People with disabilities ask feds to restore ‘hope’ and raise benefit amount
Global News
Advocates are asking the federal government to reconsider the Canada Disability Benefit amount in the months before the benefit rolls out.
Heather Thompson would love to work.
The 26-year-old dreams of going back to university to study politics and environmental science, and ultimately pursue a career to “try and make things better” in society.
“I’m not the person I want to be yet and I want to be able to achieve certain goals and be a well-rounded, well-developed person. But I’m prevented from doing that because I live in legislated poverty,” they said.
Thompson is one of 600,000 working-age Canadians with disabilities that the federal government said it would help lift out of poverty with the Canada Disability Benefit, which takes effect next July. The program is meant as a top-up to existing provincial and territorial income supports.
“We had huge expectations and we had all this hope, like finally we can escape poverty,” Thompson said.
But after last spring’s federal budget revealed that the maximum people will receive per month is $200, the hopes of people like Thompson were dashed. Now, advocates are asking the federal government to reconsider the amount in the months before the benefit rolls out.
Thompson, who uses they/them pronouns, has worked at Tim Horton’s, Staples and a call centre, but said their physical and mental disabilities — including osteoarthritis, which “heavily impacts” their mobility, along with clinical depression and generalized anxiety disorder — have forced them to leave.
They look for jobs, but many require the ability to lift or stand for long periods, which they can’t do. So Thompson lives on $1,449 a month from the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) and shares a house with three roommates in Kingston, Ont., along with Thompson’s 12-year-old emotional support cat, Captain Kirk.
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