2022 Ontario Election Summary
Impacting People with a Disability
Amplifying Our Community’s Voice is a strategic direction created by our community to demonstrate our priority public policy needs. Over the course of this election, our community has been engaging candidates in several ways to seek commitment on our four urgent priorities. Our urgent priorities are outlined here.
Thus far leading into the election day on June 2, our community engaged candidates by writing 174 letters across 71 ridings, plus individual phone calls to candidates enabled us to engage with 97% of all ridings.
We engaged over 1,000 people through social media. We engaged 357 campaign managers across all the four major parties (94% Green, 63% Liberal, 97% NDP, and 57% PC). We also sent an election questionnaire in writing and over the phone to all the candidates and received responses by all the major parties (94% Green, 62% Liberal, 97% NDP, 42% PC).
Read our findings below.
Response Summary
In summary, we learned the following from activities towards candidates, including attending 13 all candidate meetings, three media stories with CBC and the Toronto Star, and press releases to all major and local papers across Ontario.
Green Party of Ontario
- Increase funding to home care services by 20% so that people can safely stay in their homes longer.
- Mandate that personal support workers are paid a minimum of $25 an hour and for their travel time between visits.
- Create a standard basket of core home care services that providers must make consistently available across the province.
- Shift to entirely non-profit home care providers within the public system.
- Provide team coordinators as a single access point within family health teams to ensure care is consistent with patient needs.
- Increase high-quality home care options for those experiencing frailty, dementia, and disability.
- Collect meaningful quality indicators to hold homecare organizations accountable and to promote quality improvements.
Ontario Liberal Party
- Provide funds for 15,000 new assisted living homes, including small, accessible, and community-based residential services – as well as “hub and spoke” care that provides a comprehensive continuum of care.
- Make the Ontario Caregiver Tax Credit refundable, tax-free, and paid out throughout the year and enhance access to support programs and tools.
Ontario New Democratic Party
- Introduce a community based not-for-profit home care system and end for profit home care in Ontario. The NDP will work with local communities to provide care that reflects local needs and ensure access to services both at home and in the community.
- Invest an additional $1 billion for home care, with a direct investment of $235 million more in the first year.
- $28 million to increase the capacity of non-profit community support services, $57 million to prevent hospitalizations & support assisted living services, and $150 million for surgical recovery and rehab services at home or in the community.
- Establish provincial standards for home and community care services by creating a basket of core services Ontarians are entitled to receive, such as help with meal preparation, or nursing care to help with medication management.
- Develop a provincial Caregiver Benefit Program that provides $400 a month to family caregivers who do not qualify for the existing federal tax credit programs or respite care.
- Create culturally appropriate resources and training for home and community care programs and develop a provincial jobs-matching program to attract and match PSWs and other home and community care workers to communities where they have shared cultural and linguistic knowledge.
PC Party of Ontario
- Invest an additional $1 billion over the next three years to expand home care.
- The PC government passed Bill 175, Connecting People to Home and Community Care Act, 2020 and a first set of new home and community care regulations was proclaimed into force on May 1, 2022. This provides a new framework for the delivery of home and community care services by Ontario Health Teams within an integrated health care system.
Green Party of Ontario
- Conduct a comprehensive review of intermittent catheters and related urinary supplies in Ontario that ensures intermittent catheter users and taxpayers have value for money a good health outcomes.
- Ontario Greens believe that not only should we have a health care system that is patient‐centric, but many of the decisions that could save money over the long term are also the ones that are better for the people who need that care. Medical equipment that minimizes complications and significantly improves the quality of life should be provided for people without additional charge.
Ontario Liberal Party
- Conduct a review of the essential home care needs that keeps people safe at home and avoid institutional care when appropriate.
- Fund intermittent catheters and related urinary supplies through home and community care services.
Ontario New Democratic Party
- Fund the essential medical supplies that people need through an assessment process that is centralized inclusive to intermittent catheters and assistive devices.
- Work with Ontarians who depend on intermittent catheters and related urinary supplies to develop a program where no one is left behind.
PC Party of Ontario
- Review the ability for intermittent catheters and related urinary supplies to be covered under the assistive devices program.
- Procure intermittent catheters and related urinary supplies under Supply Ontario to reduce cost of catheters in Ontario through more efficient bulk purchasing in Ontario.
Green Party of Ontario
- Evaluate and improve the Assistive Devices Program to better meet the needs of those requiring assistive tools, including more up-to-date devices, training, and fewer barriers to access.
Ontario Liberal Party
- Consult with people with disabilities to improve the assistive devices program.
Ontario New Democratic Party
- Increase staffing and modernize the service delivery for the Assistive Devices Program through an annual investment of $5 million.
PC Party of Ontario
- Provide Assistive Devices Program funding to eligible Ontarians with type 1 diabetes for a continuous glucose monitor and the related supplies.
Green Party of Ontario
- Implement as much of the AODA as possible by 2025. Create a clear path for the remaining objectives after 2025.
- Strengthen the standards under the AODA to ensure they meet the needs of people with disabilities.
- Substantially strengthen the enforcement of the AODA.
Ontario Liberal Party
- Strengthen the AODA standards, enact new standards for education and health care, and address accessibility barriers for how homes and buildings are constructed.
