qathet Regional District directors were urged to be supportive of people with disabilities.
At the July 24 committee of the whole meeting, Amanda Lockitch, from Disability Without Poverty BC, appeared as a delegation to outline how many people with disabilities are living below the poverty line.
Lockitch said her organization formed as a group of people with disabilities across the country. She said when the prime minister announced the disability benefit, knowing if it was ever to come to fruition, the federal government was going to have to be held accountable by organizations such as hers.
The regulations for the benefit have just come, said Lockitch, and this federal benefit is supposed to be a top-up for provincial and territorial disability benefits. She said what the government came up with for the Canada Disability Benefit was a maximum of $200 a month. She added that the annual cap is $23,000 a year, which is below the poverty line.
“Even before people receive the benefit, it has already been clawed back if they are earning too much,” said Lockitch. “We have this limited time frame to respond back to the government. What we are doing is reaching out to all levels of government, particularly local governments, that see the effects of this filtering out.
“Communities really bear the brunt of people living in poverty. Our ask is to encourage yourselves and your community to respond to these regulations.”
Lockitch said her organization had undertaken a consultation process and came up with seven key principles in order to have a benefit that will fully serve the population that it is meant to serve. She said when the benefit was introduced, it was mentioned that it was supposed to lift hundreds of thousands of disabled Canadians out of poverty. She said currently, about 1.6 million Canadians are living in disability poverty.
“As opposed to lifting hundreds of thousands of people, the budget that they put out is only going to currently help 300,000, and they are hoping to get that up to 600,000, but there are 1.6 million living in poverty,” said Lockitch. “The reality is only 25,000 Canadians across the country would be lifted to a poverty line by 2028.”
Lockitch said the vehicle the government will be using to distribute this federal benefit is the disability tax credit. She said there are only 300,000 Canadians currently in receipt of a disability tax credit. One of the things that Disability Without Poverty BC is asking for is that anyone with provincial support automatically gets enrolled in the federal program.
“In BC alone, we know that would be an additional 70,000 people,” said Lockitch.
She said four provinces in Canada have indicated they will not claw back from the federal benefit, but BC is not one of them. She added that there is not a province or territory in Canada that brings disability fund recipients anywhere close to the poverty line.
“We are trying to bring people at least to the poverty line,” said Lockitch. “One of the things we are looking at is a smooth integration of federal and provincial benefits.”
Lockitch said there is a campaign on her organization’s website and a social media campaign going out to raise awareness.
Regional request
Electoral Area A director Jason Lennox said the numbers are shocking. He asked Lockitch what was her request from the regional district.
Lockitch said on the Disability Without Poverty BC website, there is an automated template for contacting members of parliament, so a letter goes to the government that explains the needs.
Lennox said that sounds like it is not just for the regional board, but anybody who is concerned.
Lockitch said she wanted to reach out to the community here and the people her organization services.
City of Powell River director George Doubt said recently, the regional board asked staff to provide a report on downloading from senior levels of government. He said homelessness and mental health issues are exacerbated by poverty and he made a motion to include a report from Lockitch in the regional district’s calculations of the financial effects of downloading.
Lockitch said that would help.
“At least 27 per cent of the population declares a disability and, in our study, we found 37 per cent of people with disabilities are also carers for people with disabilities,” added Lockitch.
Doubt made a motion that staff include the discussion of the disabilities report in the forthcoming report on downloading from higher levels of government on the regional district. The motion passed unanimously.
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