Disability protest a PR problem

Government appears to be picking on most vulnerable

There have been larger and louder protests at the Alberta legislature but none more poignant than the one conducted there Friday.

For much of the lunch hour any politician or government official bothering to look out their window would have been confronted by the sight of some of Alberta’s most vulnerable citizens gathering outside.

Almost 1,000 protesters turned up, many in wheelchairs. For them simply getting to the legislature was something of a chore. They needed to be driven in special handicap buses accompanied by caregivers and family members. This was a rally with motivation.

Also in the crowd were the mentally handicapped. All of them are deemed by the government to be “persons with developmental disabilities,” Albertans who rely on government-paid help every day of their lives. They are afraid that help is about to be slashed as part of the government’s budget cutbacks.

The government argues it is not cutting back but merely reorganizing how it delivers care to the disabled, to make the system more efficient and to include people, such as those with brain injuries, who now don’t receive help from the Persons with Developmental Disabilities (PDD) program.

The government points out the total budget for persons with developmental disabilities has actually increased slightly this year to $691 million from $686 million last year.

“This is not a budget issue,” insists Human Services Minister Dave Hancock. “This is about transforming the service delivery model into one that specifically deals with the needs of the individuals and their capacities and abilities to progress and to be engaged in the community. And then to take a look at our programs so we can actually add capacity to deal with a broader group of individuals who are right now excluded from the program.”

It’s a fuzzily bureaucratic explanation but it’s Hancock’s way of saying he wants to make the system more responsive and inclusive.

Many in the disabled community remain suspicious. And they should be.

While the government has slightly increased overall funding for PDD, it has cut $42 million to the portion of the budget for the Community Access Support Program — and that means private caregivers say they’ll have to cut back.

“It’s very confusing,” says Marie Renaud, who helped organize the protest. “You can’t slash dollars and expect people not to get hurt.”

Renaud, who is executive director of the Lo-Se-Ca Foundation in St. Albert that cares for disabled adults, seems more puzzled than angry by the new policy. She understands the province is not cutting overall spending on PDD but she says the government is not explaining clearly what it intends to do by reducing the community access program, or how organizations like hers are supposed to cope.

“If they want to change it, we want to change it, too. We see lots of inefficiencies but you don’t fix it this way, you don’t let the people who broke it fix it. You let us help and you let us have a voice. We’re tired of being bullied.”

Bullied is the operative word in what has become a publicrelations nightmare for the government.

Even though Hancock is one of the government’s most thoughtful and reasonable ministers — and I can’t think of any politician who is less of a bully — his department has, not to put too fine a point on it, monumentally screwed up this file.

If the government didn’t initially realize the extent of this mess, there should have been little doubt after a crowd of 500 angry and confused people confronted Frank Oberle at a town hall meeting on Wednesday.

Oberle, associate minister of services for persons with disabilities, has since been elbowed aside by Hancock, the senior minister responsible, who is busy trying to articulate the government’s longterm PDD vision by holding news conferences, appearing on talk shows and inviting journalists into his office for a coffee and a chat.

“We will make the funds available necessary to implement this change,” says Hancock, who adds the government will even increase the PDD budget if necessary to make sure people are covered properly.

His mantra has become: “It’s not about balancing the budget.”

But it was his government that initially tied the PDD changes to the budget by announcing in March it would cut $42 million from the community access program. It’s no wonder that those in the disabled community would view the changes to PDD through the government’s own budgetcutting lens.

Adding to the government’s public relations disaster is the fact Hancock can’t explain how many current recipients will be affected by the policy changes.

This is all similar to the Michener Centre debacle that saw the government announce the institution’s closure just days after the provincial budget came down — and then insist it was not a costcutting move.

The government certainly has a responsibility to make sure its programs for the handicapped are efficient, inclusive and cost-effective.

But it also has a responsibility to make sure that when it makes changes to those programs it doesn’t scare the heck out of its most vulnerable citizens.

It might want to think over the PDD changes and hit the pause button until it can explain itself much better.