Ontario

Injured workers said the move is unfair and that the WSIB’s surplus is money rightfully owed to them — not their bosses.

The provincial government announced the WSIB rebate in late November. It is a repeat of a policy Ontario Premier Doug Ford rolled out prior to the last provincial election in 2022. Ford is widely expected to call an early election next year.

The report argued the agency has used practices such as “deeming” to reduce the amount owed to injured workers. Through this practice, a construction worker hurt while earning $25 per hour could be “deemed” fit by the WSIB to work a lower-paid job, like grocery store clerk. This practice reduces the level of income support the WSIB provides to an injured worker, even if the worker has been unsuccessful landing a clerk job after hundreds of applications, the report said.

A construction business with 50 employees could receive as much as $46,000 as a result of the rebate, according to a provincial press release.

With the recent rising cost of living and high cost of inflation “we’re in the worst scenario we’ve seen to date,” said Lisa Needham, nutritionist at WDGPH, who wrote the report. This is locally, provincially and nationally. In 2019, 12.3 per cent of people were living in food insecure households locally and in 2023 it was 23.4 per cent.

A family of four on Ontario Works (OW) would have negative $145 left after monthly expenses since 58 per cent of the family’s income goes to rent and 47 per cent goes to purchasing food as part of the nutritious food basket.

For single person households in the example scenarios “we see really scary findings. We see that they would require another $500 to $750 a month to afford those two basic expenses let alone anything else,” said Needham.

Money for monthly expenses is still short for those in the Ontario Disability Support Program. A single person would see 103 per cent of their income go to rent and 32 per cent to food. This leaves them short by $511 at the end of the month. A single, pregnant person is only marginally better off with 100 per cent of their income going to rent and 33 per cent for food. This leaves them short of $502.

The Doug Ford government spent three times as much on advertising last fiscal year compared to the year before, with more than 60 per cent of that funding going toward partisan advertising.

This is “the most the government has ever spent on advertising in a year,” the province’s auditor general wrote in her annual report released Tuesday.

Between April 1, 2023, and March 31, 2024, the Progressive Conservatives spent at least $103.5 million on ads. A good portion of that — about $43.2 million — was spent on the “Let’s Build Ontario” campaign, which included television advertisements in “expensive time slots,” including during NHL games and the Super Bowl.

Auditor General Shelley Spence reports that those “It’s Happening Here” ads, which say that “more people are working than ever before” while touting Ontario’s economy and way of life, cost about $18.8 million as of March 2024. The ads began running in early 2023 and continue to be aired.

These ads were particularly controversial given their high-profile airing times, with opposition parties criticizing the government for spending millions of taxpayer dollars on television ads promoting the PCs’ accomplishments.

Liberal MPP John Fraser has argued that it was not a good use of money, especially as the province undergoes an affordability crisis.

Premier Doug Ford’s office was intimately involved in the Ontario Place redevelopment process, which was “not fair, transparent or accountable,” the province’s auditor general wrote in a blistering report released Tuesday.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/34012957

— Brampton has become the first city in Ontario to endorse the Plant Based Treaty and make “a plant based approach as a part of the city’s climate plan.” The move means they join 33 towns and citiesworldwide, including Rainbow Lake in Alberta, Los Angeles, Amsterdam and Edinburgh, in calling for a global Plant Based Treaty to be added to the Paris Agreement.

snips from the news bit:

Total of 1,484 residential homes will be built on a former commuter parking lot

The development will include 444 condos and a mix of one- to three-bedroom rental homes that will be available to residents of various income levels.

Green said the four-block community that will be created will include a childcare centre, community space, retail space and public park.

In a news release on Tuesday, the city said crews have already begun to remove parking infrastructure to prepare the site for development. Construction is set to begin in the spring, with occupancy expected in early 2029.

Ford has really ramped up the showmanship lately, calling for a bike lane witch hunt and making magical announcements about beer, highway tunnels and $200 cheques. Much of it, it seems, is being done in the service of getting us to look away from the reality of how things are going in Ford’s Ontario.

