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Helping people find work benefits individuals, but the economy needs their help, too. The government says there are 200,000 unfilled jobs in Ontario and a labour shortage is hurting Ontario’s businesses.

MacLeod is not promoting her plan as a cost-saving measure, but any government with a $14.5-billion deficit always needs to think about costs. A 10-per-cent reduction in the number of people on welfare would save the government about $300 million.

Money is where the PC plan falls short, although there is precious little detail about it. The government literally can’t afford the high cost of poverty, and it shows in some of the changes the PCs are making.

In its last budget, the previous government finally corrected a counterproductive approach that required people seeking welfare and disability supports to bleed their assets down to next-to-nothing before they could qualify. It appears the PCs have dumped that smart change.

They are also going to move toward a stricter definition of disability for new recipients, one that is in line with that of the federal government. The province believes people are migrating from welfare to disability because the payments are higher. It’s a justifiable change, but not a generous one.

Then there is the meagre size of the monthly payments. While the overall bill for welfare and disability is large, individual payments are cruelly small and will remain so. A single person on welfare gets up to $733 a month and a person on disability support receives $1,169. These are not sums on which a person can live. The Liberals had promised three-per-cent increases in both payments for three years. The PCs have increased them 1.5 per cent and have no commitment to do more.

Boil it down and what we are left with is an assertion that the PCs can make the welfare bureaucracy more effective, combined with spending that will benefit the poor less than what the Liberals would have done. That’s not a lot to cheer about.

Randall Denley is an Ottawa commentator and former Ontario PC candidate. Contact him at randalldenley1@gmail.com