Backgrounder Package
2022 Ontario Election
ISARC is pleased to provide the attached four backgrounders for use in the upcoming provincial election.
During the past two years of pandemic response, many issues of equality, adequacy and human dignity were sidelined. Yet, the dire effects of the pandemic served to further expose and enlarge the gaps in our social safety net.
The backgrounders provided here speak to Affordable Housing, Income Security, Worker Justice and Long Term Care.
Please use them to encourage civic discussion with neighbours and friends, raise questions with candidates, and inform your participation in community all-candidate events.
With your assistance ISARC plans to take the following actions:
- The questions are being sent to party leaders and responses will be posted to the ISARC website by May 18
- We ask those receiving this email to please direct the attached questions to the candidates in your local riding and then share the responses with ISARC.
Any responses received by ISARC will be posted to the ISARC website.
Together we make a difference, and an election is an important opportunity to bring public attention to matters that can be addressed if there is the political will to do so.
Ontario Party Responses:
Publications, Letters, and Documents
Explore the core of ISARC’s focus through our actions
- Written Submission to Standing Committee on Heritage, Infrastructure and Cultural Policy: Bill 23 – November 2022
- Written Submission – Jan 2022 Ontario Pre-Budget Consultation
- Written Submission to Standing Committee on Justice Policy – Bill 218 – November 2020
- Written Submission to Standing Committee on Social Policy – Bill 184 – June 2020
- Written Submission – Fall 2020 Ontario Budget Consultation – October
- Written Submission – 2020 Ontario Budget Consultation – January
ISARC Annual Reports
Advocacy
Composite list of Provincial Cabinet Ministers
Write to your MPP – Template Letter (coming soon)
Related Ontario Organizations:
Campaign 2000 – Educating on the levels and consequences of child/family poverty
ISAC – Income Security Advocacy Centre
Ontario Health Coalition – Protecting public healthcare for all
Voices From The Margins
VOICES FROM THE MARGINS is a community mobilization effort that began in the spring of 2019, where low-income people in communities across Ontario will share stories of their lives—their issues, goals, and ideas—speaking to a team of local rapporteurs. The working poor, seniors, and people on social assistance have been invited to take part.
As low-income people all around us struggle to put food on the table, pay rent and meet other basic needs, recent provincial government policies have made their lives even tougher. VOICES offers a platform to hear from and learn about the lives of these important “invisible people.” Unless enough Ontarians speak out, things could get worse in the months and years ahead. The VOICES project is sponsored by Ontario’s major interfaith anti-poverty organization, the Interfaith Social Assistance Reform Coalition (ISARC), working with community partners.
Read a detailed VOICES overview here.
Additional VOICES Resources:
COVID-19 Update: VOICES FROM THE MARGINS has been extended to include stories of how the situation for low-income Ontarians has changed since the onset of the Pandemic.