Welfare reform can rightly be considered Ontario’s single greatest social policy success of the past decade. This success could be jeopardized if the provincial government heeds the recommendations in a report by Liberal MPP Deb Matthews released earlier this month. The report advises Ontario to adopt kinder, gentler welfare policies, effectively rolling back many of the province’s 1995 reforms. Can it be that Ontario has already forgotten the tragic effects of soft love welfare policies on Ontario’s most vulnerable citizens?

Between 1985 and 1994, Ontario adopted a series of policies intended to instill fairness and equity in the welfare system. For instance, Ontario relaxed eligibility rules by enabling common-law couples to collect the same benefits as two single persons and providing automatic interim aid to anyone appealing a denial, cancellation or reduction of benefits. Benefit rates were also boosted to levels well above the national average.

Not surprisingly, welfare expenditures rose a stunning 232% from 1985 to 1994, and that’s after adjusting downwards for the effects of inflation. Most troubling, the number of welfare beneficiaries as a percentage of the Ontario population more than doubled, from 5.2% to 12.7%.

Dependency also worsened, as an unemployed adult’s average stay on social assistance rose from 6.5 months in 1987 to 12.5 months in 1994. The dependency of single parents was even worse, and the average welfare stay rose from 36 to 55 months.

Faced with record social assistance spending and high rates of welfare dependency, in 1995 Mike Harris’s Ontario government took advantage of a new flexibility afforded it by the federal government, to introduce the country’s first work-for-welfare program. This change was greeted by violent protesters who wanted to roll the reforms back. But mandatory work requirements, coupled with sanctions for non-compliance, have helped recipients make a quick transition back to work while preventing others from getting trapped in the welfare system to begin with. Tightened eligibility rules, reduced benefits (still 10% above the national average) and tough fraud prevention measures also helped make work pay more than welfare.

The significance of this new employment-focus should not be understated. The chances that an individual will stay on the welfare rolls for a longer period of time increases with receipt of a first no-strings attached social assistance cheque. Workfare, on the other hand, reduces this dependency by making welfare less attractive for potential applicants, helping current recipients develop marketable job skills in the process.

It’s hard to argue with the evidence. More than 680,000 Ontarians have left the welfare rolls since the reforms, reducing social assistance expenditures by 42%. These welfare recipients have moved largely into employment, not into poverty and homelessness as many activists had warned. Exit surveys conducted by the province in 1996 and 1998 found that approximately two-thirds of all welfare leavers were working at the time of the survey, compared to just 18% of people leaving welfare in 1994-95 and 7% of welfare leavers in 1989-90. Those not working cited changes in living arrangements or the receipt of additional income as their main reason for leaving.

Circumstances have improved even more markedly for single mothers and children. The number of single parents on welfare fell from 200,000 to 82,000, a remarkable 59% reduction from the peak reached in 1994. The duration of welfare spells has also shortened, with the average single parent remaining on welfare for 25 months in 2000, down from 55 months in 1994.

More importantly, the incidence of low income also fell during this period.

The prevalence of Ontario children living in low-income families dropped from a high of 15.5% in 1996 to a record low of 9.5% in 2002.

Twenty-seven percent fewer single mother families now experience the insecurity of low income, as defined by Statistics Canada.

Despite the general success of Ontario’s 1995 reforms, the rate of welfare dependency in the province is still roughly double that of many jurisdictions in North America. This suggests that Ontario’s 1995 reforms undid only some of the damage of the policies adopted between 1985 and 1994. Ontario must now build on these successes, applying reform principles proven to play a role in reducing dependency, increasing employment and earnings, and lowering poverty rates in other Canadian provinces and American states.

Unfortunately, Ms. Matthews’ recommendations come at the end of a year that has already seen the Ontario government begin to roll back several of the province’s most successful reforms.

Last January, tough sanctions against individuals convicted of welfare fraud were repealed, and this September the government loosened welfare eligibility requirements, making it possible once again for individuals living in common law relationships to collect benefits as if they were living alone.

The Ontario government’s move toward a kinder, gentler, welfare system may at first seem compassionate and humane, but the empirical evidence suggests it will trap a new generation of citizens in welfare and poverty.