Modernizing Income Security for Working-Age Adults (MISWAA)

 Main purpose:

St. Christopher House partnered with the Toronto City Summit Alliance (TCSA) to lead a multi-stakeholder process to address the income security of working-age adults.  

A Task Force of 40 leaders from various sectors were supported by the research and analysis of a Working Group of another 45 researchers, policy analysts and advocates.  A Community Reference Group of low-income adults participated at both the Task Force and Working Group and St. Christopher House worked with a variety of community-based organizations to include hundreds of diverse low-income people across the City in consultations.

 

See the Toronto City Summit Alliance web pages for background papers and reports.

 

 Brief description of the project:

This initiative represented the second stage of a project that has been underway since June 2004 with the support of the Atkinson Charitable Foundation. St. Christopher House brought together policy experts, diverse community members and low-income people to identify the priority problems and possible solutions to income insecurity.  This project,  Income Security Strategies for Working- Age Adults (ISSWAA), was completed in June 2004.  St. Christopher House joined with the Toronto City Summit Alliance to expand this multi-stakeholder process. 

 

The TCSA and St. Christopher House believed that the timing was good for a non-governmental review of income security directed by public-spirited leaders from civil society. The efforts of the TCSA and St. Christopher House focused on Ontario and included recommendations for the federal level of government as well. 

Working age, lower income adults face three fundamental issues:

-         Minimum wage no longer pays enough to enable people to realistically meet their costs of living, especially in urban Canada.

 -         Existing programs make it difficult to escape poverty and the welfare trap. Many welfare recipients have to earn extra income to survive but the penalties for earning income are such that it is often economically rational to choose welfare over working.

-         There is little public or political pressure to change the situation. Since the early to mid 1990s, minimum wages, employment insurance, and social assistance benefits have all declined significantly while eligibility for benefits has been tightened.

 There were four key objectives in undertaking this initiative:

 -         To provide a clear and soundly supported assessment of the current Ontario and Canadian income security systems and programs, including what is working well and gaps and flaws. The assessment will be grounded in the experience of affected individuals, communities and businesses.

 -         To develop proposals for policy and program changes for the federal, provincial and municipal governments to improve the economic security of low-income, working-age adults, focusing on Ontario in a national context.

-         To identify promising non-governmental initiatives that could complement recommended policy changes, e.g. by marshalling communities to lower the costs of working or remove barriers to working.

 -         To design a pan-Canadian campaign to help ensure that the proposals for governments are put into motion, ideally over a two-year time period.

LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE MISWAA MULTI-STAKEHOLDER PROCESS:

The Wellesley Institute undertook an evaluation of the MISWAA process in 2007.   All the participating members of MISWAA's Task Force, Working Group and Community Reference Group were asked to participate in a survey with follow-up interviews.  The Wellesley Institute has released their findings in a report "From Many Voices: Learnings from the MISWAA Project Multi-Stakeholder Process" in March, 2008.