Poverty and Inequality: A Closer Look at Ontario's Works Program
This paper analyses Ontario's Work Program and how it has impacted welfare recipients. Ontario Works helps people to prepare for employment. Getting them the help they need to find a paying job as quickly as possible. Some of the possibilities exist through training for new and updated skills, practical work experience, and/or job placement. And help with child care, transportation and other work-related expenses. Is this enough? The era of easy social assistance caseload reductions based on growing employment and the re-absorption of the most employable has similarly come to an end. The recession, the changing structure of employment and the changing characteristics of the social assistance caseload make this is an ideal moment to re-visit the question of whether Ontario Works is well designed to help people make the transition from social assistance back into the labor force.
