Thursday’s provincial election may represent a watershed moment for attempts to end poverty in Ontario.

My five colleagues — Gary Bloch, Laura Cattari, Debbie Douglas, Mary Marrone, Janet Reansbury and John Stapleton — and I have been part of discussion and debate, in some cases over several decades, involving government and civil society, about the desperate need for income security reform in our province. We have contributed to, supported and critiqued report after report, government proposals and specific reforms. Over the past 15 years, the focus has been mostly on incremental progress — until this spring.

Over the last two years we sat, at the invitation of our government, as part of a group charged with developing a 10-year plan for income security reform in Ontario. That plan was intended to complement the government’s decision to test the concept of a basic income guarantee.

Our report, “Income Security: A Roadmap for Change,” was released last November to little official fanfare. It presents a comprehensive, forward-looking, and eminently implementable 10-year plan for income security reform in Ontario

Its 98 recommendations include transforming social assistance to a program that provides real assistance to those it serves. It includes specific measures to assist all low-income persons in areas of greatest need, for example with the struggle to find affordable housing. It also includes a focus on those in deepest poverty, such as people who are homeless. And, essential to the lived realities of poverty in our province, it incorporates a uniquely integrated Indigenous voice throughout the report.

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Over the following four months we worried that the Road map was being officially buried — in that graveyard of beautifully written, sincere, well-intentioned, and ultimately ignored reports that came before it. We were concerned that, once again, a plan for realizable, measurable change would remain just that.

The first sign of hope came with the March provincial budget. In that document, the government promised major investments in income security reform. In fact, the budget promised to implement a large portion of the early recommendations of the Income Security Roadmap.

The NDP’s election platform went even further, embedding itself deeply in our recommendations, and committing to a full implementation of the Road map should that party form government.

The Greens promise a basic income, which, depending on the form it takes, may not be inconsistent with the direction of the Road map. The Conservatives have not yet released any platform positions on income security reform.

The federal government is developing a poverty reduction strategy and starting to signal new investments in income security, including its recent ten-year commitment to a major investment in housing security.

This is a watershed moment. The trickles of promises and bits of action on income security over the past many years may just be coalescing into a river of transformation.

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But this movement forward could easily be stopped. In 1988, Transitions, a landmark report on social assistance reform, was released. Parts of it were implemented over the next few years, but then those reforms were rejected and reversed by the next government in the mid-90s.

Everyone in Ontario has a powerful choice to make in this election. We can seize this opportunity to take a path toward a robust, supportive, empowering income security system that will put us at the forefront of jurisdictions trying to banish poverty. Or, we can lose improvements made in the last few years or — worse yet — take backward steps that would make life worse for low-income Ontarians. We cannot repeat the mistakes of the past.

We must hold our political representatives to account on Thursday and beyond. We must demand that whoever forms the next government implement the income security reform Roadmap recommendations — and make a full commitment to realizing the Roadmap’s vision of creating an income security system that works towards full economic and social inclusion for all.

George Thomson, Gary Bloch, Laura Cattari, Debbie Douglas, Mary Marrone, Janet Reansbury and John Stapleton were members of the Income Security Reform Working Group, which contributed to the vision and recommendations of the “Income Security: A Roadmap for Change” report.

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