Ontario’s poverty consultation is smoke and mirrors – we need to take back the stage

Many of us are preparing responses to the government’s call for “experiences, perspectives and ideas to reduce poverty,” which we are told will inform the province’s next Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS). With poverty, homelessness, and food insecurity trending sharply in the wrong direction, we all want to believe in this opportunity for change. In fact, we see it as our duty to point out injustice when we encounter it – and expect the government to address it. Step back for a moment, however, and this exercise appears to be largely a performance.

Like an amateur magician hoping to distract the audience while fumbling every trick, the provincial government asks for ideas to reduce poverty while its own policies on housing, income security, and employment services continue to make poverty worse. The misdirection isn’t subtle, and the illusion isn’t convincing, because the harm is happening right in front of us.

Take, for example, the government’s hotly contested Bill 60. This law fundamentally rewrites the rules at the Landlord and Tenant Board so evictions can proceed faster, appeals are more difficult, and tenants have fewer rights. While the government asks the public for feedback on its next poverty reduction strategy, it simultaneously bypassed the usual public hearings process for Bill 60. The Bill was passed on November 24, amid much protest from advocates.

Look over here at the PRS. Pay no attention to the erosion of tenant rights behind the curtain.

In the children and social services sector, the provincial government is slowly starving programs as it allows inflation and population growth to erode our social safety net. As Maytree’s 2025 budget analysis shows, real per-capita government spending on this sector is down 11 per cent since 2018. This neglect is most obvious in Ontario Works (OW), where rates that have been frozen since 2018 now pay less than the asking price to rent a single room in most of Ontario. Predictably, homelessness among OW recipients has doubled since 2022.

Not to worry, though. The government wants your ideas on how to deal with all the people who are now homeless.

Employment services are one of the only anti-poverty tools in which the provincial government has shown interest. But even here it has made no progress on its target to move more people from social assistance to employment. The government refuses to confront what its own data shows: Employment is out of reach without basic housing, health care, child care, income security, and other supports to stabilize people’s lives.

It’s a neat trick: Talk earnestly about getting people employed, while ignoring all the things that would help people to get and keep jobs or ensure work is decent enough to provide a realistic path out of poverty.

It would appear the government is only going through the motions on poverty reduction. The law requires a consultation, so it offers the bare minimum. The last poverty reduction strategy involved four months of public input; this time, the window has been cut to just six weeks. Previously, the government took eight months after consultations closed to develop and publish its strategy. This time, the legislated five-year deadline to table a new strategy will arrive on December 16, 2025 – mere days after the consultation closes on November 30. All signs point to a new strategy that is a box-ticking exercise, not a serious plan.

Look beyond poverty, and you’ll find a familiar bag of tricks. After the Auditor General reported in October 2025 that Ontario will not meet its 2030 climate target, the provincial government responded by rolling back key accountability requirements embedded in law. It is no longer required to set, update, or publicly report on emissions targets, nor is it required to develop further climate change plans. When it comes to climate policy, the province is not even pretending anymore.

The government’s approach to poverty reduction suggests we are headed down a similar path. The 2020 strategy already refused to set a specific poverty target, despite an explicit requirement under the Poverty Reduction Strategy Act. Now the government is doing only the bare minimum to consult on a new strategy.

At this point, we shouldn’t expect anything more than another clumsy show. The government’s actions reveal it does not take poverty seriously but merely waves its hands at us long enough to claim it tried. Don’t be fooled by the illusion, and don’t be surprised if the government soon gives up pretending entirely by removing what teeth remain in the Poverty Reduction Strategy Act.

Where does this leave those of us sincerely responding to the government’s call? While it may seem like a waste of time in the short term, the answer is not less engagement in poverty reduction, but more. More time spent working together across sectors and across the province to strengthen our collective voice. More engagement with the government on our terms, not theirs. More public attention drawn to the systemic causes of the social breakdown now visible in every community. More effort to devise the next generation of ideas that are equally galvanizing, transformative, and implementable.

Don’t look to the next PRS to turn things around. That’s up to us.