The word “poverty” has been conspicuously absent from the Ontario government’s 2025 budget and any plans to “protect Ontario” from tariff-related uncertainty. This is bad news for the increasing number of Ontarians who live in poverty.
Given the silence from the top, you’d never know that we already have a plan on the books—the Ontario Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS), which is the province’s central framework meant to assess and address poverty and its drivers, such as food insecurity, homelessness, income insecurity, and discrimination. Unfortunately, according to the government’s recently released PRS 2024 annual review, Ontario’s approach to poverty reduction is not working.
The major problem with the current strategy is that it relies heavily on employment as the primary poverty reduction tool, while ignoring everything else that makes gainful employment possible, like stable housing or affordable transit. The failing results of this narrow approach are starting to show up in the data for those receiving Ontario Works (OW) and Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP), many of whom face multiple challenges to employment.
Despite the government’s goal to move 60,000 people off of social assistance by 2024, only 34,994 transitioned to employment—a lower number than in 2019. The 2024 report also shows that the number of OW recipients reporting employment earnings dropped significantly—in 2019, just over one in eight recipients reported income. In 2024, just over one in 14 recipients did.
For ODSP recipients, the rate of reported employment earnings also fell slightly, despite significant investment in Integrated Employment Services meant to deliver “more efficient and streamlined” support for job seekers. The average time it takes to leave social assistance programs has also remained unchanged. Worst of all, poverty rates overall have stagnated or are up since 2019.
These outcomes show systemic failure, not personal failure. They reflect the squeeze that many across the province are feeling daily. Many of the so-called “employment exits” involve precarious, gig-based, or low-wage jobs that do little to lift people out of poverty. As legal clinic workers, we routinely hear from clients trapped in cycles of underemployment—forced to choose between keeping vital health benefits or accepting underpaying or dangerous jobs—while facing chronic financial stress, complicated social assistance rules, and inadequate income support.
Ontario Works rates have been stuck at $733 per month for single recipients since 2018, while inflation has risen over 23 per cent. And let’s be clear about who “recipients” are—they’re young people who can’t find employment, they’re caregivers, single parents, newcomers, women fleeing domestic violence, and your neighbour who got laid off and who has exhausted their Employment Insurance and any savings they may have had in order to keep afloat.
ODSP rates, though now annually indexed to inflation, are so far below the poverty line that the 2025 inflationary increase of $40 per month for single individuals barely registers. In 2023, the gap between ODSP income and the poverty line for a single recipient was over $12,000. An inflation-related adjustment doesn’t come close to bridging that gap.
So what would a real poverty reduction strategy in 2025 look like?
First, social assistance rates must reflect the actual cost of living. This means restoring the real value of OW and increasing social assistance rates to bring them above the poverty line. Poverty rates dipped significantly across all age groups, genders, and ethnicities during the pandemic when more people were receiving direct income transfers from the government.
Second, housing policy must move beyond vague affordability promises toward structural reform—starting with real rent control (including ending vacancy decontrol), and committing to meaningful social housing investment.
Third, employment supports must prioritize decent work. That means raising the minimum wage to a living wage, strengthening labour protections and enforcement, and regulating the gig economy to prevent exploitation.
As the government begins to draft a new PRS, it should start by listening to impacted communities, to its own data, and to the many anti-poverty advocates who have long been clear about what needs to change. The next strategy must meet our current societal moment with a strengthened social safety net and clear, time-bound targets that will move—and keep—people out of poverty.
