Ontario Works Shuffles Little Portugal Clients to Downtown Office

Ontario Works clients whose postal codes begin with M6J received a notice this month that, "in order to serve you better," their accounts would be moved to the downtown Metro Hall office, and that they would get further information in the mail.

As of yet, further notices have not been sent out, and there seem to be various versions of the story. The phone line for the 1900 Dundas West office still says that it serves M6J-ers, the notice at the entrance to the building says something about it being effective on the 20th or something like that, and workers say that the move is because the office took on clients from a postal code further out. They talk about how happy the people at the eastern border of the M6J postal code must be.

Just to illustrate how little this serves anybody better, here's a map of the two M6J areas, and the two offices (the new one is the one that's further away from most of the area):


View M6J area code in a larger map

If you eyeball it, it looks like only residents of 1/5th of the postal code are actually closer to the new location.

So why didn't they just shuffle those in the green area to the new office, instead of continuing to force them to trek west on Dundas, and let the people in Little Portugal stay in Little Portugal where they want to stay?

It's basically a big f-you to Little Portugal residents on OW. It'll be interesting to see the scads of irate Portuguese rubbing shoulders with some of the roughest OW clients in the city, at the most ghetto, difficult-to-find office in the GTA.

If you're going to have to go to this hellhole, here's how to get there: it's just to the left of the main entrance pictured below, off the north side of Wellington street, and it's on the south side of Metro Hall.


View Larger Map

Fortunately, there is a silver lining to all of this: the people at the downtown office have a bit of a better attitude. They don't speak Portuguese, though. And everybody's getting transferred to new workers. How are our Portuguese immigrants who are still learning basic, basic English, supposed to make the transition, when they're already in enough of a pickle, having come to Canada expecting everything to be coming up roses, and ending up on the dole because, oops, Canada's a pretty tough place to live, it turns out.

Another actual plus: The employment center in Metro Hall is much less ghetto than the one on Dundas West.

The problem is the commute. Ontario Works clients don't spend their transportation allowance, if they get it, on transportation, they spend it on bills, because the accommodations and basic needs allowance, added up, are what most people pay for rent - if they're lucky. So this means a lot of walking. A lot.

Maybe now's a good time to set up a much-needed Bikes for Bums project or something.