- Increased the frequency of on-site AODA inspections and regularly report on compliance–as well as advancing disability accessibility training.
- Appoint a stand-alone Minister for disability issues and include accessibility commitments in government mandate letters.
Ontario New Democratic Party
- Implement all recommendations from the Onley report to strengthen the AODA.
PC Party of Ontario
- Implement the Health and Education Standards of the AODA.
Other Disability Supports
In addition to pledges made by candidates and parties pertaining to the priorities identified by our community, we also highlight pledges made by candidates and parties that impact people with disabilities specifically.
Green Party of Ontario
- Address the growing waitlist for Ontario Autism Program (OAP) core services by building the capacity of autism providers and funding the OAP to bring families into the program as rapidly as possible.
- Double ODSP rates as a first step to implementing a basic income, and tie future increases to inflation.
- Establish an ultimate wait time benchmark for diagnosis and access to core services once registered in the program.
- Build on the work done with the OAP toward a new ODSP that would provide funding for therapeutic and respite services and supports for people with all disabilities, beginning with children and youth.
- Increase funding to home care services by 20% so that people can safely stay in their homes longer.
- Mandate that personal support workers are paid a minimum of $25 an hour and for their travel time between visits.
- Create a standard basket of core home care services that providers must make consistently available across the province.
- Shift to entirely non-profit home care providers within the public system.
- Provide team coordinators as a single access point within family health teams to ensure care is consistent with patient needs.
- Increase high-quality home care options for those experiencing frailty, dementia, and disability.
- Collect meaningful quality indicators to hold home care organizations accountable and to promote quality improvements.
- Increase upstream investments in the social determinants of health, such as social isolation, housing insecurity, and poverty to prevent substantial, long-term health care costs and severe disease.
- Increase options for primary care, such as community health centres and nurse practitioner-led clinics, to ensure access to non-urgent 24/7 care.
- Improve integration and connectivity across health care service providers through the use of digital data sharing and patient health coordinators.
Ontario Liberal Party
- Increase the amount of income those receiving social assistance can earn without impacting assistance from $2,400 to $6,000 per year and calculator earning on an annual basis.
- Reverse cuts to the ODSP and Ontario Works and increase rates by 10% in 2022 and another 10% for ODSP recipients in 2023.
- Provide all adults eligible for the Passport program at least $6,000 to participate in their communities.
- Provide all adults eligible for the Passport program at least $6,000 to participate in their communities.
- Increase the number of family doctors and nurse practitioners to ensure access to services within 24 hours.
- Fund more team-based primary care clinics, including Family Health Teams and Nurse Practitioner-Led Clinics.
- Create 15 new community health centres across the province to help tackle social, economic, and environmental challenges impacting people’s health in underserved communities.
Ontario New Democratic Party
- $1,636 million in 2022-23 to increase Ontario Works and ODSP rates by 20%, double in year 2 from current rate, and legislate that raises must, at minimum, be indexed to inflation.
- Establish a system to lift everyone out of poverty no later than the end of their first term by working with stakeholders to deliver an evidence-based approach to setting rates at a level that recognizes the real costs of essentials like food and rent.
- Update the ODSP Act with new language including changing the definition of spouse to align the timeline by which a person on ODSP is considered common-law with a person not receiving disability support.
- Overhaul Ontario’s social assistance system through meaningful consultation and co-design with social assistance clients.
- $91 million to restart the basic income pilot program and consider innovative approaches to social support.
- Work with the federal government to deliver a Canada Disability Benefit to improve the lives of Ontarians with disabilities.
- End the requirement for people to reapply for supports after the age of 18 and cut wait lists for services such as respite care, employment training, life skills, and supportive housing.
- $21 million over three years to improve access to primary care by increasing the number of nurse practitioners and $15 million to fund nurse practitioner led clinics.
PC Party of Ontario
- $425 million to increase ODSP payments by five per cent annually and tie rates to inflation for annual increases.
- Create 22 new SmartStart Hubs across the province to better connect parents and caregivers with child development services in their communities as early as possible. The new Hubs are intended to be a clear point of entry to services for children and families and bring together local professionals in early intervention and child development services to provide seamless connections to assessments and services such as speech and language services.
- $100,000 to Child Development Institute (CDI) to implement the Stop Now And Plan (SNAP) program and the Early Assessment Risk List (EARL) framework for children with behavioural issues, and in support of their families.
- Invest an additional $13 million over three years to help connect people with developmental disabilities with accessible and affordable housing in their own community.
- Provide coverage for Baqsimi, a new rescue medicine for insulin treated diabetics experiencing a severe hypoglycemic event, under the Ontario Drug Benefit program.
- Additional $15 million to expand the Home and Vehicle Modification Program.
We hope this analysis is useful when going to the polls and making a decision on who forms the next government and how you can hold the new government accountable by the pledges made during this election.
Disclaimers
- All pledges were summarized by SCIO as information was received via phone, email, social media, partners, activists, stakeholders, and other organizations supporting people with disabilities.
- SCIO grouped responses based on repetition by party and party candidates.
- None of these pledges are guarantees however viewed as acknowledgements by candidates and parties.
- SCIO is nonpartisan. It does not hold an organizational opinion on any commitment or pledge that determines who citizens should be voting for.
- Specific candidate responses or responses by candidate teams are available upon request to [email protected]
