Ontario Works Rate History and Erosion

Welfare rates were frozen decades ago and never caught back up — tracking exactly how far behind rent they've fallen.

DRAFTThe evidence fileThe playbook

Claim coverage as of 2026-07-14: 2 carried-forward documents (this library's prior synthesis document (OW Rate History), ontario-works-rate-erosion-and-shelter-penalty.md), cited as-is per this page’s binding rule, carrying their own internal CL-###-style citations from predecessor v1/csrl2 projects (not yet reconciled into this project's own this library's claims register — flagged in "Open questions / data gaps"); 4 new 2026 primary-source findings from this review's live discovery (NEW-OW-1 through NEW-OW-4), including a direct fetch of Ontario's own current minimum-wage schedule (confirming and extending the carried-forward rate table's 2026 figures) and Maytree's independently-computed 2024 Ontario poverty-line comparison (the single strongest, most methodologically transparent NEW figure this page carries). Coverage: breadth not formally checked in this review — this draft establishes claim-level coverage and fresh-discovery integration only, consistent with this page’s outline-to-depth trajectory. Cui Bono: 0 beneficiary entities identified (0 ESTABLISHED / 0 REPORTED) — see "Cui Bono" section below for why.

Written per this library's standard page structure, this project's later, 2026-07-14. Per this page’s own binding rule, the two carried-forward documents are cited as-is and not re-researched; this document's original contribution is a live-discovery pass that directly fetched Ontario's own current minimum-wage schedule (confirming the carried-forward rate table's 2026 figures precisely and adding the confirmed Oct 2026 rate) and Maytree's "Welfare in Canada 2024" report — an independently-computed, methodologically transparent poverty-line comparison for Ontario/Toronto specifically, including a 2002-2024 adequacy time series that confirms ODSP's inflation-indexing (which OW does not receive) — plus the required Cui Bono and International-context sections. Given this page’s corpus-wide canonical-figures role, this review prioritizes precision and primary-source traceability above all else.

Scope

This page’s neutral scope question: what is the verified history of Ontario Works (OW) rates from roughly 1990 to the present, how has that history's real (inflation- and wage-adjusted) value eroded, and how does the resulting rate compare to actual Toronto housing costs (the "shelter penalty")? This document covers: the exact rate history and the three identified freeze periods (Harris 1996-2004, the Liberal non-recovery 2004-2018, the current freeze 2018-present); the precise 1995-96 cut; OW's rate relative to minimum wage over time; OW's rate relative to Toronto market rent; the structural "no fixed address" shelter-allowance penalty under Ontario Regulation 134/98; and ODSP's divergent, inflation-indexed rate trajectory as a documented contrast case (not this page’s own subject, but necessary context for accurately characterizing OW's specific erosion). It hands off, rather than duplicates: ODSP's own full rate history and disability-specific eligibility rules to a dedicated ODSP-focused treatment if one exists elsewhere in this corpus; the broader deep-poverty and basic-income policy debate to deep-poverty-income-security and basic-income-universal-services, both of which hand off to this page by name for the underlying rate figures rather than duplicating them.

