Rabia Khedr has spent nearly two years working to ensure the federal government delivers on its September 2020 throne speech promise to create a new disability benefit for working age Canadians. Legally blind, the Mississauga-based mother of four knows all too well how the lack of income supports has left many Canadians with disability living below the poverty line. As the national director of Disability Without Poverty, Khedr often hears stories about the barriers people face when trying to access income supports.
She recalls one Ontario family’s story in particular. When the father acquired a disability following the onset of an underlying genetic condition, the family discovered he was ineligible for income assistance. As a result, Khedr says, the family has been forced to cover their living expenses using the monthly $1600 Canada Child Benefit cheques they receive for the children.
“He’s disabled enough that he can’t do his job, but not disabled enough for the system to support him. Their three children are teenagers, [they have] a two-bedroom apartment in the Greater Toronto Area and rent is $1,800. They’re racking up debt to keep a roof over their head and God knows how they’re eating and surviving.”
Modelled after the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) received by seniors, the new federal benefit will be provided to eligible Canadians in addition to existing disability supports, most of which are administered at the provincial level and are not indexed to inflation. With the cost of living rising high, advocates have long said that existing amounts are not enough to ensure an adequate standard of living. If delivered, the new benefit will be a top-up to existing income supports, marking the federal government’s first foray into territory typically considered provincial jurisdiction. While the consensus is that the benefit will provide much needed income relief to Canadians with disability, the process to push the bill through parliament is one many advocates have criticized for being long and slow.
When the 2021 federal election was announced shortly after legislation was first tabled, ongoing efforts to bring the benefit to life were brought to a swift halt. A few weeks after it was reintroduced by Employment Minister Carla Qualtrough on June 2, Parliament broke for the summer and the bill was once again left in limbo.
“What we’ve said all along is this: Parliament may be taking a break, but poverty does not take a break,” Khedr says. “It’s just getting worse and worse, as we wait for this bill to become law.”
For many Canadians, an increased likelihood of living in poverty is an inescapable consequence of having a disability. According to Statistics Canada, 40 per cent of Canada’s low-income population is made up of persons with disabilities. An estimated 25 per cent of those reporting a disability are earning less than half of the median Canadian income and among those persons with disability aged 25 to 64 years, only 59 per cent are employed compared to the 80 per cent of people without disabilities who are employed. And the more severe the disability, the more likely it becomes that individuals find themselves below the poverty line.
This reality is one Khedr is determined to change. When the government first announced its plans for the new benefit in 2020, she was one of several disability advocates across Canada that joined efforts and formed Disability Without Poverty, an organization whose primary goal is to push to make the promised federal disability benefit a reality.
“We began organizing and having conversations with economists, academics, and policymakers on what this benefit could look like,” Khedr says, describing some of the early work the organization took on, which included the Angus Reid survey on disability poverty conducted last year.
Pointing to the results of the survey, she says that more and more people are in support of the government taking fast action to deliver the promised federal benefit. “Eighty-nine per cent of Canadians were saying, ‘this isn’t good enough, we need to end disability poverty’.”
According to Khedr, there was a shift in attitude that followed the recession-like economic downturn caused by the pandemic. “There’s a lot of conversation happening around rising inflation [and] the impact of this on people’s ability to pay their bills, afford their necessities of life. More able-bodied Canadians are becoming concerned about the cost of living.”
While the federal government has been slow to deliver on its promise, Tom Jackman isn’t surprised by the wait. Jackman, who is based in Newfoundland and is on the autism spectrum, works with Khedr as part of the Disability Without Poverty leadership team, and says getting the bill to the first reading was an equally long process.
“We had to push really hard for somebody to actually read it for the first time,” recalls Jackman, who also sits on the board of Autism Canada. “We have to keep [pushing] over the summer so that it gets a second reading in September.”
Qualtrough, who was criticized earlier this summer by critics who say the bill she reintroduced provided no substantial information, has stated the government is taking its time to design a benefit that will not interact with other income support programs in a way that “disentitles someone from pharmacare, from their province or accessible transit or disability supports.”
But for advocates like Kenzie McCurdy, the reason provided by the Minister just isn’t good enough. A member of StopGap Ottawa, a disability organization that builds ramps for local businesses, McCurdy points to how the Canada Emergency Response Benefit was released in a matter of weeks after being announced.
“The first time [the disability bill] was tabled, the election was called, and it was dead in the water. Now a year later, there’s no further meat,” says McCurdy, adding that the government has thus far shared very little information about what it intends the benefit to look like.
“There’s no talk about timelines, there’s no talk about amounts, there’s no talking about eligibility,” she says. “People are waiting on the edge of their seat, in dire poverty, having to make choices between food and rent and there’s been very little information given about the benefit.”
Echoing McCurdy’s criticism is MP Bonita Zarrillo, the NDP critic for Disability Inclusion, who agrees that the bill should have been stronger when it came back the second time. According to Zarrillo, the priority should be including provisions that explicitly state that the benefit is designed to provide adequate funding that will lift people out of poverty.
“Right now, it’s really just in the preamble when they talk about a reduction in poverty,” said Zarrillo, in a telephone interview. “It must include language around adequacy in the principles of the bill that matches the market basket measure that Stats Canada has defined as the poverty level.”
But for Jackman, whatever shape the disability benefit ends up taking, a key priority for the government should be ensuring that administrative barriers don’t prevent Canadians from accessing the benefit.
Citing his own experiences, Jackman describes how he had been unable to access his Registered Disability Savings Plan (RDSP) after losing the disability tax credit administered by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). The RDSP, he says, helps people with disability save for their future because unlike money deposited in a personal bank account, funds in an RDSP are protected from clawbacks.
“You have to have a disability tax credit with the CRA in order to have an RDSP but to qualify, you have to prove that you are disabled enough to have a disability tax credit,” explains Jackman, saying that the clients are re-assessed every few years to determine whether they still need the benefit.
It’s a process that Jackman says involves a large amount of paperwork, placing a burden on vulnerable Canadians who have to continuously prove they are disabled enough to receive income assistance.
“Certain disabilities don’t go away, they’re lifetime disabilities. Why do you have to keep proving that you need this disability tax credit?”
With little over a month left before parliament resumes in September, Khedr and Jackman are ready to keep pushing parliamentarians to get the bill to second reading. For Khedr, the most important thing is for able-bodied Canadians to understand that this isn’t just a niche disability matter – circumstances can change quickly and the government delivering the promised benefit may one day impact them too.
“In a blink of an eye, we can find ourselves in an accident [and] disabled,” she says. “We’re one degree away from that reality. We need to be mindful of that when we have the power to make decisions that can improve people’s quality of life.”
While the politicians who have met with organizations like Disability Without Poverty have generally seemed supportive of their efforts, Khedr says that for the benefit to happen, there needs to be collective action and continued pressure on elected officials.
“The nods are there, the agreement is there but where does it fit into their priority scale? That’s where it’s really going to take massive effort and collective voices, to say, ‘this is a priority to every Canadian and since you are elected by Canadians, you need to respond to this priority appropriately’.”
Photo courtesy of DepositPhotos
