Many workers who experience permanent injuries while on the job are forced into poverty and homelessness because the WSIB has a routine policy of turning down claims, forcing injured workers to launch appeals that take years to resolve. Instead of workers getting the financial support they need and are entitled to, they wind up trying to survive on ODSP. That’s off-loading the financial responsibility of employers onto the public—a free ride for employers and a lose-lose situation for workers and the public.

Yesterday, the Minister of Economic Development bragged about cutting employers’ WSIB premiums by 30%—and then, later that year, at the same time as injured workers are being forced onto ODSP, he gave $1.2 billion back to employers.

This year, injured workers were betrayed yet again when their cost-of-living allowance was set a full 2% lower than stipulated in law and in WSIB policy. While this government thinks nothing of showering businesses with money intended to support injured workers, they are happy to rip off workers by deliberately shortchanging them on their cost-of-living increase. This is disgraceful and cruel.

Your treatment of people with disabilities is unacceptable.

I have a petition here to double ODSP and OW rates.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas CTV recently reported that at least two Ontarians with disabilities are choosing to die through medical assistance in dying (MAID) because they could not pay for housing that would reduce their suffering from their disability;

“Whereas London, Ontario, ICU physician Dr. Scott Anderson reports seeing more patients asking for MAID because they cannot afford the services they need to accommodate their disabilities;

“Whereas the Center for Justice and Social Compassion estimates that almost half of the 12,000 people in Ontario who are homeless have a disability or mental illness and 216 people experiencing homelessness died on the streets and shelters of Toronto in 2021, more than double the rate since the Conservative government took office in 2018;

“Whereas the Premier and the Conservative government have promised to raise Ontario Disability Support Program ... rates by 5%, to $1,225, of which $520 is for shelter and $705 is for food, clothing, transportation, medicine and other necessities;

“Whereas current monthly ODSP payments are 47.5% short of the municipal poverty line in Ontario and 30% below the province’s poverty line;

“Whereas it is not possible to survive on these amounts in Ontario and therefore, Ontario Works (OW) and ODSP rates kill because they do not provide Ontarians with enough income to live;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to take action on the ODSP and OW crisis by doubling OW and ODSP rates immediately so that Ontarians with disabilities have enough income to survive.”

Speaker, I fully support this petition. I will affix my signature to it and give it to page Kalila.