Current state

The rate history: three freezes, confirmed and extended

This page’s carried-forward documents establishes a detailed year-by-year rate table from 1990 to 2026, built primarily from Ontario Regulation 134/98, Feed Ontario's 2019 report, ISAC rate tracking, and Canada.ca minimum-wage history [this library's prior synthesis document (OW Rate History), carried-forward]. The table's headline finding: in 1990, Ontario's General Welfare Assistance for a single adult was $623/month, approximately 74.8% of full-time minimum-wage earnings; the carried-forward document's 2026 projection puts OW at $733/month, approximately 24.5% of full-time minimum-wage earnings — "a 50-point collapse in purchasing power relative to work" [From this library’s earlier research]. This review's own direct fetch of Ontario's current minimum-wage schedule confirms the carried-forward table's minimum-wage figures precisely and extends them: the general minimum wage is $17.60/hour for the period October 1, 2025 to September 30, 2026, rising to $17.95/hour effective October 1, 2026 — both figures matching the carried-forward table's 2025 and 2026 rows exactly, with the increase "tied to the Ontario Consumer Price Index for 2026" [NEW-OW-1]. The carried-forward table identifies three distinct freeze periods: the Harris Freeze (1996-2004, OW held at $520/month against a minimum wage that itself barely moved, following an October 1995 cut of 21.6% from $663 to $520); the Liberal Non-Recovery (2004-2018, small annual increases averaging $20-30/year that never restored the pre-Harris ratio, ending at $733/month — 37.2% of minimum wage by 2018); and the current freeze (2018-present, an initial 1.5% increase in Ford's first year — $722/month to $733/month — followed by a freeze that has now held the nominal $733/month rate unchanged through the entirety of this review's date, 2026-07-14) [From this library’s earlier research]. Restored 2026-07-16 (a later verification pass) — the $722/month pre-increase baseline was silently missing; the carried-forward document states the 1.5% increase precisely as "$722 → $733." Restored 2026-07-16 (a later verification pass) — the carried-forward document's own blunt framing for this entire history had not previously been carried forward: "This is not inflation — it is policy. Every year OW was frozen while minimum wages rose, the Province chose to make poverty deeper" [From this library’s earlier research]. It further estimates that, given approximately 23% cumulative price inflation since 2018 (per ISAC), the real value of the frozen $733/month rate in 2026 is approximately $595 in 2018 dollars [carried-forward, ⚠️ still being checked — not independently re-derived in this review]. Flagged, not silently reconciled: the carried-forward document's own prose above pairs $733/month with "37.2% of minimum wage by 2018," but its own year-by-year table pairs $733/month with 31.4% specifically in the 2018 row (against a $14.00 minimum wage) — the table's 2017 row ($706/month against an $11.40 minimum wage) is the row that actually computes to 37.2%. This is an internal inconsistency within the carried-forward source itself (its own summary prose vs. its own table), not something this review introduced or resolved; both figures are the carried-forward document's own, and neither is silently preferred over the other here.

The 1995-96 cut, precisely

The carried-forward document dates the Harris government's cut precisely: effective October 1995, a 21.6% reduction from $663/month to $520/month, sourced to Open Policy Ontario/Stapleton research [From this library’s earlier research]. This document repeats the carried-forward document's own explicit citation-precision guidance rather than restating a looser version: "Harris cut OW by 21.6% in 1995" is the source-confirmed framing; a looser claim like "OW was $623 in 1990 and $733 today, it barely changed" is flagged by the carried-forward document itself as technically true but misleading, since it omits the cut and non-recovery entirely [From this library’s earlier research].

The shelter penalty: OW's own regulation pays less to people who have already lost housing

The second carried-forward documents establishes a structural feature specific to this page’s homelessness-research relevance: Ontario Regulation 134/98 sets a lower rate for a single adult with no fixed address than for one who retains accommodation — a recipient without a fixed address receives $343/month, a basic-needs-only amount with no shelter component at all, "because the regulation denies the shelter allowance entirely once someone has no address to receive it for" [ontario-works-rate-erosion-and-shelter-penalty.md, carried-forward]. As of late 2025 (per the same carried-forward document), the monthly OW rate for a single employable adult with stable housing was $733; Toronto's average market rent for a bachelor apartment was $1,456 in 2024 — more than the entire monthly OW rate on its own, before any other living cost — and over the preceding ten years, Toronto's average one-bedroom rent rose 57% while the OW rate rose only 4% [From this library’s earlier research]. The same document states OW's real purchasing power eroded by more than 20% since 2018 once inflation is accounted for [From this library’s earlier research]. Restored 2026-07-16 (a later verification pass) — the same carried-forward document's own annualized comparison had been silently dropped: at the (then-current) $17.60/hour minimum wage of October 2025, a full year of full-time minimum-wage work pays $36,608, against which the $733 monthly OW rate annualizes to $8,796 — about 24% of that figure [carried-forward, ontario-works-rate-erosion-and-shelter-penalty.md].

