access this report to learn more about Common Assessment data referenced throughout the “Learning from our mistakes” policy brief.