Social help well being advantages are dealing with price range cuts as councillors attempt to trim subsequent yr’s tax enhance. (Photograph: Will Pearson)
This can be a corrected story. A earlier model of the article incorrectly said that imaginative and prescient care, dental care, and different well being advantages are discretionary for ODSP recipients. In reality, these well being advantages are solely discretionary for OW recipients. For ODSP recipients they’re necessary.
Debate over whether or not Peterborough ought to proceed funding well being advantages for individuals on social help subsequent yr gave the impression to be settled final Tuesday, when councillors voted 6-5 to keep up the funding.
However that call could also be reversed, after a councillor who voted in favour of funding the advantages indicated she needs to vary one among her votes, which she’ll have an opportunity to do when Peterborough’s draft 2025 price range comes earlier than council for remaining approval.
The advantages in query are known as discretionary advantages. For individuals receiving Ontario Works, discretionary advantages cowl bills comparable to imaginative and prescient and dental care, dentures, and listening to aids.
For individuals enrolled within the Ontario Incapacity Assist Program (ODSP), the scenario is a bit completely different. Well being-related advantages are necessary, which suggests the proposed price range lower gained’t affect these advantages for ODSP recipients. Nevertheless, sure bills comparable to funeral and burial prices and bus cross subsidies are delivered as discretionary advantages for ODSP recipients, in accordance with social providers director Rebecca Morgan-Quin.
Metropolis employees had beneficial eliminating the town’s funding for the advantages within the 2025 draft price range as a cost-saving measure. Council’s vote final Tuesday was for the funding to be restored.
Nevertheless, just a few hours after the vote and within the remaining minutes of the price range assembly, Coun. Lesley Parnell requested to retroactively change one among her votes in an change with Coun. Andrew Beamer, who chaired the assembly.
Parnell was off-mic. However Beamer’s feedback, which had been mic’d, established that Parnell was referring to a 6-5 vote. Beamer described the vote as “discre—” earlier than chopping himself off. One other councillor later confirmed to Currents that the discretionary advantages vote was the one Parnell requested to vary. Beamer stated it was too late to vary Parnell’s vote, however he suggested her that she might change it when the problem got here up once more at a metropolis council assembly in December.
Parnell didn’t reply to a number of requests for remark from Currents.
Nearing the tip of a marathon 11-hour price range assembly on November 19, 2024, Coun. Lesley Parnell requested to retroactively change one among her votes.
Many of the funding for discretionary advantages comes from the provincial authorities. However the province caps the quantity it offers for the advantages at a median of $10 per case per 30 days, which in Peterborough works out to an annual funding restrict of about $1.2 million. If case employees in Peterborough approve any discretionary advantages past that quantity, the town has to foot the invoice.
In 2024, the town authorised about $1.5 million of discretionary profit spending and the municipal share of that expense was $270,895, in accordance with the draft price range.
Peterborough’s group providers commissioner Sheldon Laidman defined that the provincial portion of discretionary profit funding will stay out there even when the municipal funding is lower. However with out the town’s contribution, funds could run out half means by way of the yr or the town might need to “limit discretionary benefits by policy” to make sure the provincial funds are ample.
“We have been spending a lot of our discretionary benefits,” stated director of social providers Rebecca Morgan-Quin throughout price range talks final week. “We don’t look forward to the idea of having to try to curb it part way through the year or reduce the number of people that we can assist.”
Kirsten Armbrust, the manager director of the Group Counselling and Useful resource Centre (CCRC), stated that most of the discretionary advantages “are things that should be mandatory.”
“Those are things that people need for their health,” Armbrust stated.
Province capped its funding for discretionary advantages in 2012, leaving cities to select up the tab
There’s a historical past of lowering discretionary advantages to steadiness budgets in Peterborough.
The advantages was solely paid for by the province. However on July 1, 2012, the Ontario authorities capped its funding, slashing $20 million from the provincial price range, and the Metropolis of Peterborough stepped in to foot a few of the invoice.
Since then, provincial funding for the advantages has remained comparatively regular whereas the town’s funding has decreased. In 2019, the town contributed $749,263 to deliver this system’s whole price range to $1.79 million. By 2024, the town’s portion had dropped to $270,895.
Now, the funding could be eradicated solely as metropolis councillors search for methods to cut back subsequent yr’s property tax enhance, which is presently sitting at 8 %. Eliminating municipal funding for discretionary advantages would deliver that enhance right down to 7.9 % and save the median property proprietor about $6.18 on their tax invoice subsequent yr.
In the meantime, the variety of individuals accessing Ontario Works is rising. In 2023, the typical caseload was 3,030 individuals. In 2025, the town is budgeting for a caseload of three,451 individuals as a result of “numbers are forecasted to increase across the province.”
Group Dwelling Trent Highlands govt director Teresa Jordan defined one mindset behind the repeated cutbacks to the advantages. “In the general public’s eye there’s this idea that the government can make cuts and be fiscally responsible, and some imaginary charity agencies like mine will just fill in the gap,” she stated.
Nevertheless, Jordan famous the fact is that “cuts to these kinds of things mean that people who are already almost impossibly making ends meet suddenly will have to go without.”
“I’m often amazed at how just a little bit of extra money or extra support or extra coverage for expenses can keep someone out of crisis,” Jordan stated. “Conversely, death by a thousand small cuts can cause a spiral that will destabilize and put a person into crisis.”
Throughout price range deliberations, Coun. Kevin Duguay stated that it was “incredibly unfair” that the working poor, who doubtless want well being advantages as badly as individuals on social help, aren’t eligible for discretionary advantages. Duguay voted in opposition to funding the advantages.
Emily Bennett, who lives in downtown Peterborough, depends upon ODSP to assist pay her bills. The necessary well being advantages she receives by way of ODSP helped pay for an eye fixed examination and new frames for her glasses in 2022.
“I don’t make enough money on my own from my part-time job and ODSP to save anything, so if I were paying out of my own pocket, I’d have just kept my outdated prescription forever,” Bennett stated.
Bennett stated the town needs to be making it simpler for individuals who want them to entry social help advantages, not chopping funding for them. She stated that navigating the system to entry advantages is difficult, and she or he finds it obscure which bills are eligible for protection.
“The concept of discretionary benefits was never explained to me in a way that I was able to understand and remember,” she stated. “Those of us with learning impairments don’t even understand we have some of these funds available to us to begin with.”
ODSP recipient Emily Bennett stated she wouldn’t have been in a position to afford imaginative and prescient care with out social help advantages. (Photograph: Alex Karn)
Though some social help recipients could also be unaware that these advantages exist or that they could be decreased, some residents pleaded with councilors to maintain the funding within the price range throughout council’s basic committee assembly on November 12.
“People are suffering. They’re going without. They’re struggling,” stated retired occupational therapist Joanne Bazak-Brokking throughout a delegation to council. “It’s just really devastating to think that another cut is going to occur to this particular budget line when it’s needed more than ever.”