A second, unreconciled Toronto rent-affordability estimate (inherited)

Restored 2026-07-16 (a later verification pass). The first carried-forward documents, this library's prior synthesis document (OW Rate History), independently states its own Toronto housing-affordability comparison, built from a different-dated CMHC estimate than the $1,456/2024 bachelor-rent figure already cited above: an average Toronto bachelor apartment at approximately $1,800/month (CMHC 2025), against which the $733/month OW rate covers approximately 41%, leaving $267/month for every other cost; and an average room in Toronto shared housing at approximately $1,100/month, against which OW covers approximately 67%, again leaving $267/month before food and transit [This library's prior synthesis document (OW Rate History)]. Flagged, not silently reconciled: this document's two carried-forward sources cite different CMHC-sourced Toronto rent figures for the same or an adjacent unit type ($1,456/2024 bachelor vs. $1,800/2025 bachelor) from different vintages, and neither source nor this review reconciles them into one figure — both are carried forward as independently-sourced, non-identical data points rather than one silently overwriting the other. The same carried-forward document states its conclusion plainly: "A person on OW cannot afford a room in Toronto without going into debt or living in an encampment" [From this library’s earlier research], and separately notes that a person living in an encampment receives no shelter allowance at all — the same $343/month basic-needs-only figure already established above via the shelter-penalty document. ⚠️ still being checked — neither rent figure was independently re-fetched against a live CMHC source in this review.

ODSP's divergent trajectory: the contrast case that sharpens OW's own erosion

This review's own live discovery adds a directly-confirmed, methodologically independent contrast case not fully developed in the carried-forward material: Maytree's "Welfare in Canada 2024" report — an annual, methodologically transparent, jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction poverty-line comparison — states plainly that "Monthly basic OW benefit amounts were unchanged in 2024. Monthly basic ODSP benefits increased by 4.5 per cent in July 2024 due to inflation indexing" [NEW-OW-2]. This single sentence, from an independent source using its own computation methodology (not reliant on this page’s carried-forward predecessor-project figures), directly confirms the carried-forward document's own characterization of a divergence between the two programs' rate trajectories — OW frozen, ODSP receiving statutory inflation-indexing that OW does not — at a confidence level this project's discipline treats as strong: independently derived, not merely repeated.

The poverty-line comparison: Maytree's independent 2024 figures for Toronto

Maytree's methodology computes total welfare income (basic social assistance plus federal/provincial child benefits and tax credits/benefits, where applicable) against four poverty and low-income thresholds, using Toronto-specific Market Basket Measure (MBM) and Low Income Cut-Off (LICO) thresholds since Toronto is the province's largest city [NEW-OW-3]. For 2024, the unattached single considered employable (i.e., the population OW's base rate is designed for) had a total welfare income of $10,455 — this document notes this welfare-income figure includes federal/provincial tax credits and benefits beyond the bare OW rate, so it is not directly comparable to the $733/month × 12 = $8,796 bare-OW annualized figure the carried-forward document cites; both are independently sourced and neither is silently substituted for the other in this document. Maytree's own finding: this household's income was "$11,542 below the Deep Income Poverty threshold and $18,874 below the Poverty Line," meaning their total welfare income (inclusive of all applicable benefits, not the bare OW rate alone) was only 48% of the Deep Income Poverty threshold (itself 75% of the MBM) and only 36% of the MBM poverty line itself [NEW-OW-4]. Maytree's 2002-2024 adequacy time series shows this same household's welfare income "started the time series in 2002 at 45 per cent of the Poverty Line and stayed virtually the same until 2018... gradually declined to a low of only 36 per cent of the Poverty Line in 2024" — a 9-percentage-point decline over the full 23-year series, with the household "living below the Deep Income Poverty threshold across the entire time series," meaning this household type "would have consistently lived in deep poverty for the last 23 years" on Maytree's own independent calculation [NEW-OW-3].

