Same Premier Who Supports Helping Autistic Kids?

Isn't this the same government that was supposed to improve the conditions in nursing homes and are being sued by one of the unions...........

Poor to get dental plan
Fighting poverty will be a cornerstone of today's throne speech and Premier Dalton McGuinty has conscripted his most powerful ministers to ensure the poor are championed at Queen's Park.

How much dental care does one need if they brush regularly and subsist on mac & cheese?

Unions turn screws on Liberals

Jobs leave, poverty arrives
November 29, 2007
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Premier targets city poverty
Nov. 27
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Up here in the riding of York South-Weston, the poorest riding in Toronto, the root cause of poverty is very clear. Over the past 30 years, successive provincial governments have allowed the industrial base of the area to flee and sell their land holdings to be redeveloped as retail or dense housing.

CCM, Moffat Stoves, Dominion Bridge, Admiral, Massey Harris, Fruehauf, MacMillan Bloedel and others have all left the neighbourhood. Thus, minimum wage, part-time, temporary work has replaced full-time, good-paying, permanent industrial jobs. Those who do find employment aren't much better off than being on welfare.

The next big conversion is planned for the 20-hectare former Kodak Canada site. Kodak Canada was a fixture here for more than 100 years and had more than 4,000 good jobs in its heyday. The developers who bought the land from Kodak advised the city that they want to put in a 600,000-square-foot "power centre" retail complex on these lands. It will cause a huge influx of car traffic on already strained arteries and do nothing to raise the standard of living of the poor residents nearby.

The province and the city have the tools to prevent this conversion and to tell the developer to keep the land industrial. A local community network has suggested that the lands be set aside as a "centre of excellence" for "green" industrial research and manufacturing.

Let's hope Premier Dalton McGuinty and Mayor David Miller can see that some of the solutions don't require any further study. They are obvious to the folks living in poverty.
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Mike Sullivan, Chair, Weston
Community Coalition, Toronto

Poor know why they're poor
November 29, 2007
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Premier targets city poverty
Nov. 27
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Deb Matthews, chair of the provincial government's cabinet committee on poverty reduction, was quoted about the United Way report on poverty in Toronto as saying, "The question the United Way report asks but doesn't really answer is why. ... What is it that's driving that and, more importantly, what do we need to do to help people move beyond poverty? It's complicated. It's very complicated."

I disagree. There are many obvious reasons why there is poverty in Toronto.

Half the population are tenants who lost the protection of rent control in 1998; the repeal of anti-demolition/conversion laws led to a loss of affordable private rentals; provincial affordable housing programs were abolished in 1995; welfare rates were cut by 22 per cent in 1995; the minimum wage is low; there's marginal employment with no job security and no benefits; there's a lack of enforcement by the province against employers who don't pay the miserable minimum wage; and only 22 per cent of people are eligible for employment insurance benefits, the lowest rate in the country.

It's not complicated at all – not to me anyway.
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Barbara Hurd, Toronto