>> Jeyan: Canada's rate of inflation hit 4.4% last month.
The highest in almost two decades.
Justin Chandler covers the Hamilton Niagara region for our Ontario hubs.
He has been working on how that affects people who rely on the Ontario disability support
program also known as ODSP.
He joins us now from Hamilton for more.
Hey, Justin.
>> hey, Jeyan.
>> Jeyan: Before we generates look at what -- before we begin, let's talk about what we mean by
inflation.
>> Reporter: What is inflation?
Inflation is the rising cost of goods and services and it means just about everything you buy
costs more.
But how is it determined?
In Canada, inflation is measured by something called the Consumer Price Index.
The CPI compares the cost of goods and services today to the costs of those same goods and
services a year before.
The increase is the rate of inflation.
Households spend money on everything from groceries, clothing and entertainment to
big ticket purchases such as cars.
The Consumer Price Index can't track every purchase.
Instead, it uses a virtual shopping basket of about 700 goods and services Canadians
typically buy.
Each item is given a different weight depending how frequently households purchase it.
So groceries are weighted more than things purchased less often like haircuts.
A moderate rate of inflation can encourage spending but rapidly increasing inflation makes goods
unaffordable and can have a serious impact on the economy.
In explain it 1, the Canadian government and the Bank of -- in 1981 the Bank of Canada and the
Canadian government started to put targets in place to of.
Following two decades of unstable inflation and unsustainable costs of living.
The Bank of Canada raises or lowers that interest rate to try to seek that target.
The current inflation target in Canada is set at 2%.
>> Jeyan: All right, Justin let's talk about your article for tvo.org.
You quota McMaster University study about how people on social assistance are fairing during
the pandemic.
What did you find in that?
>> this was a very interesting study that McMaster did.
It was based on a survey of about 800 people.
They asked all sorts of questions about Covid-19, about finances, about people's
thoughts on government.
And what they found repeatedly was the people on Ontario works and Ontario disability support
program payments -- people who were reliant on that, they were consistently having some of the
worst outcomes when it came to their financial stability, when it came to their health.
As compared to people who were receiving the Canadian emergency response benefit or to people
who were not receiving any government supports.
So I guess as an example of this would be half of people on OW or ODSP reported that they had no
food to eat some days.
Whereas one in ten CERB respondents said that and 1 in 20 people who had no support who
responded to the survey said that.
>> Jeyan: You mentioned OW, I want to clarify Ontario Works and ODSP, the Ontario
disability.
Yeah, so I want to pull up one of these quotes that you mentioned in your article.
You spoke to one person who described something known as hell week.
What does that actually mean?
>> yes, this was something that I learned through Andrea Helatis she is in Toronto, a musician,
she also lives on ODSP.
What she told me is that the last week in the calendar month before people get their next
cheque is called hell week.
This is the week that people have to make the most crushing and difficult decisions about
their finances.
When the money's running dry and when people have to decide whether they're going to eat or
pay for medication or how they're going to get by.
>> Jeyan: There is a big discrepancy between the cost of living right now and how much
people receive on the Ontario disability support program.
Currently is the rate?
What does someone get at the end of the month?
And are there plans to increase that?
>> with the caveat that these rates change based on a person's situation, the maximum amount
that a person can receive is about $1,169.
For a single person.
And that's assuming that they don't have other sorts of benefits or a different
situation.
But let's assume it's that.
The cost of living is much higher than getting that much per month.
I think as everybody knows most people's rent would be completely eaten up by that.
But the rates have not gone up since 2018.
The government did not directly respond to a question about whether or not the rates would
go up which leads me to believe that at least at this point there are no public plans for
them to do that.
>> Jeyan: Early in the pandemic there was a lot of pressure on food banks and other programs to
sort of fill that gap.
20-plus months later are we still seeing that trend?
What are we seeing in there?
>> we are.
In the McMaster study over 20% said they were making more use of food banks.
But even now I spoke to somebody at the hope centre in Welland.
They're worried that as more support programs wind down that's going to result in a 30
to 40% increase.
>> Jeyan: We talked about this on the program before.
People on CERB and that's the Canadian emergency response benefit early on in the pandemic
received substantially more.
It was about $2,000 per month in comparison to the $1,169 you would be receiving from ODSP.
Does this make an argument to increase ODSP payments?
Does this put any pressure that, hey, this number, this blanket number of $2,000 was created to
help people get through the pandemic.
Yet there have been people who have been surviving on less than that for quite a while.
>> certainly a lot of people are making that argument.
This is something I repeatedly heard while reporting this article.
One thing I should note.
Andrea said one thing she wants people not to do is argue over who had it worse.
Nobody's saying that people on CERB should not have received this amount of money.
They're just saying that perhaps this represents the federal government acknowledging that
that's at least a minimum amount that people need to survive.
And that if that's the minimum amount, then ODSP would and subminimum amount.
>> Jeyan: You spoke to someone from the ODSP action coalition and they as an organization have
a list of demands to spark solutions.
Can you give us some of those solutions that they're asking for?
>> yes, Navy got eight up on their web -- they've got eight up on their website.
These include increasing the amount a person can earn before their income is deducted.
This also includes trying to index to the rate of inflation.
So that ODSP payments go up more.
Also making it more accessible, increasing the amount that people get for housing.
So there's a whole lot of different ones here but one of those biggest ones is just
raising the rates.
>> Jeyan: Very quickly I do want to ask you, there was a quote in your piece that read in poverty
you are obsessed with the fact that you have no money and obsessed with ways to get by.
This is a quote from Andrea Hortalla.
Does she hold out hope that the situation can improve for her and others as well.
>> this is one of those things that after you talk to somebody you hear about these things.
After she was talking about hell week I was saying thank you for talking to me I know this is
difficult.
She said, you know, the only way this gets better is if we talk about it.
And she said maybe there's not an easy solution here but really people can put their heads
together and we need to make sure that people who need it are getting the supports that they
need to live well.
>> Jeyan: Thank you very much, Justin.
A very important story and I'm sure we'll continue to follow it.
>> take care.