Toronto: the case for and against

Section merged in 2026-08-11 from a companion Toronto-specific brief. OW rate-setting is uniform across Ontario (Toronto is a single-tier city; CD and CSD codes coincide, Statistics Canada geographic code 3520005/3520), so this section states no separate local rate figure beyond those already established in "Current state" above.

FOR — evidence that rate increases have occurred and that a fix mechanism already exists:

OW's nominal rate did increase across the full time series (from $520/month during the Harris Freeze to $733/month currently) — the program has not been static in dollar terms.
ODSP's own inflation-indexing formula, confirmed independently via Maytree [NEW-OW-2], demonstrates the mechanism is already operational within Ontario's social-assistance system for one major program — extending it to OW is not a novel policy design question (see "What Toronto/Ontario can steal shamelessly" in "International context" above).
Toronto and other municipalities retain the ability to formally request provincial rate changes via Council motion, a documented advocacy channel used on adjacent funding questions elsewhere in this project's corpus.

AGAINST — general claims from this backgrounder's Current State evidence still apply locally, since OW rate-setting is uniform across Ontario: the precisely-quantified multi-decade erosion (the 1995-96 Harris cut, the current freeze since 2018, ODSP's statutory inflation-indexing that OW does not receive, the O. Reg. 134/98 no-fixed-address $343/month penalty, and Toronto's own $1,456/month 2024 average bachelor rent exceeding the entire monthly OW rate on its own) — see "The rate history," "The 1995-96 cut," and "The shelter penalty" above [carried-forward, NEW-OW-1, NEW-OW-2].

Municipal ask (upward): like this page’s sibling funding-architecture leaves, this is structurally an upward-ask-only issue for Toronto specifically: OW rate-setting is wholly provincial jurisdiction under the Ontario Works Act and Ontario Regulation 134/98. this library's municipal-asks table was checked and contains no row specific to OW rate-adequacy or the no-fixed-address shelter-allowance penalty. This page’s own companion cards document proposes three specific asks not confirmed elsewhere as already formally made: extending ODSP's existing inflation-indexing formula to OW (a recommendation card); restoring the shelter allowance for OW recipients without a fixed address (a recommendation card); and publishing a standing government adequacy dashboard using a methodology consistent with Maytree's existing approach (a recommendation card).

Toronto bottom line: Ontario Works has been frozen in nominal dollars since 2018 while the province's own minimum wage has risen by roughly 28% over the same period and Ontario's own disability-assistance program receives statutory inflation-indexing OW does not — a distinction this page independently confirmed via a methodologically transparent third-party source rather than repeating from its inherited predecessor-project material alone. Maytree's own independent calculation finds the population OW's base rate is designed for has lived in deep poverty, by Ontario's own official measures, for all 23 years of its tracked 2002-2024 series, currently at a series-low 36% of the province's poverty line.

Toronto-specific uncertainties: no verified current Ontario Works caseload figure was located in this review, meaning neither a recommendation card nor a recommendation card's aggregate provincial fiscal cost could be estimated — stated honestly as a gap rather than guessed. The remaining uncertainties (the bare-OW-rate/total-welfare-income reconciliation, the carried-forward CMHC-sourced Toronto rent figures, and whether Ontario has published a formal rationale for excluding OW from indexing) are already carried in "What the evidence does and doesn't support" and "Open questions / data gaps" below.

Key tensions / tradeoffs

A 50-point collapse in wage-relative purchasing power against a technically-true-but-misleading "barely changed" framing. The carried-forward document itself flags this tension explicitly and gives explicit guidance on it: OW's nominal dollar figure rose from $623 (1990) to $733 (2026) — a real but small nominal increase — while its value relative to a rapidly rising minimum wage collapsed from 74.8% to 24.5% over the same period [From this library’s earlier research]. This document repeats that guidance rather than re-deriving it, since it is a citation-precision matter this page’s own carried-forward material already resolved correctly.

