By Kendall Worth!
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| Honourable Kamal Khera Minister of Diversity Inclusion and Persons with Disabilities. |
Minister Khera;
I wanted to write this to you today, following up on my previous Open Letter, to provide you with an update from the Disability Community in Nova Scotia. The Nova Scotia Disability Community continues to hope that work on the national level is being done to rush the Disability Benefit, so it will be available to all Canadians ASAP. Inflation and the high living cost living have been hurting Canadians from coast to coast.
I also want to make sure you know that some hope is coming to Nova Scotians in April. However as pointed out in this post, what is called the Standard Household Rate from Income Assistance in Nova Scotia, is currently $950.00. $950.00 Plus $300 = $1250 starting in April. However, only those considered to be “disabled” will qualify. When you factor in the effect from inflation, lack of affordable housing etc., today, that is still not enough money to live on. There is a lot of concern that not all persons with disabilities in Nova Scotia will be approved for this $300 top-up. The Employment Support and income Assistance Program (ESIA), here in Nova Scotia, is the only program that even comes close to a persons with disabilities living allowance. According to contacts in the disability community, here in Nova Scotia, persons with disabilities have been finding it more and more difficult to live productive lives, lately.
Then since the posting of this blog, and this one where I provide readers with updates on the Federal Disability Benefit, we have continued, as Nova Scotians, to hope that the end result of this Disability Benefit will be something better than our provincial ESIA Program. Things have got much worse in the day to day lives of the disability community in Nova Scotia.
Examples from Nova Scotia include:
Evidence of persons with disabilities living in the homeless encampments.
Sources in the community, report that there have been and continue to be wheelchair users living in our homeless shelters. If a federal disability benefit was already in existence and it provided enough to live on, that would not happen!
As this post points out, to rent an apt in HRM it costs between $1700 and $3200 a month depending on size and family size. So if we think about what it might take to get a wheelchair accessible apartment (of which there are few at the best of times) I estimate it at $2400 a month, at a minimum.
Unexpected and phenomenal growth of food bank use continues, as this post explains, and more and more persons with disabilities are included in those food-bank line-ups.
One specific Atlantic Canadian story about the difficulties of living with a disability, is pointed out in a series of blog posts, about Carrie Ann Budgen., There are seven parts of this story and I do hope you read all of them.
Although not a federal issue, there are many issues with how the provincial income assistance is administered, beyond the punishing low income it provides. There is plenty of bureaucratic nonsense and discrimination. The workers have too much power and need to know too much about personal lives of their clients and have the ability to use that power to hurt people. The rates obviously are too low and rules like spouse in the house are human rights disasters leaving women and youth, in particular, at risk of violence or trafficking. So, for many reasons beyond the lack of ability to live on the pittance it provides, and the lack of human rights, the provincial system is not working for anyone but especially those with disabilities.I have heard from my contacts across the country that the same issues are being experienced in most provinces.
Hopefully real results will come from the work of the Canadian Disability Benefit soon!
Kendall Worth!
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