End poverty in Ontario! The Ontario Coalition for Social Justice (OCSJ) decided to seek this goal in 2003 after it had taken the lead to organize Days of Action in Ontario, in cooperation with labour unions across the province, against cutbacks to social, health, and education programs by the Mike Harris government in the 1990s. A little background will help to explain the challenge that still exists with Ontario's current government to convince them in 2009 to end poverty in this province.

The Days of Action were successful in gaining the support of people at Days organized in Hamilton, London, Ottawa, Sudbury, and Toronto in the 1990s. Thousands of people participated. Yet despite this mobilization, Harris won re-election in 1999. Clearly, a different strategy to fight Harris' cuts was needed!

At the OCSJ's spring assembly in 2003, a few months before that year's provincial election, the coalition decided to focus on poverty as an essential step to work on broader goals of social justice. One wonders how anyone could support reducing the income paid to people who need social assistance. Yet, that's exactly how the Harris Government had started its "common sense revolution" within a month of winning the election in 1995. The Conservatives reduced the income of those who were the poorest of Ontario's citizens by a staggering 21.6 percent of their provincial assistance each month!

A majority of voters finally agreed in 2003 to vote against further punitive policies of the Harris "revolution", and elected Dalton McGuinty's Liberals instead. It was time for a change. Yet the new government's moderate reforms to alleviate the stark poverty in the province only raised the minimum wage by small amounts each year and the rates for social assistance and disability were raised even less. Therefore, in the 2007 provincial election, the OCSJ, working with numerous allies and partners, argued that a poverty reduction strategy was needed desperately. We won that argument! The Liberals agreed to develop a strategy in its first year of their term of office.

The Liberals kept their promise, and announced their poverty reduction strategy for Ontario in December 2008. However, in spite of widespread support for a comprehensive strategy to reduce the poverty of persons of all ages, of all groups, of all regions, and through all the diverse public programs designed to be accessible to everyone, but which in fact are often not available to poor people, the Ontario government decided to focus only on child poverty in the strategy that it announced.

While child poverty needs to be ended not just reduced in Ontario, the OCSJ believes that the government's focus on children is too narrow. Since children are usually part of families, surely ending the poverty of all persons, of all ages, and throughout Ontario, is a fairer strategy that would benefit children too, since they would receive indirect help from what's offered to help their families.

The year 2009 offers challenges to which the OCSJ looks forward. First, it hopes to influence the provincial government to do more than its poverty reduction strategy says now. The provincial budget, likely to be announced in March, will indicate the amount of money that the government will be willing to invest to reduce poverty in the next year. OCSJ will argue that more money needs to be invested to make a real difference.

Second, OCSJ wants to build public capacity to influence change by co-operating with groups and coalitions like Canadian Pensioners Concerned (CPC). As members of CPC know, one of the strengths of the coalitions by which members try to influence politicians is based on the fact that there are numerous chapters, partners, and allies throughout the province, or country. By co-ordinating widespread member and group actions the views of political parties as a whole can more likely be influenced because of speaking directly to MPPs and MPs throughout the province and country. Of course, the following step is influencing the government itself.

By continuing the coalitions' co-operation, I believe that we shall grow stronger and more influential. If anyone has any questions or views about how we may co-operate, or if anyone wants to receive the OCSJ electronic newsletter two times per month, you are welcome to contact me at info@ocsj.ca or (416) 441-3714.