OW frozen since 2018 while ODSP receives statutory inflation-indexing. This review's own independently-sourced confirmation (Maytree, NEW-OW-2) that "Monthly basic OW benefit amounts were unchanged in 2024" while "Monthly basic ODSP benefits increased by 4.5 per cent in July 2024 due to inflation indexing" sharpens a genuine, currently operative policy distinction: the same government maintains two social-assistance programs on structurally different inflation-protection regimes, with OW — this page’s own subject — receiving none.

A structural shelter-allowance penalty for the population a prevention-focused response would most need to reach. The carried-forward document's own framing states this plainly: OW's regulation "pays least to the very recipients who have already lost stable housing — precisely the population a prevention-focused response would most need to reach before they enter, or while trying to exit, homelessness" [From this library’s earlier research]. This document repeats rather than softens that framing, since it traces directly to Ontario Regulation 134/98's own text as characterized by the carried-forward source.

What the evidence does and doesn't support

Well-supported:

The three-freeze rate history (1990-2026) and the precise 21.6% 1995-96 Harris cut are corroborated by the carried-forward document's own primary-source citations (Ontario Regulation 134/98, Feed Ontario 2019, Open Policy Ontario/Stapleton, ISAC rate tracking) and this review's own independent confirmation of the 2025-2026 minimum-wage figures directly against Ontario's current government page.
ODSP's inflation-indexing (and OW's exclusion from it) is now doubly confirmed: once via the carried-forward document's general characterization, and independently again via this review's own direct fetch of Maytree's methodologically transparent, independently-computed 2024 report — a genuinely strong confirmation for a leaf whose entire purpose is figure precision.
The Ontario Regulation 134/98 no-fixed-address shelter-allowance penalty ($343/month, basic-needs-only) is directly sourced to the regulation itself per the carried-forward document.
Maytree's independent poverty-line comparison (the unattached single employable household living at 36% of the MBM poverty line and 48% of the Deep Income Poverty threshold in 2024, with 23 consecutive years below the Deep Income Poverty threshold) is a methodologically transparent, independently-computed figure from a different research organization than this page’s carried-forward source material — genuinely converging evidence, not a repetition of the same underlying claim.

Thin or contested:

This page’s carried-forward documents carry their own internal CL-###-style citations from predecessor v1/csrl2 projects not yet reconciled against this project's own this library's claims register — cited here as carried-forward, not independently re-verified by this review, except where this review's own direct fetches independently corroborated a specific figure.
The relationship between the carried-forward document's bare-OW-rate annualized figure ($733/month × 12 = $8,796) and Maytree's total-welfare-income figure ($10,455, inclusive of federal/provincial tax credits and benefits) is a genuine methodological difference this document states explicitly rather than silently conflating — the two figures measure different things (bare social assistance rate vs. total household welfare income including all applicable benefits) and neither should be substituted for the other without that distinction being carried forward.
The carried-forward document's Toronto bachelor-apartment rent figure ($1,456 in 2024, cited to CMHC) and rent-increase percentage (57% over ten years for one-bedroom units) were not independently re-verified against a live CMHC source in this review — flagged as carried-forward, not re-confirmed.

International context

1. Treaties/frameworks touched. Ontario Works, as a provincial income-support program, does not have a direct treaty-level anchor in the way this project's federal-funding sibling page’s National Housing Strategy Act does — social assistance rate-setting is provincial jurisdiction under the Constitution Act, 1867, with no equivalent Ontario or Canadian statute declaring an enforceable right to an adequate income floor. That said, a genuine connection exists worth naming precisely rather than gesturally: Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) — the same instrument the federal National Housing Strategy Act engages for housing specifically — recognizes "the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate food, clothing and housing," a broader adequate-standard-of-living right that a social assistance rate below Canada's own official poverty line (as Maytree's independent 2024 figures show OW recipients living, at 36% of the Market Basket Measure) sits in evident tension with, even though no Canadian or Ontario statute makes ICESCR Article 11's broader income-adequacy language directly enforceable at the provincial social-assistance level the way the federal National Housing Strategy Act does specifically for housing. This document states that tension plainly without asserting a legal enforceability claim this review cannot support.

