Ontario’s focus on employment is failing to reduce poverty as province develops next strategy
As Ontario’s current poverty reduction strategy approaches its end in 2025, the provincial government has launched a public consultation to shape the next strategy. A new policy brief from Maytree finds that the core assumption underlying the current plan was flawed. The strategy relied on the premise that employment alone could lift people out of poverty, an approach not supported by evidence.
The brief, Learning from our mistakes: Ontario needs more than an employment strategy to address rising poverty, is the second in a two-part series examining the 2020-25 strategy. The first brief documented that poverty in Ontario has risen to pre-pandemic levels. This new brief explains why the strategy has failed and what must change as the province develops its next plan.
“Ontario’s approach assumed people living in poverty simply need an employment counsellor and they’ll be off into the middle class,” said Alexi White, Director of Systems Change at Maytree. “But many people face real barriers to stable employment, and many jobs available today are precarious and low wage. A poverty reduction strategy must address the systems that create and sustain poverty, not just pressure people to find work.”
Key findings:
- The current strategy focused narrowly on employment and overlooked barriers such as housing instability, lack of child care, inadequate health supports, and food insecurity.
- The labour market does not offer enough stable, decent-paying jobs to support a reliable path out of poverty for many workers.
- Some people will not be able to work enough to escape poverty and require adequate and predictable income supports.
The brief calls for a new poverty reduction strategy that:
- Recognizes the right to an adequate standard of living and addresses the systems that perpetuate poverty.
- Invests in income supports, housing, child care, and health and social services to enable stability.
- Ensures the labour market provides decent work with fair wages and secure hours.
“There is an important choice to be made,” said White. “The province can repeat a strategy that has already failed, or it can adopt an evidence-based approach that reduces poverty in meaningful and measurable ways.”