The Québec Ombudsman criticizes the Minister of Social Solidarity and Community Action, Chantal Rouleau, for overly limiting the hours of work that people on social assistance can accumulate before their check is reduced.
Currently in Quebec, welfare recipients are allowed to earn a maximum of $200 per month in work if they don’t want their cheque to be reduced. That’s the equivalent of about three hours per week at minimum wage ($15.80).
This summer, the government announced that it would give them more leeway by reducing the penalties imposed when the threshold is exceeded by 10%. A person whose cheque was previously reduced by $463 per month would therefore recover $46.
For the public protector, Marc-André Dowd, this is not enough relief. “With this calculation, we must ask ourselves if [cela] will really encourage service providers to work more,” he argues in a letter sent in August to Minister Chantal Rouleau, as part of consultations conducted by his ministry.
The 10% supplement, he continues, is “insufficient” and will “probably not produce the desired effects.”
16 hours less than 25 years ago
Mr. Dowd also mentions that the $200 threshold has not been indexed since 1999. At that time, it allowed people to work 29 hours a month at minimum wage. Today, it is the equivalent of about 13 hours.
If the $200 threshold had been indexed based on the cost of living over the past 25 years, it would be around $338, he notes.
The 10% increase was announced in the Action Plan to Combat Poverty and Social Exclusion (2024-2029) tabled by the Minister in June. In this plan, the government said it was allowing the increase to “support recipients of social assistance and social solidarity programs towards greater participation in the labour market.” And this, “in the current context of labour shortage.”
In the past, Minister Rouleau had already spoken publicly about her desire to increase the $200 limit. In an interview in April 2023, she even mentioned an increase of up to $500. “I want to review that. Is it going to be $500, […] “A percentage, a number of hours? I don’t know,” she confided to The Press Canadian.
A first step
Questioned by The Duty On the comments of the Québec Ombudsman, the ministry defends its decision. It says it fears in particular that a more marked increase in allowable incomes will make social assistance too advantageous compared to the job market. “We must ensure that it remains advantageous to work at minimum wage compared to social assistance when we take into account the available Quebec and federal tax credits.”
The Ministry of Employment and Social Solidarity also mentions that “several options have been analyzed” and suggests that its thinking on the subject is not complete.
“The introduction of a supplement to earned income that exceeds the applicable exclusions constitutes a first step in the overall reflection on the mechanisms to encourage providers to work,” he writes.
He also clarified that the 10% increase is not in force since it must be approved by a decree of the Council of Ministers. Once this is done, the change should come into force on 1er January.
A long-standing claim
For their part, associations that defend people on social assistance have been calling for a major increase for years. They argue that this ceiling is counterproductive and that it deprives these people of good opportunities for reintegration.
In a report at the same time last year, The Dutyr reported, for example, the case of Denis, a welfare recipient who had been a chef in a previous life and who wanted to work a few hours as a dishwasher in a restaurant. However, at five and a half hours of work per week, welfare took away the equivalent of everything he had earned.
A total of 2,630 households out of the 258,267 on social assistance are penalized in this way, according to data from the Québec Ombudsman, or 1% of the total.
The intervention of the Ombudsman came a few weeks before the minister tabled a bill aimed at making social assistance “more humane.” In Quebec, the basic social assistance benefit is $807 per month. Some people are entitled to additional allowances, for employment constraints, for example.