2. Best global comparators. Ontario's own now-cancelled Basic Income Pilot (launched 2017 under the then-Premier's government, cancelled 2018 by the incoming Premier's government before full results were gathered) remains this page’s most directly relevant domestic comparator for an alternative income-floor design, though this document does not re-litigate that pilot's specific parameters or cancellation circumstances here, since basic-income-universal-services is this corpus's dedicated home for that subject and this page hands off to it by name. Internationally, no live-discovery attempt in this review located a specific, currently-operating foreign social-assistance program with a directly comparable "single employable adult" rate category and inflation-indexing design that would serve as a cleaner comparator than Ontario's own internal OW-versus-ODSP indexing divergence already documents — stated honestly as a limitation of this review's discovery rather than a forced comparator claim.

3. What Toronto/Ontario can steal shamelessly. The single most concrete, nameable, and already-domestic transferable mechanism is not foreign at all: Ontario's own ODSP inflation-indexing formula, already in statutory operation for one of the province's two major social-assistance programs, is the direct, evidenced, zero-novel-design-risk mechanism available to extend to OW specifically — the same government, the same province, an already-operating formula, applied to the one major program currently excluded from it. This is a stronger "steal shamelessly" case than an international comparator would be, precisely because it requires no cross-jurisdictional translation.

Cui Bono — who profits from this problem persisting

Per the Accountability Observatory's charter (Prime Rule: pointer, never author) and the backgrounder template's binding requirement — 0 beneficiary entities identified in this review (0 ESTABLISHED / 0 REPORTED). A direct check against this library's internal records found no row naming a specific corporate/entity beneficiary of Ontario Works rate levels or their erosion specifically. This is a structurally different kind of finding than a procurement or contracting question: OW rate-setting is a direct government income-transfer decision with no identifiable third-party contractor or beneficial-ownership structure standing between the policy and the affected population — a frozen or eroded social-assistance rate does not obviously enrich a named entity the way a sole-sourced shelter contract or a financialized-landlord rent-extraction pattern does (both of which the Seed Landscape does document, for different pages in this corpus). The closest indirect connection worth naming honestly, without asserting it as an established Cui Bono finding: the same Seed Landscape document independently establishes (per StatsCan and a peer-reviewed Toronto-specific study) that financialized landlords "charge higher rents and raise them more quickly than other landlords" and "file for eviction at the highest rates among landlord types" [this library's internal records, REPORTED grade] — a population made more vulnerable to eviction by a frozen, real-terms-eroding OW rate is plausibly a population more exposed to exactly that landlord segment's documented behavior, but this document does not assert a direct causal or beneficiary claim connecting OW rate policy to financialized-landlord profit, since no source reviewed in this review makes that specific connection explicitly. Flagged here as a genuine, honest absence with an adjacent (not equivalent) finding named for context, not as a populated Cui Bono row.

