Workfare in Canada

As of 1995, Canadian provinces have been adopting workfare policies for social assistance such as Ontario Works. In May of 1998, The Ontario Works Act and Regulations was born. Ontario Works aims to help "employable people find work and become independent of social assistance." People who are already receiving social assistance who meet the Ontario Works requirements are deemed employable, and must participate in order to continue to receive assistance. They must complete a 'Participation Agreement', in which they list activities that they will agree to take part in or complete. Such activities include: "job searching, attending a job-finding club or other job training, completing a Community Placement, enrolling in Employment Placement, completing their education or starting their own business."

Canadian Workfare policies such as Ontario Works were created under a neo-conservative lens emphasizing "work ethic" and "family values." This neo-conservative lens values individualism and inequality as an "essential incentive for innovation and effort." The real agenda for neo-conservatives who protect these values is to protect trade and the free market. Workfare polices exist in Canada under the guise that individuals in need of social assistance have a chance to obtain upward mobility with the dual financial and employment assistance plan that workfare offers. Statistics collected over the last ten years of existing workfare practice in Canada have painted a much more grim picture.

Firstly, caseloads are down of individuals receiving workfare, likely because the criteria for workfare assistance are more restrictive than those for welfare. Due to the changing economy, individuals leaving workfare are worse off than those who received welfare assistance. Individuals who exit workfare programs are more likely to live in poverty compared to individuals who exit welfare assistance. There are an increasing number of restrictive and exploitative practices in workfare as well that de-humanize the integrity of workfare recipients. These practices include mandatory literacy and drug testing for teen mothers through the LEAP (Learning, Earning, and Parenting) program, home inspections in the Ontario Works program to ensure recipient compliance, and inadequate child support and care for workfare parents which increases the risk of child poverty. Recipients who are eligible for workfare on average receive less financial assistance than those who were once eligible for welfare and are less likely to gain meaningful employment while working within the program.

It is important to stress again that workfare polices exist in Canada under the guise that individuals in need of social assistance have a chance to obtain upward mobility because they are receiving financial assistance while being taught the "value of work." The inadequate pay and poor working conditions that workfare subjects those in need of social assistance to makes workfare an oppressive practice against the poor.

Information about Ontario works obtained from:

Lanark County
http://www.county.lanark.on.ca/Page376.aspx

Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Services
http://www.settlement.org/sys/link_redirect.asp?doc_id=1001460


Information about Workfare in Canada obtained from:

Snyder, Linda (2006). Workfare: Ten years of pickin' on the poor. In Westhues, A. (Ed.) (2006). Canadian social policy: Issues and perspectives. Canada: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.