Open Letter: “An End to Thirty Years of Social Murder and new paths forward for Ontario.”
We, the undersigned organizations and individuals, have come together to respond to over thirty years of social murder and austerity brought about against disabled people across Ontario. From Mike Harris to the current government of Doug Ford, we have been constantly and consistently failed by the Province of Ontario through the undermining and underfunding of our social systems at every turn and every level. Enough is enough. Action must be taken to change the fundamental direction of the Province of Ontario and disabled communities in Ontario will not be silent now or following the current election.
Over these thirty years, disabled communities across Ontario have sounded the alarm again and again. From devastating, never-recovered-from cuts to social assistance programs in the 1990s to the continued financialization of housing to ballooning police budgets and anti-disabled measures like the Safe Streets Act, our communities have been at the front lines of pushing back against government imposed austerity measures. While there have been victories against these measures, no government has actually turned this ship around—neoliberal economic policy continues to run rampant over our safety, well-being, and ability to thrive in communities across Ontario. This has only intensified since 2020 with the ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic—where small measures provided some relief, but the wider realities of our systems’ failures have been laid bare. We are more vulnerable than ever to becoming unhoused, less supported than ever before, and still struggling against the same austerity mindsets present since the day Mike Harris stepped into office.
Doug Ford, through three most recent bills—Bills 223, 238, 242—has pushed the pressure points we’ve noted above to their breaking point. These bills lay out clear threats to critical resources for our communities; the defunding, closures, and intensified threat of penalty makes it clear that the Ford government wants to push us further past the margins and simply into death. We already have so little infrastructure and so many opportunities to be criminalized as disabled people in Ontario—we simply can’t let reality in this Province be ignored.
The reality is that the vast majority of unhoused Ontarians are disabled.
The reality is that the vast majority of disabled people in Ontario—housed or not—struggle due to unbelievably low social assistance.
The reality is that existing carceral institutions—long-term care facilities, prisons, group homes—in Ontario, all continue the legacies of warehousing and violence embedded in the colonial health and education systems across this Province’s history.
In turn, forced treatment and new policing structures will build on these violent, disgraceful histories and make our lives even worse.
All of these issues—and more—are direct attacks on disabled folks. To our readers, we remind you: these are not abstractions, but attacks on you, your loved ones, your neighbours, your friends and community members. For all of us, then, we need to end the thirty year cycle of continued austerity in 2025 and begin taking different roads for a better Ontario.
This is bigger than one election. This will require pressure on every party and politician to make right, but we can start now. We believe it is time for a massive reinvestment in our social systems—from housing to social assistance to home care to education and more—and we know that now is the time to do it. Every moment longer we spend while politicians ‘wait’ for the answers that communities have been giving for years is harm done to disabled Ontarians. Every month another life taken through incarceration or MAiD; another death due to the failures of Ontario’s social systems.
Instead, we have a set of policy positions that we urge people across Ontario to take up with every party and push now—no matter who wins the next election. We need to take care of each other and hold the powerful to account, together. We need to see the value in each other and in building the Ontario we dream of—a place to not just live, but thrive and grow together.
No matter how you organize—on the streets, at the ballot box, or talking while sitting at someone’s kitchen table—now is the time to do so and to act together. We pledge to hold these values together and make it happen.
With solidarity,