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With the recent increase in Ontario's minimum wage, the gap between the minimum wage and the welfare rate is as wide as it was during the Depression.

It may have been a Depression era coincidence, but broad based minimum wage laws brought in by the Ontario government in 1937 closely followed the first issuances of cash welfare in 1935.

Back then, the minimum wage (which applied mainly to working women in Toronto) was $12.50 a week, or about $54 a month. The going relief rate at that time for a single person in many parts of Toronto was about $ $19.50 a month. So a single relief packet amounted to 36 per cent of what someone could make working for minimum wage.

Flash forward to today, the minimum wage in Ontario just rose to $10.25 an hour, which works out to $1,625 a month based on a standard 36-and-a-half-hour work week. Meanwhile, the single maximum welfare rate is $585 a month. That means that, for the first time in 73 years, the welfare rate will again equal 36 per cent of the Ontario minimum wage.

What happened in between?

In 1944, relief rates were tied to a nutritious food basket through the efforts of the predecessors of the Toronto Social Planning Council and various academic departments at the University of Toronto.

In the 20 years after the Second World War, the minimum wage began to climb toward the elusive $1.00 an hour mark while welfare rates lingered at low levels before the advent of the Canada Assistance Plan. We almost dropped back to 36 per cent – but not quite.

In 1967, Canada's centennial year, one of the great acts of unintended symmetry was realized in Ontario: 100 years of Canada, a $1.00 an hour minimum wage, and welfare rates that finally surpassed the $100 a month mark. The ratio of social assistance to minimum wage stood at 63 per cent.

By 1980, minimum wage in Ontario had reached $3.00 an hour, but social assistance did not keep pace and the ratio dropped to 41 per cent just as a major recession hit.

However, by November 1991, propelled by a robust economy, the social assistance single rate was raised to $626 with a $6.00 an hour minimum wage. The ratio reached its high-water mark of all time at 70 per cent.

Although no one knew it at the time, that 70 per cent standard would relentlessly erode over the next two decades under governments of all political stripes. The Rae government stopped raising social assistance in 1993 but implemented two more minimum wage increases, bringing it to $6.85 an hour in 1995 where it would stay until 2004. When Premier Mike Harris cut the social assistance single rate to $520 a month, the ratio dropped to 47 per cent.

Since 2005 the minimum wage has risen at a higher rate than social assistance and the ratio relentlessly fell to the current 36 per cent.

The yearly difference between the single welfare rate and minimum wage is now $19,500 in gross minimum wages versus $7,020 in basic assistance.

So we have the same stark work incentives as we did in the depths of the Great Depression. Who says history doesn't repeat itself?