Urging Ontario to keep their commitments

The group the Ontario Coalition for Social Justice is urging the Ontario government to keep their commitments to reducing poverty. The group even says to even got into the red to do it.

Our snippet comes from the Toronto Star. Rob Ferguson fills us in on the what the group says.

With less than a week until next Wednesday's fall economic statement, the lobby group said yesterday that hard economic times make it increasingly important to provide more help for the province's 1.3 million poor.

Premier Dalton McGuinty has promised a poverty-reduction plan will be introduced by the end of the year but has already warned it may have to be watered down or delayed because of financial pressures.

But only substantial infusions of cash – such as a 30 per cent increase in welfare rates to make up for the 1995 cuts by former Progressive Conservative premier Mike Harris – will put a serious dent in poverty, the coalition told a news conference.

"We've heard many times that they don't plan to spend any extra money on reducing poverty, that it's a matter of re-allocating and changing policies as opposed to investing more," said spokesperson Josephine Grey.