Doubling social assistance rates would make ‘life-changing difference,’ recipient says - CBC News [2024-01-25]

Whether she’s riding the bus to an appointment, packing her son’s school lunch or taking courses so she can get a good job, Tia is constantly running numbers in her head.

“I crunch numbers all day long to figure out what I have, what I’m going to have, what I might need to put aside, or if there’s $10 left over, if I’ll put it on the hydro bill,” the 27-year-old mom told CBC News earlier this week. “I can’t just go in tp a grocery store and put things into my cart like the average person. I have to think about the cost, how I can stretch it.”

Every month, $1,002.92 gets deposited into her account from Ontario Works (OW. Her rent is $925 a month. Add in an $8 service fee charged by her landlord to pay the rent, $25 for a cell phone, $70 for Rogers and $60 for hydro, and she’s already $86 in the hole, without having purchased any food for herself or her son.

“Every month when you get your check,it’s already spent. It’s gone before you get it,” Tia said. (CBC News is only using her first name because of the stigma of living on social assistance). If it weren’t for a monthly federal child tax benefit and quarterly carbon tax credit, she wouldn’t be able to survive.