Comment 61606

By A Smith (anonymous) | Posted March 26, 2011 at 19:14:08 in reply to Comment 61588

arienc, you are correct. An economy that accumulates money at the top is not healthy. That's why I am in favour of moving welfare rates much higher.

The current rate is around $570 month, hardly enough to survive on. If the provincial government moved that up to $900, that money would flow right back into the competitive free market.

As of Jan 2010, Ontario had a welfare case load of 819,084. If you multiply that by an additional $330/month, that works out to an additional $3.2 Billion.

The total Ontario budget plan for 2010-11 was $125.8 billion.

To put this in context, in 1997-98, a year the Ontario economy grew 4.5% (2002 dollars) , the social services budget (welfare) accounted for 14.9% of total provincial expenditures. In that same year, the entire Ontario budget was only 15% of GDP.

Today, the Ontario budget is 20.4% of GDP and yet social services is only 7.4% of the budget. In other words, less of the budget today is spent on cash payments and more goes to employing public employees.

To be clear, in 1997-98, Mike Harris spent 14.9% of the Ontario budget on welfare and the economy was strong. In 2010-11, Dalton McGuinty is spending only 7.4% and the economy is just alright.

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