Introduction
In November 2025, March of Dimes Canada responded to an open consultation launched by Ontario's Ministry of Children, Community, and Social Services to re-envision Ontario's poverty reduction strategy. We shared the following insights and recommendations expressing the need for those with lived experience of disability and poverty to have a meaningful say in the design and implementation of government policy. These recommendations are based on our expertise in providing community support services and skills, development and employment services to people with disabilities across Canada, deeply informed by the lived experience of our service users.
Submission
November 28, 2025
The Honourable Michael Parsa
Minister of Children, Community and Social Services
Minister's Office
7th Floor 438 University Avenue
Toronto ON M5G 2K8
Submitted by email to:
prs@ontario.ca
Dear Minister Parsa,
On behalf of March of Dimes Canada (MODC), we welcome the Ontario government's invitation to Ontarians to share their experiences, perspectives, challenges, and priorities to assess the current poverty reduction strategy and to explore opportunities for the next strategy.
MODC is a leading national charity committed to championing equity, empowering ability, and creating real change that will help people with disabilities across the country unlock the richness of their lives. We're paving the way for people with disabilities to experience full and meaningful lives in an inclusive world.
MODC has
signed a submission for this consultation coordinated by Maytree. We would like to provide context for our support of this submission, including real-world examples of the consequences of policy decisions that do not embed a human rights-based approach to poverty reduction.
Maytree and our other co-signatories have endorsed the following best practices that should be integrated into the next poverty reduction strategy.
An acknowledgement of the systemic causes of poverty and plans to address each of them.
Coordinated, dignified, adequate support for those living in poverty, primarily but not exclusively in the form of income security.
Transparent, measurable goals for reducing poverty and deep poverty, coupled with supporting indicators for housing, food insecurity, access to services, equity of outcomes, and more.
Inclusive governance structures that enable those with lived experience of poverty to have a meaningful say in the design and implementation of anti-poverty initiatives.
These best practices must be adopted to implement the recommendation that Ontario's next poverty reduction strategy commit to reducing the poverty rate to no more than 7.5 per cent by 2030, representing a 50 per cent reduction over 2015 levels.
1. Supporting people with disabilities to find meaningful employment
MODC delivers a wide range of employment services for people with disabilities, including:
- Specialized assessment services tailored to the unique needs of clients in rehabilitation settings
- Employment placement referrals for people with disabilities.
- Online Employment Services, which provide comprehensive support to people with disabilities, empowering them with the skills to enter and excel in the workforce.
Service providers across Ontario who support people with disabilities are facing significant barriers because of the provincial government's restructuring of Employment Ontario (EO). While the intention behind the transformation is to streamline employment services and create a more outcomes-driven system, its implementation has had unintended and deeply concerning consequences for equity and inclusion.
Under the new model, introduced as part of EO's modernization beginning in 2019, all job seekers, including those receiving Ontario Works and the ODSP, now access employment services through a single system managed by Service System Managers (SSMs). In this restructured system, funding to service providers is increasingly tied to performance-based outcomes, including incentive payments triggered only when a job seeker is employed for a minimum of twenty hours per week.
This threshold presents a major structural barrier for many people with disabilities, for whom working twenty hours per week may not be feasible. Individuals may face episodic health conditions, post-neurological illness fatigue, require workplace accommodations, or need to re-enter the workforce gradually after extended periods of unemployment or recovery. In these cases, part-time employment, flexible schedules, and progressive work experiences are critical and meaningful steps toward long-term employment and financial independence.
The current funding model doesn't allow for these options. It forces service providers into a tough choice: either help people who want and can work part-time without getting paid for that support or focus on clients who meet the twenty-hour requirement to keep their operations running. This creates an unfair system that excludes people with disabilities, goes against the idea of inclusive employment, and undermines equity and person-centered services.
In practice, this restructuring has resulted in reduced access to appropriate employment services for people with disabilities, strained provider capacity, and the erosion of specialized expertise that has been built over decades. Without changes to the funding and measurement framework to reflect the diverse realities of job seekers with disabilities, the system risks excluding those it most urgently needs to support.
