Remind me again how exercising, eating fruits and vegetables, and quitting
smoking is going to improve the health of Ontarians...
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News Release
Released:July 08, 2003
Bitter strikes, rationed services, increasing poverty
and homelessness, and a crumbling social safety net
legacy of Tory policies
Toronto - The Ontario Conservative government's social service
spending cuts are a false economy leading to growing poverty and
homelessness, less home care support services, fewer affordable child
care spaces, and increasing labour disputes in the community agency
sector, say members of a social justice labour alliance.
Many community-based social service agencies are in a deficit
situation, and in an effort to stay afloat financially, are extracting wage
and benefit concessions from already low-paid workers. Bitter strikes,
like the one now underway at Toronto's Central Neighbourhood House,
a community agency that provides home support, shelter and youth
services, and child care, are becoming increasingly commonplace in
the sector.
"It's important to connect the dots about how our crumbling social
safety net is directly related to the social service policies of this
government. Increasing poverty and homelessness, cash-strapped
community agencies, and workers subsidizing services through wage
rollbacks, are the result of eight years of detrimental Conservative
social service policies and chronic underfunding," said Brian O'Keefe,
secretary-treasurer of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE)
at a Queen's Park media conference held today.
Ultimately, the social and financial costs of the Conservative polices -
such as increasing child poverty, lack of affordable housing and child
care, and a growing wage gap for immigrant workers - will far outweigh
the immediate money savings, said Jane Mercer, executive coordinator
with the Toronto Coalition for Better Child Care (TCBCC), and Michael
Shapcott, a researcher on homelessness and shelter with the
University of Toronto.
"The City of Toronto has cut more than 1,600 subsidized child care
spaces in the last twelve months as a result of the shortfall in provincial
funding. Now another 500 are on the chopping block. Every time we
turn around, we are losing more subsidies. Child care is a vital
employment support for working families, and the long-term cost of not
funding it properly is highly irresponsible," said Mercer.
Since 1995, the Tory government has cut $879.1 million from provincial
housing programs, and Ontario has lost 23,300 affordable social
housing units.
"That," said Shapcott, "is in addition to another 59,600 affordable social
housing units that should have been built. In the Tories' two terms in
government, Ontario led all other provinces in cutting funding to
housing. This is why we have growing homelessness province-wide."
He attributes the social housing losses to the Tory decision to cancel
government-funded social housing programs, and download the cost of
social housing to cash-starved municipalities.
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For more information please contact:
Michael Shapcott University of Toronto
Jane Mercer TCBCC (416) 538-7630
Brian O'Keefe CUPE Ontario (416) 579-8774
Stella Yeadon CUPE Communications (416) 578-8774
opeiu491/EW
CUPE Ontario
305 Milner Avenue, Suite 902
Scarborough, ON , MIB 3V4
Phone: (416) 299-9739
Fax: (416) 299-3480
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