It considers barely $1,500 a month in income for disabled Ontarians as ensuring their 'financial well-being'
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This week’s federal budget doused the last, best hope for Ontarians who are too disabled to work. Their own provincial government thinks $1,308 a month is a dandy amount of support, but the federal government has long promised a new Canada Disability Benefit.
Optimists believed that the federal money and the cash from the province would finally get disabled Ontarians up to a minimum subsistence income. On Tuesday, they found out that the big-spending Justin Trudeau government was going to allot them $2,400 a year.
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If better funded, the federal plan would have gotten the Ontario government off the hook for its own slightly improved, but still inadequate performance on disability support. Now, the provincial Doug Ford government will have to decide whether to count the new payment as income, thus reducing its own Ontario Disability Support Program obligations. That would be consistent with its approach up to now, but it would nullify even the limited benefit offered by the new program.
On the bright side for the Ford government, the federal announcement makes Ontario’s own disability support look positively lavish by comparison.
The federal budget’s $6.1-billion announcement sounds impressive, but it’s only about $1 billion a year for six years. It’s a tiny sum for a government that is spending is $535 billion this year alone. It would be difficult to argue that the federal Liberals are short of funds.
With that $1 billion a year, the federal government intends to “increase the financial well-being of over 600,000 persons with disabilities.” It’s difficult to see how the phrase “financial well-being” could apply to Ontarians who would be bringing in a total of little over $1,500 a month.
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Disabled Ontarians have been waiting a long time for their meagre handout. The federal disability payment was promised in 2020 but wasn’t passed until 2023. The legislation came with no details as to amounts, eligibility or implementation.
The odd thing about the federal government’s tepid support for the disabled is that the idea itself is a political winner
Ten months later, the amount is set but the disabled shouldn’t expect the money to start trickling right away. That won’t happen to July of next year. The feds, you see, need time to consult with disabled people “to ensure that the benefit is reflective of the needs of those receiving it.” And yet the government’s own website says consultations with the disabled already took place last year.
The federal government is also calling on territories and provinces not to count the new disability benefit as income. Again, the feds said a year ago that talks about that were underway. But Ontario government spokesperson Caitlin Clark says there haven’t been negotiations with the province yet. It is waiting for the federal government to produce detail on how the new program will work and who will benefit from it.
The fear that provincial governments would reduce benefits by the amount of the new federal payment is not unwarranted. Ontario already does that when it comes to the Canada Pension Plan Disability Benefit. Disabled people who qualify can apply for the CPP benefit but it won’t net them much extra money because the provincial government then reduces its own payments.
It’s really an unconscionable practice. The CPP benefit provides a maximum monthly payout of $1,606, although the average is $1,176. Combine that with the provincial money and a disabled Ontarian would have some chance of scraping by.
That’s more than can be said for the $2,400 a year the Trudeau government has promised. It’s a shockingly low amount. Last year, parliamentary budget officer Yves Giroux modelled the costs for three different disability benefit scenarios. The average payment for the least expensive model he considered was $7,683 a year.
When the concept was introduced in 2020, then minister Carla Qualtrough said the new program would be based on the federal Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS). That led reasonable people to believe that the amounts might be similar. The GIS pays a low-income single person up to $1,065 a month, more than five times the new disability amount.
In 2020, the government noted that there were six million Canadians with disabilities and, as of 2017, 850,000 of them lived in poverty. The new program won’t even help all of that group.
The odd thing about the federal government’s tepid support for the disabled is that the idea itself is a political winner. A poll earlier this month by the Angus Reid Institute found that 91 per cent of Canadians support a benefit. Payments for the disabled should be at or above the poverty line, 86 per cent said.
Meaningful help for the disabled is an opportunity for government to do the right thing and get broad public support for it. For its part, Ontario should say right now that the small federal sum won’t mean lower Ontario payments. Anything less would be ridiculous.
National Post
Randall Denley is an Ottawa journalist.
andalldenley1@gmail.com
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