On March 9, ISARC met with the Honourable Laurel Broten, Minister of Children and Youth Services and two of her staff.

ISARC asked the Minister about the Government’s Poverty Reduction Strategy, shared our concerns about sustainable funding for child care, the need to maintain the Special Diet for social assistance recipients who require it, the commitment for more affordable housing, and the issue of people of colour having higher rates of poverty.

Minister Broten shared with us that the Social Assistance Review is a big component of the Poverty Reduction Strategy. Even though the financial circumstances in the province have changed for people economically, the government remains committed to doing what it can do. She felt that the government is still on target in moving that ahead. Concern was expressed that the crazy rules in social assistance must be changed as quickly as possible. It will be important to raise Ontario Works asset levels as more and more workers exhaust the Employment Insurance benefits.

She explained that the 4 and 5 year old roll out of kindergarten will be a slow process and during this time the child care sector will need to stabilized. She said that her government fought hard for more, better childcare with the federal government. She believed that the child care profession needed to be lifted up to see its positive role in society, but the present federal government did not see the value. ISARC was concerned that many municipalities will face cutbacks in subsidies and will find it difficult to pay for childcare with property taxes. Even Waterloo Region, which had no waiting list, currently will have 700 on the waiting list in September 2010, if there was no additional money for childcare in the provincial budget. There was no money in the Federal Budget. Other regions had more sizeable waiting lists that Waterloo Region.

Around the Special Diet, the Minister reported that this was not her direct line of responsibility, but asked what ISARC’s perspective is on this issue. ISARC responded that we were always concerned about adequacy. To remove something, which may have been used inappropriately to address inadequacy, would not be wise when the issue of inadequacy was not addressed. We urged the Minister and the Government not to remove the Special Diet until something proper replaced it.

ISARC also asked the Minister to affirm affordable housing as a vital part of the Poverty Reduction Strategy, urging her to help make the next phase of the affordable housing roll out happen. ISARC pointed out that good housing was a social determinant of health. It cut down costs on all other social services and health care in the province and, if done right, was a positive outcome for neighbourhoods and the provincial government

ISARC pointed out that people of colour had higher incidences of poverty. We discussed with Minister Broten our recommendation for the government to establish an Equity and Anti-racism Directorate to help embed equity principles, policy frameworks, programs and practices within and across all ministries as well as in the broader public sector.

Finally we asked the Minister how ISARC could be supportive of the provincial poverty reduction strategy. She suggested ISARC could recommend models and mechanization “to get all hand on deck.” ISARC also suggested that she and the Government make use our communities for consultation and ideas.

We ended the meeting by sharing that our ISARC Social Audit was an opportunity for us to help the government bring the voices of those living in poverty into circles of discussion.