Open questions / data gaps

Not yet drawn into the claims register: all figures inherited from this page’s two carried-forward documents carry their own internal CL-###-style citations from predecessor v1/csrl2 projects not yet reconciled against this project's own this library's claims register. The 4 NEW-OW-# items from this review's own live discovery are likewise not yet run through add_claim.py/registry, though NEW-OW-1 and NEW-OW-2 independently corroborate existing carried-forward figures via direct primary-source re-fetch.
Genuinely uncovered: the precise relationship between the carried-forward document's bare-OW-rate figures and Maytree's total-welfare-income figures was not fully reconciled in this review (both are cited, neither is conflated, but no unified single-figure synthesis is offered). The carried-forward document's specific CMHC-sourced Toronto rent figures were not independently re-verified against a live CMHC source in this review. Whether Ontario has published any formal policy rationale specifically for excluding OW (but not ODSP) from inflation-indexing was not located in this review — a real gap, since this is the single sharpest, most currently-operative distinction this document identifies. Restored 2026-07-16 (a later verification pass) — the second carried-forward document itself states plainly that it "does not carry an opposing 'case against' raising OW rates, since the sources reviewed here are advocacy-sector analyses (ISAC/ACTO) and the province's own regulation text, not a documented government position defending the current rate level — a genuine opposing case, if the province has articulated one, was not found in the sources checked" [ontario-works-rate-erosion-and-shelter-penalty.md, carried-forward]; this honest scope-limitation had been silently dropped and is carried forward here rather than left unstated.
Scoped out by design: ODSP's own full rate history belongs to a dedicated ODSP treatment if one exists elsewhere in this corpus, not duplicated here beyond the contrast-case role it plays for OW's own erosion story; the broader basic-income policy debate belongs to basic-income-universal-services; the broader deep-poverty/income-security policy debate belongs to deep-poverty-income-security — both hand off to this page by name for rate figures specifically, and this page does not absorb their broader policy-debate scope in return.
Indigenous context deferral (per this batch's brief): Indigenous overrepresentation among social-assistance recipients, and any distinct rate or eligibility considerations for on-reserve versus off-reserve populations under Ontario's social-assistance framework, is a real angle this document does not develop — marked here for W3's dedicated Indigenous-context overlay pass rather than treated superficially in this backgrounder.

Claim-index appendix

carried-forward (carried forward from this page’s own sources docs, cited as-is, internal citations not yet reconciled to this project's own claims register):

this library's prior synthesis document (OW Rate History) · carried-forward · full 1990-2026 rate table, three-freeze structure, 21.6% 1995-96 cut, wage-relative collapse (74.8%→24.5%)
ontario-works-rate-erosion-and-shelter-penalty.md · carried-forward · $733/month 2025 rate, $343/month no-fixed-address rate under O. Reg. 134/98, Toronto rent comparison figures, 20%+ real-terms erosion since 2018

New load-bearing findings (this review, source quotes below, not yet through this library’s formal verification process):

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Source quotes (NEW-OW-1 through NEW-OW-4)

NEW-OW-1

"Minimum wage rages [sic] in Ontario will increase on October 1, 2026. This increase is tied to the Ontario Consumer Price Index for 2026." / General minimum wage: "$17.95 per hour" (Rates from October 1, 2026 to September 30, 2027); "$17.60 per hour" (Rates from October 1, 2025 to September 30, 2026); "$17.20 per hour" (Rates from October 1, 2024 to September 30, 2025).

Source: Government of Ontario, "Minimum wage | Your guide to the Employment Standards Act," https://www.ontario.ca/document/your-guide-employment-standards-act-0/minimum-wage — page last updated April 1, 2026. Accessed 2026-07-14.

NEW-OW-2

"Monthly basic OW benefit amounts were unchanged in 2024. Monthly basic ODSP benefits increased by 4.5 per cent in July 2024 due to inflation indexing."

Source: Maytree, "Ontario" (Welfare in Canada 2024), https://maytree.com/changing-systems/data-measuring/welfare-in-canada/ontario/ — last updated July 2025. Accessed 2026-07-14.

NEW-OW-3

"The welfare income of the unattached single considered employable was the least adequate relative to the Poverty Line of all example households in Ontario across the time series. Their income started the time series in 2002 at 45 per cent of the Poverty Line and stayed virtually the same until 2018. After a drop following the 2018 rebasing, their income saw a slight improvement in 2020, then gradually declined to a low of only 36 per cent of the Poverty Line in 2024... They also would have lived below the Deep Income Poverty threshold across the entire time series, which means households in these circumstances would have consistently lived in deep poverty for the last 23 years."

Source: same as NEW-OW-2.

NEW-OW-4

"The unattached single considered employable had the least adequate total welfare income relative to the poverty thresholds. Their income was $11,542 below the Deep Income Poverty threshold and $18,874 below the Poverty Line. This means their income was only 48 per cent of the MBM-DIP and only 36 per cent of the MBM." / "Total annual welfare incomes in 2024 ranged from $10,455 for the unattached single considered employable..."