Advocacy groups across Canada are expressing widespread disappointment at the amount of funding allocated in the 2024 federal budget for the long-awaited Canada Disability Benefit.
On Tuesday, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland revealed that the Liberals were finally willing to shell out funds for this federal income supplement.
The government has allocated $6.1 billion over six years and $1.4 billion ongoing, including costs to deliver the benefit. This funding would provide a maximum benefit amount of $2,400 per year.
However, as stakeholders quickly realized, given that the benefit is estimated to be offered to 600,000 people with disabilities, the maximum proposed benefit would be just $200 per month, or as March of Dimes Canada estimates, “just $6, 66 per day.”
“This budget fails to deliver on the government’s promise to lift people with disabilities out of poverty, let alone the ‘Canada Promise’: a fair chance at a prosperous future,” said March of Dimes President and CEO Canada, Len Baker. in a sentence.
While welcoming the important step taken to launch this benefit, Daily Bread Food Bank chief executive Neil Hetherington said there remains a “clear need” to increase payments.
“It is imperative that this program helps people with disabilities live above the poverty line,” he said in a statement.
According to Disability Without Poverty, 41 per cent of low-income Canadians live with a disability and 16.5 per cent of them are disabled people in Canada. Reacting to the budget, the group’s national director, Rabia Khedr, said this benefit was supposed to “offer real hope,” but instead it has not been enough.
Last week, an Angus Reid Institute poll indicated overwhelming support for the benefit, but only one in 20 respondents were confident the government would deliver.
Green Party co-leader Elizabeth May called the inclusion of this funding in the budget “tick-box politics.”
“It’s there… But when you look at the details and say ‘what, $200 a month? And not start until July 2025, with more eligibility conditions?’ We have called for an end to legislated poverty for disabled people. That’s not here,” May said at her post-budget reaction press conference.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has also said he wants to get some clarity from the government on this funding before determining whether his party will back the Liberals in this budget.
“People waited for a year and a half to get the disability benefit, and it’s only $200, at a time when the cost of living is so high. What’s the plan to increase that?” Singh said in an interview on CTV News Channel’s Power Play on Tuesday.
The groups are also concerned about the eligibility threshold set in the budget, warning it will only cover less than half of those currently receiving disability income support.
Under the plan, low-income people with disabilities between the ages of 18 and 64 who have a valid Disability Tax Credit (DTC) certificate will be eligible.
“Using DTC as the only point of access… is concerning when there are other valid ways to verify disability,” Baker added. “Asking people with disabilities to overcome additional barriers to access the financial security benefits to which they are entitled is harmful and traumatizing.”
Hetherington said expanded eligibility “will be necessary to achieve meaningful change.”
According to the budgetThe government plans to issue the first payments in July 2025.
The budget also promises to cover the cost of medical forms needed to apply for this financial assistance and to consult with people with disabilities about maximum income thresholds and benefit phase-out rates.
However, “the design of the benefits must adjust to the investment proposed in the 2024 Budget.”
Work has been going on for years to make this new stream of financial assistance a reality.
After passing the legislation in June last year, in September Diversity, Inclusion and People with Disabilities Minister Kamal Khera still could not say when it would come into force, saying her focus was on getting it “right”. This sparked calls for an interim “pop-up relief benefit” that never came to fruition.
The government has framed this federal income supplement as a legacy social policy that will help hundreds of thousands of low-income, working-age people with disabilities, intended to complement existing provincial and territorial benefits.
However, ambiguity remains over the possibility of cross-jurisdictional recoveries, and the federal government says it is still asking provinces and territories to agree to exempt the Canada Disability Benefit from counting as income in relation to qualifying for other supports.
Based on the premise that “every dollar matters to those living with a disability,” the government states in the budget that it “aims for the combined amount of federal and provincial/territorial income support for people with disabilities to grow to the level of old age”. Social Security (OAS) and the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS)”.
Questioned on her way to a Liberal caucus meeting, MP Pam Damoff said the government is aware advocates are disappointed and while she, too, would have liked to see additional funding, “it’s more than we had before.”
“It also opens the door to conversations with provinces and territories… They have to come to the table on this,” said Damoff, who was one of the dozens of liberal deputies who had written to Freeland before the budget asking her to include funding for the benefit.
“It’s not the sole federal responsibility to ensure people don’t live in poverty. And I get a little frustrated when it all falls on our shoulders. Provinces need to step up for some of the most vulnerable people in the country, and we’re working to fill that void, but it doesn’t depend solely on us.