To truly reduce poverty, Ontario must remove barriers to employment for people with disabilities. We urge the government to revise its incentive structure so service providers are rewarded for supporting clients who very much want to work but cannot work twenty hours per week. Recognizing part-time and flexible employment as meaningful outcomes will open doors to opportunity and ensure every Ontarian can contribute according to their abilities.
2. Preventing homelessness and protecting renters' rights
On Monday, November 24, 2025,
Bill 60, the
Fighting Delays, Building Faster Act 2025, passed third reading. The government brought this bill forward without providing an opportunity for public input or meaningful debate, removing essential renter protections and putting more people in Ontario at risk of losing their homes. Although the stated goals of this bill – to cut red tape, speed up construction timelines, and support the delivery of new homes, roads, and infrastructure across Ontario – are admirable, there are elements of this bill that will disproportionately negatively impact people with disabilities.
People with disabilities are more likely to be renters than homeowners than the rest of the population in Canada (33 per cent of people with disabilities, compared to 26 per cent of the non-disabled population).1 Furthermore, Statistics Canada has revealed that people with disabilities are more likely to experience barriers to finding and keeping housing (due in part to lower incomes and health conditions) and are twice as likely to be evicted than their non-disabled counterparts.2
These factors are clear examples of why it is essential to embed a human rights-based approach in policy making. Because this lens has not been used for Bill 60, it will make life harder for all tenants, particularly those with disabilities. Of particular concern:
- The bill gives tenants who are behind on their rent only seven days to pay any rent owing in the N4 notice (Notice to End a Tenancy Early for Non-payment) before the landlord can apply to the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) for an eviction hearing. Tenants currently have fourteen days to repay their rent.
- Tenants have lost the right to raise their health and safety issues at their arrears hearing under Bill 60 unless they meet strict advance notice requirements and pay 50 per cent of the rent alleged as being owed up front.
- Bill 60 allows the government to set out the factors that the LTB can consider in deciding whether to postpone an eviction to account for a tenant's personal circumstances (section 83). These are generally circumstances out of the tenant's control, some related to human rights grounds, including illness, disability, caregiving responsibilities, problems receiving income assistance payments, and job loss. Bill 60 places limits on LTB's ability to postpone an eviction. Prior to Bill 60, there were no restrictions on LTB considerations of s.83 tenant circumstances.
- Bill 60 shortens the time to request a review of an LTB decision to fifteen days (from thirty). The Bill also gives the government power to limit the circumstances where an LTB decision can be reviewed.
- Bill 60 has removed the one month rent compensation for “landlord own use" (N12) evictions if the landlord provides four months' notice. Currently, the one-month compensation is mandatory with two months' notice.
- Tribunals Ontario is exploring the creation of an online database for LTB decisions that in effect will act as a blacklist for tenants and make their personal information publicly accessible. This means that a person with a disability who falls behind on their rent because they receive a low income, face unexpected health costs, or generally need to meet the higher cost of life with a disability, may find it even more difficult to find housing if they are included in this database.3
Additionally, instead of improving the LTB to prevent evictions, building affordable housing and properly funding tenant supports, resources are being poured into evicting tenants from their homes faster after receiving an eviction order.
We strongly encourage the government of Ontario to reconsider the elements of Bill 60 by redirecting resources to support the efficient functioning of the LTB, and as stated in Maytree's submission, that government policies must embed a human rights-based approach to reduce poverty. This is particularly critical for people with disabilities, who have intersecting identities that compound the barriers they face to living above the poverty line.
Conclusion
People with disabilities face intersecting barriers that compound poverty. Ontario's next poverty reduction strategy must prioritize equity, inclusion, and human rights across all government decisions and ministries to ensure no one is left behind. Existing government policies that disadvantage marginalized groups, including people with disabilities, must be re-envisioned by enabling those with lived experience of disability and poverty to have a meaningful say in the design and implementation of government policy.
