Ottawa tight-lipped on details around measure
Government had vowed to reduce poverty
The minister in charge of the highly anticipated federal disability benefit won’t say how many people — if any — it will lift out of poverty, as the federal government faces criticism over what advocates say is an inadequate benefit that won’t have a meaningful impact.
In an interview with the Star, Kamal Khera did not answer questions about whether the government has done the math on how many people the disability benefit will lift out of poverty, even though experts and advocates say the government should provide that number.
Instead, the minister for persons with disabilities insisted the benefit will “close the gap” and said the current funding for the benefit is just a first step intended to be built upon, much like the Canada Child Benefit and the Guaranteed Income Supplement for seniors the benefit is modelled after.
“When we look at some of the hardest hardships that people with disabilities live with across the country, it’s fair to say that every dollar counts, and, you know, this is a benefit that was meant to be expanded,” she said. “But we need to be a responsible government that does it in a way that ensures that there are no provinces or territorial, unintended consequences or clawbacks.”
The federal budget states incoming regulations must fit within the fiscal framework of $6.1 billion — the money allocated for the benefit over the next six years. The $200 per month income-tested benefit will eventually cover 600,000 working-age people with disabilities, far fewer than the more than one million living in poverty.
Policy experts who spoke to the Star said the government would be highlighting the number of people the benefit would lift out of poverty if it was a significant number, in line with the government’s promise that it would reduce poverty.
“Having worked in government myself on budgets at the provincial level, if that was a big number, it would have been in there front and centre,” said Alexi White, the director of systems change at Maytree, an organization that promotes solutions to poverty.
“My guess would be the numbers are just so small, that they didn’t find that that would be, you know, a compelling argument to support the benefit design that they’re bringing forward.”
The government uses the market basket measure, which employs a “specified basket of goods and services representing a modest basic standard of living” to define the official poverty line by region and population. For a single person living in Ontario, the average is $27,097.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer estimated the annual benefit should have been at least $14,356 per person 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 Star has reached out to all 13 provincial and territorial governments about the benefit and only Manitoba has confirmed it would not claw back its supports.
When the government revamped the Canada Child Benefit in 2016, it said the changes would result in 300,000 fewer children in poverty in one year. In contrast, this year’s budget only says the new disability benefit will “increase the financial well-being” of low-income persons with disabilities.