Dr. Tracy Smith-Carrier meets with Ontario Premier
January 5, 2018
Dr. Tracy Smith-Carrier, Associate Professor in the School of Social Work, met with Ontario’s Premier, Kathleen Wynne, and her team on December 18, 2017. During the hour-long meeting, the group discussed the preliminary findings on rural poverty in the province.
Ted McMeekin, Parliamentary Assistant to the Premier, asked Dr. Smith-Carrier to write a literature review on rural poverty in Ontario as part of a larger report on rural poverty to be publicly released later in 2018.
Dr. Smith-Carrier, and the advisory group writing the report, conducted a series of rural poverty consultations across the province. They met with local community providers and with people with lived experience of rural poverty in several areas within Ontario. The upcoming report will include the findings from the consultations as well as recommendations.
Dr. Smith-Carrier has worked in the area of poverty for a number of years. She says, “Given that more and more people are struggling to make ends meet, recommendations on how to alleviate poverty in rural and remote communities in Ontario are especially timely. I look forward to the release of the report, and the actions to be taken in response to it.”
At King’s, Dr. Smith-Carrier teaches Introduction to Social Policy, The Canadian Policy Context: Responses to Poverty and Social Problems, and Advanced Practicum Seminar. She is also an active researcher with the London Poverty Research Centre at King’s.