Provincial Government

Video: Watch OCAP crashing Liberal heritage dinner

OCAP Organizes to Raise Welfare/Disability Rates.

On Thursday, February 25th, 2010, diners at a lavish Ontario Party Liberal fundraising event, which cost attendees $950 per plate and $9,500 a table, did not finish their meals in comfort.

Members of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) organized to crash the fundraiser, at which Premier Dalton McGuinty was scheduled to speak, in an act of outrage at the fact that rich Liberal Party supporters could spend more on a meal than people on welfare and disability have to live on for a month. While the Liberals feast, literally thousands of people in this city go without food or shelter.

At about 7:00 p.m. at the Metro Convention Centre, 50 low income people
and OCAP supporters managed to disrupt the fine dining and cocktails, walking past police and security and proceeding right to the front of the banquet hall. Just as hundreds of dinner attendees gathered in the reception area sipping on champagne, OCAP occupied the centre area chanting Raise the Rates and We are hungry, we’re angry, we won’t go away!. The group was loud, energetic and determined despite physical attacks by Toronto Police and Liberal Party members.

Roland Wong, M.Sc., MD., FRCPC
Community Medicine

February 14, 2010
Dalton McGuinty, Premier
Legislative Building
Queen's Park
Toronto ON M7A 1A1
Fax: 416 325 3745

Dear Premier:
RE: The Special Diet Allowance

On Tuesday, February 9, a frail 63-year-old man with cancer came to my office and cried that his social worker at Ontario Disability refused to take his form. Why? Because I had completed the form for him. He was told to take a new form and to have it completed by another doctor. He was also told to look for a job. He told the social worker that he did not have another doctor and that I have been his doctor for 5 years. This man had taken his old form to the new MPP for Toronto Centre, Mr. Glen Murray. I know him from Winnipeg in the mid-80s where we fought an epidemic of phobia and discrimination. The patient was told to return to me to forward his case to the Ministry.

Perhaps Mr. Murray has too much confidence in me! So the patient trudged heavy-hearted to my office. I told him the best I could do was to write a note for him to show all those in power who can change his fate. Those in power set rules whether it’s fair or not. The heads of Ontario Disability and Ontario Works issued a memorandum on December 18, 2009 to their departments that social service workers can decide on their own that a person does not have a health condition.