“There’s a growing impression among the taxpayers of this province that they are being drained of their money to provide a living for idlers… We will pay the municipalities a lump sum each month… In other words, we will say to them: ‘Here’s the alimony, you raise the children.’”
– Mitch Hepburn, Premier of Ontario, 1935
“There was rampant fraud and welfare abuse… it was inconvenient for people to have to go down to offices to pick up cheques so we mailed them out and we found out that mail was being re-directed to other provinces and even other countries…We had to re-adjust rates and give incentives for those who were able-bodied to go out and get into what we called ‘workfare’ or ‘education fare’ or ‘get-off-your-duff-and do-something fare.’ So, ‘workfare’ – … and other policies in combination were a huge success.
– Mike Harris, Premier of Ontario, 2002
“What drives me crazy is people on Ontario Works, probably 300,000 or 400,000 that are healthy and we’ve never seen more jobs… It really bothers me that we have healthy people sitting at home collecting your hard-earned dollars.
– Doug Ford, Premier of Ontario, 2023
One of the most enduring assumptions in Canadian social policy is that people experiencing poverty must be supervised before they can be helped.
The idea is so deeply embedded in welfare systems that we rarely stop to question it. Yet it may be one of the most important unanswered question in social policy today.
Is supervision actually necessary before we provide income support? Or is it a historical assumption that has survived long after its original rationale disappeared?
For years I have participated in focus groups and seminars involving both social assistance recipients and members of the general public. The conversations often begin in very different places. The public worries about dependency. Recipients worry about survival.
But something surprising happens as the discussions unfold. The two groups begin describing exactly the same path out of poverty.
When members of the public are asked how someone receiving welfare should improve their situation, the answers are remarkably consistent:
- Get a job.
- Get training.
- Save some money.
- Accept help from family.
- Share housing costs with others.
In other words, do what millions of Canadians do every day to build greater security and independence. What is striking is that social assistance recipients say much the same thing.
After decades of working with Ontario Works and ODSP recipients, I have rarely heard people say their primary ambition is simply to receive more assistance.
Instead, they say:
“I wish I could work without being penalized.”
“I wish I could get training that led somewhere.”
“I wish I could save for the future.”
“I wish my family could help me.”
“I wish I could move in with a friend without losing benefits.”
The aspirations are nearly identical. The public and recipients agree far more than policymakers seem to realize. The problem is that welfare rules frequently block the very route that both groups support.
The system says it wants work. But it places penalties on work.
Take employment.
The public routinely tells welfare recipients to get a job. Recipients often want to work. Yet welfare systems reduce benefits as earnings increase beyond modest exemptions less than 7% of minimum wages. The details vary over time and across programs, but the underlying message remains the same: work more while support declines.
The system says it wants self-sufficiency. But it often discourages the investments that produce it.
Consider education and training.
Most Canadians believe that skills and education are among the most reliable routes out of poverty. Recipients agree.
Yet many welfare-related training programs emphasize rapid labour-market attachment rather than helping people build sustainable careers. The focus is often on getting any job quickly rather than obtaining the credentials needed for long-term advancement.
The system says it wants responsibility. But it often penalizes the accumulation of modest assets.
Consider savings.
Governments encourage Canadians to save through TFSAs, RRSPs, pensions, RESPs, and emergency funds. Financial resilience is treated as a virtue.
Yet social assistance systems have long imposed asset rules that make it difficult for recipients to build meaningful financial security.
The system says it wants community. But it often penalizes community.
Consider family support.
Most Canadians regard family assistance as normal and desirable. Parents help children. Children help parents. Relatives provide housing, transportation, food, childcare, and financial support.
Yet welfare systems have frequently treated such assistance as income that can reduce benefits.
The system says it wants efficiency. But it often penalizes cooperation.
Finally, consider shared housing.
When costs rise, Canadians reduce expenses by living together. Students share apartments. Friends become roommates. Adult children move home. Extended families pool resources. Yet social assistance systems often reduce benefits when recipients share housing or form households.
The contradiction is difficult to ignore.
For decades, welfare policy has been shaped by a fear of dependency. Policymakers worried that benefits might become too comfortable. Rules were designed to ensure that assistance remained temporary, conditional, and less attractive than employment.
Over time those rules multiplied.
Earnings rules.
Asset rules.
Household rules.
Gift rules.
Training rules.
The result is that many welfare systems now discourage precisely the behaviours most Canadians associate with independence. To understand why, we need to look backward.
When modern welfare programs emerged in the 1930s, Canada had not yet built a comprehensive income security system. There was no CPP. OAS was still evolving. Employment Insurance was in its infancy. Poverty was often viewed through the lens of character, conduct, and deservingness.
Relief was therefore designed not merely to provide income but also to supervise recipients. The state became a substitute parent. Income support and behavioural oversight were intertwined. Think about what Mitch Hepburn said in the opening quote.
At the time, this approach reflected prevailing social attitudes. Governments were constructing programs in a world still heavily influenced by nineteenth-century distinctions between the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor.
But then something remarkable happened. Over the next eighty years, Canada gradually built an income security system that abandoned many of those assumptions.
Old Age Security does not investigate whether recipients have roommates. CPP does not impose asset tests. Employment Insurance does not require applicants to liquidate savings. The Canada Child Benefit does not demand proof that recipients have exhausted every source of family assistance.
Workers’ compensation does not reduce benefits because someone receives help from relatives. Program after program moved away from supervision and toward income security.
Except one. Welfare.
Welfare remained rooted in a philosophy that predated the modern income security state. Recipients continued to face rules governing savings, gifts, earnings, family support, living arrangements, and countless other aspects of daily life.
The historical question is no longer why welfare was designed this way. The more interesting question is why it stayed this way while almost everything around it changed.
Part of the answer is political. Most income security programs became broadly shared and politically legitimate. Welfare never did.
Part of the answer is administrative. Entire bureaucracies developed around monitoring eligibility, relationships, assets, and household arrangements.
But there is another explanation. Welfare performs a symbolic function that other income security programs do not.
Programs such as OAS, CPP, Employment Insurance, and the Canada Child Benefit are expected primarily to provide income.
Welfare is expected to provide income and reassure the public that poverty is being supervised. The system serves two masters.
One objective is relief. The other is oversight.
The first pushes toward adequacy, simplicity, and trust. The second pushes toward conditions, restrictions, monitoring, and behavioural control. The result satisfies neither objective particularly well.
Recipients dislike welfare because it is intrusive, restrictive, and inadequate. The public dislikes welfare because it appears ineffective. Governments dislike welfare because poverty persists despite decades of reform.
Yet all three groups often agree on what people need to move forward.
Work.
Training.
Savings.
Family support.
Cooperation.
The irony is profound. For decades governments have argued that welfare should not become income security because income security might create dependency.
But what if the opposite is true? What if the refusal to provide genuine income security is actually preventing independence?
A person who cannot save remains vulnerable.
A person who cannot accept family support remains isolated.
A person who cannot pursue meaningful training remains trapped.
A person who cannot work without penalty remains disconnected from the labour market.
A person who cannot share housing remains burdened by unnecessary costs. These are not pathways to independence. They are obstacles to it.
Perhaps the most important lesson from decades of listening to both recipients and the public is that the disagreement is not nearly as large as policymakers assume.
The real disagreement is not between welfare recipients and the public. It is between the aspirations both groups share and the rules themselves.
After nearly a century, it is fair to ask whether the assumption that poverty must first be supervised before it can be relieved has earned the right to survive.
Or whether that assumption has become the very thing standing in the way of the independence it was meant to promote.