Disability advocates pin hopes on NDP
Singh urged to force Liberals to make changes to federal benefit announced in last week’s budget
As NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh says his party is “undecided” on supporting the federal budget, some disability advocates are hoping the New Democrats can leverage their position in Parliament to force changes to the newly announced Canada Disability Benefit.
Speaking to reporters in Edmonton on Wednesday, Singh echoed the concerns of advocates who have questioned the benefit’s amount, eligibility criteria and lack of clarity on how provinces will respond.
He said he has raised those “unanswered questions” with Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, but would not say what exactly the NDP expects, and whether they would break their supply and confidence agreement with the Liberals and vote against the budget if the Liberals hold their ground — a move that would force an election, given the other three parties in the House have said they will vote against it.
“I’m not going to presuppose kind of the outcome of that conversation,” Singh said. “We’re not trying to plan for an election.”
His comments come as the Liberals have been under fire since unveiling last week’s budget, which commits $6.1 billion over six years and $1.4 billion annually after that for a federal disability benefit to supplement provincial supports.
The benefit will become available in July 2025. Its maximum payout of $2,400 per year, or $200 per month, falls far short of what many had expected after years of delays and promises it would drastically reduce poverty like the Canada Child Benefit and the Guaranteed Income Supplement for seniors. The Parliamentary Budget Officer, for example, estimated the annual benefit should have been at least $14,356 per person before clawbacks to address the gap between welfare and the poverty threshold in any area in Canada (provinces and territories have varying levels of disability support).
The long-awaited benefit will reach 600,000 people at its peak, federal officials said, despite some data suggesting around 1.5 million people with disabilities live in poverty in Canada, and there is no deal yet in place to guarantee provinces won’t claw back their own benefits.
That disappointment has prompted calls for the government to reverse course, and for opposition parties — which voted unanimously in support of introducing a federal disability benefit — to present their alternative plans.
“We would be calling on all parties to not pass the federal budget until there is a commitment to increase funding for the benefit,” said Krista Carr, the executive vice-president of Inclusion Canada. “The NDP hold the keys to the kingdom at this particular moment … we would definitely want to see them make the (benefit) the hill to die on.”
“I recognize the NDP has a very tough choice to make, as this budget has not provided enough in terms of the Canada Disability Benefit,” said Michelle Hewitt, the chair of Disability Without Poverty. “But there is still time to correct this.”
The Star has reached out to the governments of all 13 provinces and territories, asking how they will respond to the benefit. Only Manitoba confirmed it would not claw back its disability supports. Ontario, Alberta, B.C., Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia and Yukon welcomed the benefit but would only say they’re examining how it would affect their own programs.
Alexi White, the director of systems change at Maytree, an organization that advocates for economic rights, said it’s hard to tell how provincial governments will respond to such a program, but differing responses could lead to more problems for the federal government.
“We saw with the benefits during the pandemic that there was a whole bunch of different approaches,” he said. “Like British Columbia exempted a lot of stuff, Ontario chose not to. If we’re in that kind of situation, it could get really messy.”
The Prime Minister’s Office did not respond to questions about the NDP’s position on the benefit, the budget vote and the provincial responses. But in the absence of clear commitments, the government has called on the provinces not to claw back their payments.
“There is no point in putting out a federal disability benefit if the provinces are going to claw back,” said Diane Bergeron, the president of CNIB Guide Dogs.
The Conservative party, which routinely criticizes the Trudeau government’s spending, did not respond to questions about how it would approach the benefit.
In a statement to the Star, Green MP Mike Morrice said the federal government should automatically enrol those already receiving provincial disability supports, rather than use the highly criticized Disability Tax Credit — which many advocates have pushed for.