That the Ontario government has sought to cushion the most vulnerable citizens in the province from escalating electricity costs is laudable, but with uptake in the Ontario Electricity Support Program (OESP) languishing barely above 25 percent we beg to differ with the Ontario Energy Board’s excitement over the efficacy of the program.
By the Ontario Energy Board’s own estimates, there are more than half a million low income Ontarians who are eligible for relief through the OESP. Many of those people are regularly faced with the decision of whether they will buy enough groceries to feed themselves and their families for the month or make their rent payment. Shelter or food, it is the daily reality still faced by thousands of residents of one of the wealthiest regions on the planet, and this decades past the days of the Mike Harris slash and burn run through the Ontario Works (OW) and Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) and the less-than-inflation increases applied by his successors, Progressive Conservative or Liberal.
There are reasons that people find themselves on welfare and, despite the coffee shop rants of the curmudgeonly inclined, statistics clearly establish that those reasons are only most rarely that recipients don’t want to work. Adding to that, the numbers clearly indicate that most Ontario Works recipients are “on the dole” for a very short period of time. Also to be mentioned are the so-called “deserving poor,” those whose disabilities prevent them from being able to hold down a job and who find themselves on the slightly less meagre stipend provided by ODSP.
Then there are the working poor. There are many reasons that people find themselves unable to find employment that does much more than keep the wolf from the door, barely managing to keep their heads above water, anything that can be reasonably done to lighten that load should be done.
For the latter group, the outreach programs, YouTube videos, newspaper, radio and television advertisements may be the only real option to bring the OESP to their attention, but for those on Ontario Works and ODSP there was, and is, a much simpler and more elegant solution.
Since everyone on OW and ODSP qualifies for the relief, they could (and should) have been automatically qualified for the program, as could/should everyone who receives the Guaranteed Income Supplement component of Canada’s old age security safety net.
While there are some challenges to that approach, those challenges could hardly exceed those challenges created through the current program, never mind the duplication of resources necessary to vet the applicants and to validate the individual consents that applicants are required to submit.
With the validation of the social workers who already assess each OW or ODSP applicant for their eligibility already taking place (never mind that those workers are also already seconded to assisting people who need such help with preparing their applications) it seems counterintuitive that a duplicate process is put in place with a completely separate agency.
Since any error or omission in an application can short circuit that application, causing further delay and hardship for those in society the OESP is purported to assist, the elegance of working through existing programs would seem, on the face of it at least, a sensible course of action.
There are those who might suggest that the provincial government is more interested in being seen to do good than actually solving the problem, since the fewer successful applicants taking up the offer reduces the immediate costs and, since the program is not retroactive, delays in bringing those eligible into the program also helps to mitigates those costs (albeit on the backs of those who can least afford it). With the ongoing privatization of Hydro One it also begs the question of who is paying for what is, in its essence, a social program. Social relief is properly the purview of the provincial government and should not be provided through the inefficient and indirect vehicle of the hydro bills of other users of the system.
The provincial government should recognize the lack of efficacy inherent in the current approach to providing electricity cost relief to those most in need and take steps to provide that relief through the proper channels.
