Michael Prince knew almost immediately when the new Canada Disability Benefit was announced in the 2024 federal budget that he would resign from the committee that advises the minister of diversity, inclusion and persons with disabilities.
“It wasn’t too hard of a decision to make, quite frankly,” Prince said Monday afternoon. The University of Victoria professor began writing a resignation letter to Minister Kamal Khera hours after the budget was released.
Prince’s decision came after the government announced it was allocating $6.1 billion over six years, beginning in 2025-26, for the new Canada Disability Benefit. The benefit is a new financial benefit for low-income working-age Canadians with disabilities.
According to the 2024 budget, the most a person could receive from the Canada Disability Benefit is $2,400 a year, or $200 a month. Only people who qualify for the Disability Tax Credit are eligible. The budget estimates 600,000 Canadians will receive it.
Twenty-seven per cent of Canadians 15-years-old and older — eight million people — have one or more disabilities, according to the 2022 Canadian Survey on Disability. Data from 2021 shows that 16 per cent of Canadians with disabilities — about 1.5 million people — live in poverty.
A typo
The details of the new Canada Disability Benefit left Prince discouraged and despondent, he says.
Last June, Parliament unanimously passed the Canada Disability Benefit Act to allow the government to create a benefit for disabled Canadians between the ages of 18 and 64. The benefit’s purpose, the law says, is to “reduce poverty and to support the financial security of working-age persons with disabilities.”
A benefit of $200 a month will not reduce poverty, says Prince.
The advisory group did not know what would be in the budget, he says, because it is arm’s length from the government. But the amount “sure wasn’t what we thought it would be,” he said.
The Canadian Human Rights Commission echoed these thoughts on X, formerly Twitter. “People with disabilities in Canada urgently need the financial support of the #CanadaDisabilityBenefit to make housing more affordable, access healthcare and lift them out of poverty,” the agency posted Friday.
“We echo the disappointment and concerns shared by disability communities following the announcements made in #Budget2024 on this issue. Countless [people with disabilities] will continue to fall through the cracks and struggle to meet their most basic needs.”
Prince posted his resignation letter to X on Thursday because he wanted it to be public and for people to know why he resigned.
Prince has studied social policies related to people with disabilities for decades. In April 2020, he was appointed to the COVID-19 Disability Advisory Group, an advisory group created by Carla Qualtrough, then-minister of employment, workforce development and disability inclusion. The group originally advised the government on meeting the needs of Canadians with disabilities during the pandemic. Now it advises the government on various issues affecting people with disabilities in Canada.
“If I continue to just remain quiet and stay on the advisory group to the minister, that would be seen as my support and acceptance of [the benefit],” Prince said, explaining why he resigned.
When Prince first saw the benefit amount in the budget, he thought $2,400 a year was a typo. Many advocates were hoping for $2,400 a month when the new federal benefit was added to provincial and territorial disability benefits, he said.
In 2020, when the government announced it would create a disability benefit, it said the benefit would be modelled after seniors’ Guaranteed Income Supplement. The maximum monthly amount a single person can receive on the Guaranteed Income Supplement is $1,065.47.
That supplement is a significant program, says Prince, so people thought this new benefit would also be significant.
The Maytree Foundation, an anti-poverty advocacy organization, said in its analysis of the budget that a benefit similar to Old Age Security “would be truly revolutionary — and very expensive.”
“It was always doubtful that the government would find the money for a benefit that would end disability poverty as we know it in a single year,” the statement continues. Federal programs, like the Canada Child Benefit, were improved over time.
The federal government could still improve the new Canada Disability Benefit, the foundation says. The foundation says it is good that Ottawa is asking provinces and territories not to reduce their social assistance programs because of the new federal benefit.
‘Major milestone’
The federal government acknowledged Prince’s work on the committee, but did not say how it plans to address the concerns he and others have raised about the benefit.
“We thank Mr. Prince for his work and advocacy from his time on the minister’s Disability Advisory Group,” Laurent de Casanove, Khera’s spokesperson, said in a statement.
“We are grateful to be able to receive insightful advice from the group, and we will continue to rely on them as we work on the next steps and into the future following budget 2024’s $6.1-billion investment into the Canada Disability Benefit.”
The budget commitment is a “major milestone,” the statement says.
The Disability Tax Credit is the “key to unlock the benefit as fast and equal as possible while ensuring national consistency,” the statement says.
But Prince says tying benefit eligibility to the Disability Tax Credit goes against the principles of the Accessible Canada Act, federal accessibility legislation that passed unanimously in 2019. The act talks about removing barriers, but attaching this benefit to the tax credit creates a barrier, he says.
To receive the Disability Tax Credit, people must pay doctors to fill out medical forms. The government announced in the budget that it will provide $243 million a year for six years beginning in 2025-26 to help cover doctors’ fees for completing these detailed forms.
“That’s kind of an admission of you’ve picked a pretty flawed eligibility gateway for this benefit,” said Prince.
“We’ve not lowered barriers. We’re actually reproducing a barrier,” he said.
At a press conference in Toronto on Friday, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland was asked how the government decided on the amount of the benefit. The minister did not explain why this amount was chosen.
“It would be great to be able to do more, and we aspire to that,” Freeland told reporters.
Prince says he does not expect his resignation to cause others to resign. But he does hope the government reconsiders the amount of the Canada Disability Benefit and improves it, either in the fall 2024 economic statement or next year’s budget.
“Parliament has spoken,” he said. “It’s passed the laws. It’s endorsed the principles of poverty reduction and living with dignity. Unfortunately, this budget falls well short of those principles.”