In particular, he’d really like us to pay no attention to the housing policy failure behind the curtain. But by the numbers, Ford’s failure on housing should be way too big to hide.

A report released last week by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation revealed that housing starts in Ontario are down 18 per cent so far this year. That stat, which measures the number of new housing units that saw construction get started, should set off loud alarm bells. Because housing, more than any other issue, has been Ford’s signature issue — the subject of lots of legislation. He’s styled himself as a builder-in-chief who will “get it done.”

This isn’t a case of Ontario’s large population skewing the numbers, either. For his excellent Data Shows newsletter, analyst Tom Parkin recently crunched the per-capita numbers for housing starts and found Ontario ranked eighth out of Canada’s 10 provinces. According to Parkin’s numbers, with just 34 new starts for every 100,000 people, Ontario’s rate of per-capita building was well below that of provincial peers like Manitoba (47), Quebec (47.8), B.C. (58.8) and Alberta (89.9).

With numbers like that, it’s no surprise that the province has dim hopes of hitting its much-ballyhooed goal of building 1.5 million homes by the end of 2031.

DOFO on his way to build another expensive highway that moves less people than trains, busses, and bike lanes, while forcing more people into car traffic.

#DOFO @ontario #DougFord #ThugFord #ONPoli

This is malice. Thug Ford continues to ruin the health of Ontarians.

@ontario #ThugFord #ONPoli

Hey Ontario, are you doing OK?

#ONPoli #TOPoli #NotOneSeat #ThugFord #ONPoli @ontario

Tell your friends. Inbe4 someone spends 5min discussing the effecacy of a petition that takes 2min to read and sign.

cross-posted from: https://discuss.online/post/13377479

Someone I know (nickname: Jane Doe) was a victim of sexual violence in Toronto. Could you please provide all (ideally the most effective and best) organization contacts (e.g. police, gender-based violence (GVB) against women entities/orgs) to report the event, support and effectively and fast catch the perpetrator (both for Jane Doe's safety and of other people), and provide me with information, protocols, resources, apps, psychological support, risk assessment and creating a safety plan against GVB and re-victimization, etc.

Also, please provide me with links to laws on gender-based violence, and more specifically sexual violence and harassment against women to make us aware of what exactly constitutes his crimes and to hopefully put the perpetrator on jail. Let's do this, Toronto. Of course I'm providing Jane Doe's with support and help as long as Jane Doe's is comfortable with.

If anyone here has gone through this process, please share the details and insights and how to best and most effectively handle the situation in all its processes, for example with reporting to the police and how do you protect yourselves from re-victimization.

I compiled and sent this file to Jane Doe for now specifically with Toronto/Ontario/Canada resources: https://oshi.at/GePn

A Kingston, Ont., doctor celebrated for organizing drive-thru vaccination clinics that helped thousands get shots at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic is now being ordered to pay back more than $600,000 in fees for those same services.

Dr. Elaine Ma said she organized 45 mass vaccination clinics that administered roughly 35,000 doses between April 2021 and the following February.

Her work was recognized by the Ontario College of Family Physicians, which granted her its Award of Excellence in 2021, in part pointing to Ma's role in boosting local vaccination rates.

About a year later, the doctor said she received notice from the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) seeking to recoup the money she had billed for the shots — approximately $600,000, plus around $35,000 in interest.

A Kingston, Ont., doctor celebrated for organizing drive-thru vaccination clinics that helped thousands get shots at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic is now being ordered to pay back more than $600,000 in fees for those same services.

Dr. Elaine Ma said she organized 45 mass vaccination clinics that administered roughly 35,000 doses between April 2021 and the following February.

Her work was recognized by the Ontario College of Family Physicians, which granted her its Award of Excellence in 2021, in part pointing to Ma's role in boosting local vaccination rates.

About a year later, the doctor said she received notice from the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) seeking to recoup the money she had billed for the shots — approximately $600,000, plus around $35,000 in interest.

I love these nerds