An Open Letter to Justin Trudeau

An Open Letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

 

 

From: https://www.ourcommons.ca/Members/en/58733

cc:  Hon. Carla Qualtrough, Minister of Employment, Workforce Development, and Disability Inclusion

A question from the Disability Community!

Date:  June 1st., 2022

Dear Prime Minister Trudeau;

I am writing this letter today on behalf of the Disability Community. This letter is to remind you that when you became Prime Minister, part of your promise was that your government would create a disability benefit. I am providing the following link to Jog your memory. https://www.bcdisability.com/canada-disability-benefit

Contacts I have in the disability community are all wondering if there is any update on the creation of this benefit, and if yes, where this update is, and what it says?

On October 23^rd 2020, I wrote to Minister Carla Qualtrough, about my thoughts on this benefit. https://nsadvocate.org/2020/10/23/kendall-worth-an-open-letter-to-carla-qualtrough-the-federal-minister-of-employment-workforce-development-and-disability-inclusion/.

In my letter to Carla Qualtrough I commended her for speaking out for the need of this Benefit. See https://omny.fm/shows/580-cfra/listen-now-canadas-minister-of-disability-inclusio If all provinces suffer bureaucratic nonsense and systemic problems like in N.S. then people with disabilities should not have to rely on provincial social assistance programs. Programs vary widely from province to province – in N.S. for example, whether able bodied or disabled you are all under the Employment Support and Income Assistance Program (ESIA) whereas in Ontario the disability support program is a separate system.

As you may already know, I have been a journalist for the Nova Scotia Advocate up until the passing of my former editor Robert Duvet. I should let you know that now I have my own BLOG at: https://worthmatters.blogspot.com/search/label/Kendall%20Worth

Here is another article where I interviewed a local advocate, right here in Halifax Nova Scotia. In this article advocate Sherry Costa talks about her Hopes and Dreams for the Disability Benefit when it becomes available.

Members of the Disability Community are very disappointed that the new Disability Benefit was not in the 2022 Federal Budget. We, as members of the disability community want to ask Why?

 

From twitter June 1 - An act is coming .... when, with what benefit?

Through my advocacy for things like Guaranteed Annual income and a federal Disability Benefit are from the Nova Scotia perspective, I have heard from contacts in other provinces that their income is not a whole lot more then the current Standard House Hold Rate we receive here in Nova Scotia. That is $950.00 a month. Ontario contacts tell me that what they receive from the Disability Support Program is just over $1000 a month. Amounts like this are simply not enough for people to live on.

Under our system here in Nova Scotia, supports through the Employment Support and Income Assistance Program tend to put barriers in the way of, for instance, collecting the “special needs” categories of payments – phones, transit passes, diets etc.. The understanding of the disability community has been that the idea behind this federal disability benefit, is that persons with disabilities will no longer have to live in poverty. Hopefully, that will be the case once it is up and running. Your Government has already proven that you could solve income and poverty issues, by offering the $2000 a month CERB during the first set of COVID restrictions. So why did you not move on the disability benefit in the 2022 Federal Budget?

I will end this letter by saying that the Disability Benefit being included in the 2022 Budget may, and likely would, have done Canadians with Disabilities a lot of good.

I am looking forward to a response to this letter.

Your Truly;

Kendall Worth

On behalf of the Disability Community!