Welfare Fraud: The Constitution of Social ... - York University

1998) and the Ontario Disability Support Program Act, 1997 6 (into effect June 1, 1998).
In her closing comments on the third reading of Bill 142 (the S.A.R.A.), then Minister of
Community and Social Services, the Honourable Janet Ecker, highlighted three
objectives of the reforms embodied in the Bill: to meet the unique needs of persons with
disabilities; to make self sufficiency the overriding goal of social assistance; and to fight
welfare fraud. 7 Similarly and more recently, Debbie Moretta, the Director of the Ontario
Disability Support Program (O.D.S.P.), described the Ontario Works (O.W.) regime as "a
labour adjustment program, which provides short-term financial and employment
assistance to persons in financial need while they participate in mandatory activities that
help them take the shortest route to paid employment and financial independence" and
noted that "one of the objectives of the new legislative framework was to address abuse
of the social assistance system." 8 With the passage of the S.A.R.A., fighting welfare
fraud had come to occupy a central place in the new social assistance regime.
In many important respects the reforms embodied in the new legislation reflect a marked
departure from the principles and concrete recommendations arising from what was
perhaps the most comprehensive review of social assistance ever undertaken in
Ontario, Transitions, the report of the Social Assistance Review Committee (S.A.R.C.). 9
Rather, the historical antecedents for the embodied reforms are more dated, reaching
back to the Poor Laws of the seventeenth century and the radical liberalism of the late
19 th and early 20 th centuries. 10
In our review of the reforms we focus primarily on the O.W. regime. While the Ontario
Works Act (O.W.A.) and the Ontario Disability Support Program Act (O.D.S.P.A.) share
many common features, there is also much to distinguish them. Unlike the former social
assistance framework in which single parents and those with disabilities were
distinguished from the able-bodied 'employable', it is the existence of a recognized
6 Ontario Disability Support Program Act, 1997, S.O. 1997, c.25 Schedule B.
7 Ontario Legislative Assembly, Official Reports of Debates (Hansard) 1 st Session, 36 th Leg., Nov
25, 1997.
8 Affidavit of Debbie Moretta, sworn August 29, 2003 submitted in Broomer et al. v. Ontario
(A.G.), Toronto 02-CV-229203CM3 (Ontario Superior Court of Justice) at para.8 and 42.
9 The Social Assistance Review Committee, Chaired by George Thomson, was established in
1986 by the Ontario Government. The Committee's final report, Transitions, was released in
September, 1988. Report of the Social Assistance Review Committee, Transitions (Toronto:
Queen's Printer, 1988).
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