Ontario Disability Support Plan (ODSP) recipients received a double shot of relatively good news in July.
First, the automatic 2025 inflationary increase raised the maximum monthly ODSP allowance for a single person from $1,368 to $1,408.
Second, the province announced that income from the new federal Canada Disability Benefit would not affect ODSP payments. The federal benefit offers up to $200 a month to working age, low-income individuals with disabilities who have the Disability Tax Credit.
The extra $240 a month from these two disability programs brings the combined maximum benefit to $1,608 a month. This is a welcome, one-time overall increase of 18 per cent.
However, this good news will not be shared by all low-income Ontarians who rely on social assistance.
For one, not all ODSP recipients are able to access the Canada Disability Benefit. This includes large numbers of people with episodic disabilities and many with mental health conditions.
Many also face barriers accessing family doctors who must fill out the eligibility forms for both ODSP and the Disability Tax Credit. In Toronto, for example, up to 29 per cent of low-income individuals do not have a family doctor.
Another issue is that Ontario Works — Ontario’s backstop program for low-income Ontarians — lags far behind inflation. Its current rate of $733 a month is not indexed to inflation and has not been raised since the Ford government took power in 2018.
That year, the ODSP rate for a single person was $1,169 a month — or 60 per cent higher than the Ontario Works single rate of $733. Today, ODSP is 92 per cent higher. Within two years, it will exceed the Ontario Works single rate by more than 100 per cent.
While experts agree that ODSP should be higher than Ontario Works (to recognize that low-income disabled individuals bear additional costs associated with living with a disability), the question is, by how much? Most would say it should be between 30 and 60 per cent — not 100 per cent.
And things are even worse for couples relying on Ontario Works.
The ODSP single rate of $1,408 is 24 per cent higher than the Ontario Works rate for couples, which is $1,136 a month. There is simply no rationale for paying a single person in need — disabled or not – 24 per cent more than a couple in need.
Couples receiving Ontario Works comprise only eight per cent of those who receive assistance from the program, while the prevalence of couples in Canadian society at large is over 50 per cent. This suggests people who need social assistance tend to not apply as couples, as they get more money as two single people living separately.
Couples may be a far more financially viable unit in general, but not if you are poor because of this “marriage penalty.”
The reality is that the benefit structure of Ontario’s two social assistance programs — one indexed to inflation (ODSP) and the other not (Ontario Works) — is now seriously out of order.
Increases to ODSP and fewer clawbacks are all very welcome. But the erosion of Ontario Works — and disadvantage for couples who are recipients of either program — contributes to a growing, unjustifiable, and highly visible patchwork of human suffering.
