Toronto
– Fed up with the number
of caseloads that are
twice the national
average, and a
provincial government
that is indifferent to a
problem affecting
325,000 Ontarians living
in poverty, unionists
representing the Ontario
Disability Support
Program (ODSP) today
called for a
province-wide Day of
Action on March 4.
“There
are days when I just
want to cry,” said Wendy
Tabor, ODSP steward from
Woodstock told a special
meeting in Toronto. “All
I’m told all day long is
‘just get the job done.’
Well, we can’t ‘just get
the job done’ because
there are too many fires
to put out. We’ve
reached the breaking
point.”
The call
for a Day of Action is
the result of severe
understaffing and under
funding that has caused
a crisis in a provincial
program that administers
and distributes more
than $2.6 billion in
income support payments
to disabled Ontarians
living in poverty.
Clients often go months
before receiving benefit
payments and service
because of backlogs.
The Day
of Action will include
noon hour information
pickets outside 44 ODSP
offices across Ontario,
and MPP lobbying by
senior officials from
OPSEU which represents
1,200 ODSP workers.
Income
support specialists in
Ontario each handle an
average of 530 cases.
Similar workers in
British Columbia have a
caseload ratio of about
300:1. In Nova Scotia,
Manitoba and
Saskatchewan the rate is
lower than 200:1.
OPSEU is
demanding that $60
million be included in
this spring’s provincial
budget that would bring
the ODSP per-worker
caseload ratio closer to
the national average of
about 250:1.
OPSEU
president Warren
(Smokey) Thomas told the
stewards that the crisis
in the ODSP strikes at
the heart of the
McGuinty government’s
war on poverty, which it
has pledged to reduce by
25 per cent over the
next five years.
“How can
the government be
serious about reducing
poverty when it denies
Ontarians living in
poverty with public
services to which they
are rightfully entitled
to?” Thomas asked.
