Issue Five: Livable Wages and Decent Jobs Build Community and an Economy that Works For Everyone
Assured access to meaningful and productive work, coupled with a guaranteed livable income are essential elements of a social protection system. The next decade will involve massive shifts in jobs and skills as we move away from extractive industries and toward more caring and green economy work. A universal jobs program, could be closely aligned with such shifts and focus on supporting local communities to successfully make these transitions. The post-pandemic recovery period offers a unique opportunity to boldly restructure the labour market in ways that would make job insecurity and poverty wages a thing of the past.
This idea of a job guarantee has come mainly from academic and political circles in the United States, but Canadians are familiar not only with the ideas but have experience with its practice through the federal government’s Local Initiative Programs (LIP) that existed from 1971-1977 as a protection against unemployment and in fostering community economic development. The time has come to create a re-imagined version of this approach – A Job Guarantee. See more detail here.
Ask your candidates what they will do to:
- End our brutal and punishing Social Assistance system that forces nearly a million people to live lives of misery
- Support a parallel Work Transitions program including a Job Guarantee, community building infrastructure projects and a Green Jobs Corps
- Fund it by targeting tax avoidance, a wealth tax, and tax fairness measures aimed at large corporations, banks, and the top 30% of tax filers
- Increase the minimum wage to $17/hr indexed to changes in the cost of living
- Strengthen social protection for workers, renters and consumers, including an end to predatory lending
Issue Six: Deliver Affordable Child Care. Honour The Commitment to $10/day Care.
The Ontario government was the last jurisdiction in Canada to sign-on to the new federal partnership program on affordable child care. Given the foot dragging, there are concerns that it will not work hard to ensure that the full $13.2 billion in affordable child care will be fully utilized. Worse, that it will use this major infusion of financial support as an excuse to ignore the growing need and demand for affordable child care across the province.
Ask your candidates what they will do to:
- Make sure Ontario families get the $13.2 billion in affordable child care that has been funded – by paying decent wages to staff, expanding non-profit care and cutting fees by 50% by the end of 2022
- Push the government to expand its commitment from 86,000 new spaces to the more than 200,000 required to keep pace with growing demand
- Bring Ontario into line with other jurisdictions by raising the wage floor from $18/hr to closer to $25/hr as well as including decent benefit protections
- Ensure a wage grid recognizing education and experience is established to attract and retain both current and future high quality early childhood educators
See more here.
