Ontario needs to address the crises

Today, Ontario faces a deepening crisis. Food bank use and homelessness are at record highs. Unsheltered homelessness is growing everywhere in the province. Too many Ontarians continue to die of preventable drug overdoses. Climate-related disasters, including forest fires, are increasing in number and severity. All these problems leave Ontario increasingly vulnerable, while U.S. tariffs threaten the viability of Ontario industries and the livelihoods of Ontario workers. Yet current provincial policies are exacerbating poverty and homelessness and will increase carbon emissions while reducing our capacity to withstand climate impacts.

In the Diocese of Toronto’s pre-budget submission to the province this January, we reiterated calls for investments and policies to address these crises.

Poverty reduction

A record one million Ontarians relied on food banks last year, 87 per cent more than in 2019-20, while the number of visits is up 13 per cent over the previous year and 165 per cent since 2019-20. The Association of Municipalities of Ontario found that nearly 85,000 Ontarians were homeless in 2025, up nearly 8 per cent since last year, while northern and rural communities saw homelessness increase by 37 per cent and 31 percent, respectively. Homelessness is also lasting longer, with 53 per cent of people experiencing homelessness in 2025 being chronically homeless.

Both Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) and Ontario Works (OW) rates fall far below the poverty line, trapping recipients in poverty and driving them into homelessness. As of July 2025, more than 30,000 people on OW and ODSP were experiencing homelessness, up 72 per cent since July 2019. The situation is especially desperate for those on OW, whose rates have been frozen since September 2018, while the cost of living has increased by more than 23 per cent. While the minimum wage and other provincial income support programs are indexed to inflation, OW rates and earnings thresholds have remained stagnant, eroding the value of these benefits. A single person on OW cannot afford a bachelor apartment anywhere in Ontario, much less food, clothing and transportation. This causes greater demand on social housing and benefit programs. Moreover, social assistance recipients who become homeless lose the “housing” component of the benefit, making it more difficult for them to exit homelessness. These factors drive recipients into ever-deeper poverty, contributing to rising homelessness, hunger and demand for social and health services. We call for bringing OW and ODSP rates into alignment with the cost of living, indexing OW rates and earnings thresholds to inflation, and combining the basic needs and housing components of social assistance into one flat rate.

Having a job should keep one out of poverty, yet nearly one in four households using food banks in Ontario this past year cite employment as their main source of income, more than double the percentage in 2019-20. A recent University of Toronto study found that 89 per cent of food-insecure households in Canada have a main income earner in a permanent, full-time job. While the minimum wage is indexed to inflation, it still falls short of a living wage. Low-income workers saw a 14 per cent increase in earnings between 2019 and 2024, yet the cost of household essentials like food, housing and transportation increased by 22 per cent over the same period, leaving them in a widening affordability gap. We urge the government to gradually raise the minimum wage until it approximates the average living wage in Ontario and thereafter index it to inflation.

Ontario’s employment legislation still lacks paid sick leave, which can lead to financial hardship for low-wage and precariously employed workers. Workers must go to work sick or forfeit a day’s pay. Going to work sick has negative public health impacts and can worsen health conditions for employees, leading to potential medical complications, possible job loss and a greater burden on our healthcare system. We call for legislation requiring employers to provide employees with 10 paid sick days per year.

Housing & homelessness

Rent control loopholes, including the exemption on new units, vacancy decontrol and above-guideline rent increases, result in asking rents increasing faster than increases in tenants’ incomes, even above the rate of inflation. They give landlords an incentive to displace tenants and even to demolish existing rental units to build new units not subject to rent control. This results in an overall loss of affordable units, as well as increasing housing precarity among tenant households. Recent legislation exacerbates this precarity, restricting tenants’ ability to preserve their housing and reducing their right to compensation for no-fault evictions. Soaring rents not only require higher housing benefits to bridge the gap between rental costs and tenants’ incomes; they push people into homelessness, which ends up costing us all more. We recommend closing these rent control loopholes, which would stabilize costs not only for tenants but for Ontario taxpayers overall.

