Remind me again how exercising, eating fruits and vegetables, and quitting
smoking is going to improve the health of Ontarians...
---------------------------
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.

                         -30-

 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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