Legislative Assembly of Ontario
Tuesday March 27, 2007
Responses to Ministerial Statements

Ms. MacLeod (Nepean-Carleton): Thank you Mr. Speaker.

I am pleased to respond on behalf of John Tory and the PC Caucus to the Minister of Children and Youth Services. Mr. Speaker, at first blush this child benefit programme is very supportable.

The problem with it Mr. Speaker, is that the child benefit programme was designed not with kids in mind, but with votes in mind.

The cynicism is that sometime this summer, right before Ontario Families go to the polls, they will be receiving their first $250 per child cheque under the new Ontario Child Benefit program.

As my leader, John Tory said yesterday in this legislature yesterday,

"It's interesting to me that when it moves the government, as a result of the electoral timetable, to have a down payment available of this child benefit on July 1, undoubtedly with some flowing letter from the minister or the Premier taking personal credit for this use of the taxpayers' money."

Sadly Mr. Speaker, Dalton McGuinty has had 4 years to provide some much needed help to Ontario’s families, but he refused.

Only now, at the eleventh hour, after 3 and a half years of dithering and delaying has Dalton McGunity decided to get serious about child poverty.

And he is doing so because it is election year.

As Randall Denley an Ottawa Citizen columnist points on in his column this past week :

"A new program to help families on welfare and the working poor is the centrepiece of the budget. It's the kind of thing that will be applauded by the NDP voters the Liberals are trolling for, but the government can't even afford a modest new monthly payment this fiscal year, settling for a $250 handout in July instead. The real cost of this $2.1 billion program is only $190 million this fiscal year. By moving the big increases out several years, the government gets maximum political torque for minimum dollar spending. The poor get a pittance."

Mr. Speaker, Randall Denley adds, "The poor will get their full amount by 2011."

So here we are today, celebrating a vote-buying downpayment when it will take another 4-5 years before Ontario’s most vulnerable families will even derive any real benefit from the plan

And as Lorrie Goldstein, a Sun chain columnist says of this cynical program:

"Worse, McGuinty's budget attempts to guilt-trip middle-class Ontarians into silence. How? By earmarking billions of their tax dollars to be paid out, eventually, to poor families and children now living on welfare, through his so-called Ontario Child Benefit."

And if you think, Mr. Speaker these two columnists might be a little to "right leaning", they why not quote Rabble.

Michelle Langlois writes:

"People on social assistance will continue to have the federal benefit clawed back from their welfare cheques. The new provincial benefit will not be clawed back . ..

Seems like a pretty clear and easy-to-understand policy, right?

Then why is the McGuinty government trying to confuse people by claiming that the new Ontario Child Benefit will "effectively end the current clawback of up to $122 per child per month from the National Child Benefit Supplement" according to "government officials" quoted in the Toronto Star on Friday?

The answer is simple. The Liberal government promised during the 2003 election campaign to end the child tax benefit clawback from the families who need it most desperately: social assistance recipients. As with many of their other promises, they did not follow through.

Mr. Speaker, the word poverty never appeared in any other McGuinty budget. So I have to ask why the focus now, why not a full benefit now, why implement a half baked scheme right before the provincial election?