There are 310,908 people on social assistance in Quebec; 310,908 people whose income is insufficient to cover basic needs such as food, housing, clothing and travel.
Posted at 1:00 p.m.
However, if the trend continues, to use the famous expression, the issue of the living conditions of people on social assistance will once again be sidelined from the upcoming election campaign. As if it were self-evident that thousands of people are forced to live in poverty so great that it compromises their physical and mental health and their dignity.
Insufficient one-off aid
People on social assistance have been left to their own devices during the pandemic. Apart from some administrative relaxations, which have become necessary due to the confinement, the government has not granted them any additional financial assistance. As misfortune never comes alone, these same people have been hit hard by inflation for more than a year.
Of course, everyone is affected by the rapid rise in prices, but the consequences are much more immediate and serious for those who, even before this surge in prices, did not have the possibility of cutting their budget.
The $500 granted by the outgoing government to “compensate for the rise in the cost of living” is far from sufficient to provide effective assistance to people on social assistance. Not to mention that those who, of the lot, have a debt to the State, or who have not completed their tax return, have not even been able to see the color of this money. In reality, $500 is still less than the extra amount that people on social assistance would need each month just to be able to meet their basic needs. Rather than ad hoc measures, the government must implement structural measures.
Curbing impoverishment
An effective and sustainable measure would be to raise public protections to the height of the Market Basket Measure (MBM), which corresponds to the cost of a set of goods and services considered basic. The Collective for a Poverty-Free Quebec has been making this claim for several years. Coverage of basic needs should be considered a non-negotiable minimum.
Recently, the Collective has also made another demand, which specifically aims to limit the impoverishment caused by galloping inflation: the indexation on a quarterly basis of social assistance benefits. Currently, benefits are indexed only once a year, on the 1er January.
The idea is not new. Quebec indexed social assistance every three months from 1982 to 1985 and that is what Ottawa did for the Old Age Security pension and the Guaranteed Income Supplement.
Quarterly indexation would make it possible to more adequately maintain the purchasing power of people on social assistance since their benefits would follow price variations more closely. If the benefits had been indexed on a quarterly basis from April 2021, the start of the inflationary surge, a single person on social assistance would now receive $40 more per month (i.e. $766 instead of $726 ) and a single person at Social Solidarity, $62 more per month (i.e. $1,200 instead of $1,138).
Respect the dignity of people
Next December, it will be 20 years since Quebec adopted the An Act to combat poverty and social exclusion, where the fight against poverty is defined as a “national imperative” and where the government undertakes to respect and protect “the dignity of people living in poverty”. Two decades later, it is clear that the government flouts the spirit of this law with its social assistance benefits that are so low that they condemn people to a life of deprivation.
Will the next government finally be able to respect and protect the dignity of people on social assistance? A first step in this direction would be to proceed with the quarterly indexation of benefits from the first months of his coming to power. A second would be to increase, as soon as possible, public protections to guarantee everyone an income at least equal to the MBM.
Good news: the third Government Action Plan for the fight against poverty is due to expire in 2023, and we must already start thinking about the fourth. Let’s hope that each of the political parties takes the time, during the election campaign, to inform the population of the measures it intends to include.