Volume 6, Issue 2, October 1996

CHURCH JOINS VOICES AGAINST WORKFARE

Fears are being raised by some that the present Ontario government's program of "Ontario Works", which is being put into operation to replace the long-time welfare system, is flawed.

Claimed to give its participants valuable experience and skills required to gain employment and to become self-sufficient, the new programme, with the present high unemployment and lack of jobs, appears to be destined to put many jobless people at clean-up and occassional work in the community.

The United Church, at its meeting of the Hamilton Conference last summer declared no to the new programme. Composed of around 350 congregations in the regions of Niagara, Hamilton-Wentworth, Halton, Brant, Haldimand-Norfolk, Wellington and Bruce, the delegates agreed to "Say no! to mandatory workfare" and to "Encourage congregations to find ways to stand in solidarity with the poor in our communities, in this painful time, in this opposition to Mandatory Workfare."

The social planning Council of Metropolitan Toronto says the programme appears based on the assumption that slotting someone into a job is the same as creating a new job, and ignores the possibility that they will simply be shuffling the population on assistance. They point out as well that the assurance workfare will not displace any paid workers will be impossible to monitor and enforce.

Though the workfare programme meets the popular contemporary point of view that every citizen must give something in order to get something, the Ontario programme appears to simply trade welfare assistance and job training for low wage, intermittent work in which the recipients will not end up better off financially or trained.

Forced to do mundane work under duress and without freedom does not meet our common responsibility to treat those who truly cannot help themselves justly and humanely.

Search Articles by Keyword

 


Back to Issue Summary || Issue Index || Home

"Religion NOW" is published in limited edition by the Rev. Ross E. Readhead, B.A., B.D., Certificate of Corrections, McMaster University, in the interest of furthering knowledge and participation in religion. Dialogue is invited and welcomed.