As the market cannot provide sufficient affordable housing for low-income tenants and people exiting homelessness, we also need investment in social housing. The waitlist for subsidized housing in Ontario now exceeds 300,000 households, with average wait times of more than five years and as long as 16 years. A proposed “pause” on inclusionary zoning requirements could mean 3,000 fewer affordable units created each year. Without sufficient affordable housing, people are more likely to become homeless and less able to exit homelessness. Emergency shelter cannot keep up – despite shelter bed capacity in Ontario growing by 34 per cent from 2019 to 2024, chronic homelessness grew by 138 per cent in that time.

Unsurprisingly, encampments have proliferated across the province. Yet without available housing, encampments will not disappear. Criminalizing people in encampments overrides their human rights, removes them from supports and does nothing to resolve the underlying issue. Moreover, the cost of jail is approximately three times the cost of supportive housing^.

Without significant intervention, homelessness in Ontario is projected to more than double in the next decade, and more than triple under an economic downturn, which could easily result from the impact of U.S. tariffs. The increase in the number and frequency of Ontarians using food banks is also a predictor of another surge in homelessness. We call for increased investments in homelessness prevention and transitional, supportive and rent-geared-to-income housing, to end chronic and unsheltered homelessness.

Harm reduction

The closure of 10 supervised consumption sites in 2025 has led to increased pressure on remaining sites, drop-ins and other community services, along with an increase in public overdoses and discarded needles. In December 2025, Toronto Public Health reported a sharp spike in overdoses, along with an increasingly contaminated street drug supply. While investments in addictions treatment and supportive housing are welcome, this government’s shift from supervised consumption sites to abstinence-based Homelessness and Addictions Recovery Treatment (HART) Hubs is contrary to the advice of healthcare workers and drug policy experts. HART Hubs do not allow supervised consumption, drug-checking or needle exchange – vital services that save lives and promote public health by reducing public needle litter, reducing the transmission of blood-borne diseases and reducing the strain on our emergency services. We recommend reversing the closure of safe consumption sites, ending the ban on new sites and expanding harm reduction services across Ontario.

Climate change

Climate change is leading to more frequent and severe wildfires, floods, droughts and heatwaves. In 2025, wildfires in Ontario destroyed nearly seven times the area burned in 2024, while Toronto saw a record number of heatwaves, putting Ontarians’ health and productivity at risk. Yet this government has abolished the legislative requirement for emissions reduction targets, a climate change plan or reporting on progress to meet those targets. We urge the province to continue to set emissions reduction targets and track progress toward those targets.

Mega-highway projects like Highway 413 and the Bradford Bypass will pave over some of Ontario’s best farmland, exacerbate urban sprawl and lead to higher levels of air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, costing taxpayers billions without easing traffic congestion long-term. The province is also spending taxpayers’ money to appeal a court decision in favour of bike lanes, while adding new legislative obstacles to municipalities seeking to add this infrastructure. We recommend cancelling the development of the 413 mega-highway and the Bradford Bypass and investing those dollars in expanding and improving public and regional transit. We further recommend reversing plans to remove bike lanes and returning active transportation infrastructure decisions to municipalities.

The province’s energy production policies move us farther from our climate action goals, with gas-fired power projected to account for 25 per cent of Ontario’s electricity supply in 2030, up from 4 per cent in 2017. We call on the province to significantly expand investment in renewable energy sources and storage.

Most recently, this government plans to amalgamate Ontario’s 36 existing conservation authorities, which follow local watershed boundaries and play a vital role in protecting communities from flooding, into seven regional bodies. With climate change already leading to more frequent and severe weather events, consolidation risks disrupting protections for watersheds and downstream communities, reducing local knowledge and representation, and requiring a complex transition process that could cost as much as it saves, without clear evidence of benefit. We urge this government to reconsider the planned amalgamation of Ontario’s Conservation Authorities and instead pursue opportunities to enhance coordination between them.

Ontario needs targeted, coordinated, and sustained action to address these crises and put our province on a path to greater resilience as we face the challenges before us.