Ontario’s NDP Children and Youth Critic Andrea Horwath is calling on the McGuinty government to restore an allowance that enables low-income families to provide winter clothing and school supplies for their children.

Describing the Liberals’ much-touted child benefit as “emperor’s clothing”, Horwath pointed out that already-struggling families are actually worse off since the introduction of the Ontario Child Benefit, which sent the special allowance program to the scrapheap and cut the amount received by each family.

“The winter clothing allowance is extremely important,” Horwath said. “I hear from the families who live the experience. They’re not buying the Liberal claim that they are further ahead. They know they are no better off.”

Ensuring children are properly prepared to learn and adequate clothed in winter should be basic to any poverty reduction commitment, Horwath said.

The McGuinty program, being phased in over the next three years, could currently strip families of about $600 a year.

Today CUPE and anti-poverty advocates rallied in London for action on the issue.