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The federal government provides a National Child Benefit Supplement (NCBS) to low-income families to reduce child poverty. The province of Ontario deducts, or claws back, up to $1,463 a year of the NCBS from every child on social assistance.
Premier Dalton McGuinty promised to end the clawback of the NCBS in 2003. So his government was asked: When is it going to honour its promise?
Because of the NCBS clawback, families with children on social assistance are as poor as ever. This is of great concern in child welfare because poverty debilitates families.
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Why deduct federal child income benefits targeted to poor children from families who rely on social assistance?
Apparently it is to lower a "welfare wall," the "wall" arising when social assistance benefits are marginally better than low-paid employment. Notably, single able-bodied adults are better off if employed full-time than on $536 a month in social assistance.
In reality, the "wall" is about children and the real additional costs and responsibilities of their daily care. Using child benefits to reduce welfare leaves unemployed parents and their children no better off and at a standard of living that is too low. Do we really want to reduce a "welfare wall" so low-paid work appears more attractive and raise a "child welfare wall" within which children are at a higher degree of risk? What's on the other side of the "wall" for children? Does employment guarantee children escape poverty? No.
As Campaign 2000 To End Child Poverty reports, since 1995, the proportion of children living in poverty who have a parent working full-time has doubled to 33 per cent. Indeed, many families living in poverty cycle between welfare and precarious low-paying jobs.
Poverty is the problem. We must reduce poverty overall so parents can raise children in decent and dignified living conditions, and so children get a good start in life, whether their parents are employed or unemployed. Investing in the next generation is important. The experiences children have in their formative years have lifelong consequences. Society benefits socially and economically when families raise healthy children.
Our social policies must respond to the presence of children by investing in them, not by neglecting them. McGuinty should act on promises to end the NCBS clawback and invest in more child care and affordable housing. That would lay the foundation for developing a multi-year, made-in-Ontario poverty reduction strategy, which could include a new Ontario Child Benefit, to ensure that low-income parents are better off whether they are in the workforce or on social assistance.
Ontario's children deserve no less.
- reprinted from the Toronto Star