What the Future holds now that the Houston Budget has been Approved

 

By Kendall Worth

Last week, after much resistance and outcry, the Houston Government pushed through its 2026 budget. This budget included major cutbacks in a number of sectors that will impact programs and services, and throw thousands of Nova Scotians out of work.

Usually in my BLOG I write about the struggles of people living on Income Assistance, many of whom struggle with various disabilities and mental health challenges. But in today’s BLOG I am focussing upon a comparatively privileged group of citizens who will soon will be introduced to the harsh realities of life on Income Assistance in Nova Scotia.

The people I am referring to today are those who have been employed, some in unionized jobs, but who will be losing these jobs due to the Houston budget. This job loss will happen in many different government departments, as well as in civil society organizations, most notably in the arts, cultural, heritage and environmental sectors.

The downward path facing the affected workers is a discouraging one. I wrote about the economic reality in a recent BLOG, on how laid off workers must first adapt to life on Employment Insurance (EI) – receiving  only 55% of their wages. A year later will follow the plunge down to life on Income Assistance.  

The affected households will be dealing not just with the struggles of surviving on vastly reduced income. They will also be introduced to a world of bureaucratic nonsense and broken systems. I have described some of these experiences in earlier BLOGs and articles, including some written for the Nova Scotia Advocate.  

This crushing reality of unemployment is also a world of stigma, in which families, friends and neighbours may well begin to view affected people as unworthy “welfare bums”. This social stigma is one of the most difficult aspects of poverty and unemployment that people in my community face on a daily basis. For a while, people present themselves as “between jobs” or “having a dry spell”.  But if a new job is not readily found, and life as an Income Assistance recipient becomes the new reality, then the stigma is sure to follow, as I have written about here and here.

For some, the diminished income is not the biggest challenge they will face. It is the lack of emotional and mental health support as they try to navigate all the struggles they face in their lives of poverty and marginalization.

The sad reality is that Nova Scotia has never invested in developing a mental heath system that is capable of responding to the various mental and emotional challenges that people living in poverty face on a daily basis. For some, it is their mental health issues that pushed them into poverty. For others, the emotional and mental health issues were the product of this life in poverty. For both groups, securing access to a mental health professionals and receiving the needed care is hugely problematic.

Back to the Arithmetic:

I have discussed the arithmetic of life on IA in previous BLOGs.  The standard rate of Income Assistance is $1,022 a month, - possibly less, depending on circumstances. This will mean enormous challenges for families used to a living wage, - and will require both material as well as psychological changes to adapt to this life of reduced expectations.   

This Standard Household IA rate means an annual income of only $12,264. This compares to salaries for the jobs lost which, in the case of the closed Tourist Information Centres was between $44,000 and $35,000.  In average terms this would mean annual income of about $40,000 in 2025, dropping under EI to around $22,000 in 2026, followed by a further plunge to $12,000 in Income Assistance in 2027. The implications of such a drop in household income are almost impossible for people to imagine before it actually happens to them. It impacts what they eat, where they live, how they dress, how they move about, what – if anything – they do for fun. Their whole lives are transformed and diminished.  

This drop is particularly sharp for those working in unionized positions, as most public sector collective agreements include benefits for employees related to health care, pensions and more. All of these supports are lost when workers are laid off from these jobs.

This process is particularly painful and challenging for workers who are married and have families and are now reduced to applying for Income Assistance. The terms and conditions laid out in the Employment Support and Income Assistance Policy Manual can be quite restrictive and considerable discretion placed in the hands of the ESIA Caseworker on awkward issues like co-habitation. I have written about these issues here, here and here.

The Solution?

The Budget has been passed. Nova Scotians are not likely be able to make many significant changes before the next election, which is not likely before the Fall of 2027/ Spring of 2028. In the meantime, we need to find ways to bring our community together to support one another through these difficult times.  

One of my greatest regrets as a community activist is the collapse of BRAG, the Benefits Reform Action Group. I have written about the history of BRAG in both newspaper articles and BLOGs, recounting its efforts to gather together under one umbrella Income Assistance recipients across HRM so that we could act as a solidarity group and advocate on behalf of our community.

This current juncture is exactly the place at which a union of the poor and unemployed could actively engage with members, politicians, government agencies, service providers and the media to express the needs and interest of the people being so negatively impacted by these policies.  And to support the impacted families and individuals, - although how a BRAG-like organization could provide services and outreach to affected members across the entire province remains unclear.

Nonetheless, the creation of a BRAG-like union of people living in poverty remains the most promising option for the future, in my mind. But how we get there from here is not at all clear at this moment.

 

Kendall Worth is an award-winning anti-poverty activist who lives with disabilities and tries to make ends meet on income assistance.