By Joanna Alphonso:

For the majority of Canadians, going about their days and doing regular tasks such as going to work, grocery shopping, and visiting family and friends can be done without a second thought about their abilities. However, there are many Canadians who experience barriers accessing everyday services and completing everyday tasks.

Statistics Canada (StatCan) reports that four out of five Canadians with severe disabilities experienced barriers to accessibility in public spaces as of 2022. About one third of Canadians with fewer or milder disabilities experienced the same. Those aged 65 years and over were most likely to experience public accessibility barriers. Women were more likely to experience the same compared to men.

A significant part of this is the unmet needs of Canadians with disabilities. Nearly three-quarters of persons with disabilities (73 per cent) reported cost as the reason for the unmet need for mobility aids., while 76 per cent of Canadians with disabilities had unmet needs for help in everyday housework and activities, such as preparing meals, running errands, and accessible transport.

The current economic climate impacts Canadians with disabilities more significantly. The Hub reported in November 2024 that people with disabilities have lower-than-average employment rates, and a poverty rate that is several times higher than the average. It is speculated that the ableism and lack of support programs and aids contribute to this number.

“Food insecurity among Canadian adults with disabilities is shockingly high,” Jennifer Robinson reported in The Hub. Canadians with disabilities are more than twice as likely to experience food insecurity, even after accounting for factors like age, level of education, immigration status, and housing tenure. Provincial income assistance is “deeply stigmatizing and heavily policed,” writes Robinson, as she notes that not all provinces have such aid.

Who’s responsible for helping them through policy? Typically, the provincial or territorial government is responsible for social assistance and protection. However, two notable exceptions are old-age pension and Employment Insurance. The Hub concludes that the federal government can — and should — play a larger role in overall poverty reduction, especially for Canadians with disabilities.

“In fact,” the Hub reports, “Ottawa has signed critical international agreements, including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), that impose certain obligations on all orders of government such as access to food and housing.”

Ottawa has played a role in recent years with the Canada Disability Benefit Act (CDBA), which came into force in June 2024 and established a framework for an annual benefit to Canadians with disabilities. This framework is income-tested and designed to aid in forming some financial security for the working-aged demographic. The first month for eligibility is June 2025, with first payments beginning in July 2025. However, the maximum benefit available is $200 per month, or $2,400 annually. Income affects the benefit depending on the family net income, marital status, type of employment, and whether a spouse of the applicant is receiving the benefit, so many recipients will get less.

To be eligible for this benefit, one must be a resident of Canada for the purposes of the Income Tax Act, aged 18-64, be a Canadian citizen (or other specified citizenship status) have been approved for the Disability Tax Credit, and have filed an income tax return for the previous year.

Disability Without Poverty (DWP), a Canadian advocacy group focused on eliminating disability poverty “gives the government a failing grade of “F” for the CDBA, in their 2024 report. This piece of legislation is “not the benefit that the federal government led people with disabilities to believe would be rolled out,” noting “The amount is inadequate, the eligibility criteria are too narrow, the timeline for delivery is too far away, and the design of the benefit does not protect it from negatively interacting with a range of federal, provincial, and territorial supports and subsidy programs.”

The Hub criticizes the government in the meagre level of benefits available to Canadians with disabilities. “Total government spending in Canada grew by nearly two-thirds between 2013 and 2023. Meanwhile, total government debt has increased by almost 50 percent over the same period. So, we’ve been borrowing and spending more and yet outcomes for some of our most vulnerable citizens—including Canadians with disabilities—haven’t improved.”

DWP made seven recommendations for the improvement of the CDBA, consideration of the added costs of living with a disability in the current economic environment as well as making the eligibility broader, the application simpler, and the benefit fair to those in need. They also asked the government to “keep disabled people involved” in the development and implementation of the CDBA. Finally, DWP encouraged the government to uphold dignity of Canadians with disabilities by making the program adequate enough to lift them out of poverty.

The Supreme Court of Canada overturned the laws banning euthanasia in the 2015 landmark decision, Carter v Canada. Parliament has since run with this decision, not only permitting “Medical Assistance in Dying” (MAiD) for persons with terminal illnesses or disabilities, but later broadening the law to allow those with interminable conditions and, beginning in March 2027, those suffering solely from mental illness. There is also a push from “Dying with Dignity” Canada to have a framework that is more like the Netherlands, which has allowed “mature minors” to opt for MAiD since 2002.

In 2022, Global News reported that poverty is driving Canadians with disabilities to Medical Assistance in Dying more so than the pain or disabilities themselves. On one hand, the government will not do enough to assist these persons; on the other hand, the government is doing the most they can to assist the same people in ending their lives.

The disabled mother and daughter that Global News interviewed also reported that they “must find a way to scrape by on $1,228,” from the Ontario Disability Support Program that they receive monthly. After paying for the cost of their home and insurance, they have about $59 left to buy groceries with – for the month.

Dr. Naheed Dosani, a palliative care physician in Toronto, told Global News that people are choosing MAiD because they do not have the money to live. “When people are living in such a situation where they’re structurally placed in poverty, is medical assistance in dying really a choice or is it coercion? Dr. Dosani asked. “That’s the question we need to ask ourselves.”

In one now infamous case, a 51-year-old Ontario woman chose MAiD because she struggled to find affordable housing that did not worsen her chemical sensitivity. 

Trudo Lemmens, a professor of health law and policy at the University of Toronto, told Global News that Canada’s MAiD laws fail to implement the most basic safeguards that exist in countries that have broader euthanasia laws. In countries like Belgium and the Netherlands, doctors are required to exhaust other options before they put euthanasia on the table.

“In the context of medical assistance in dying,” said Lemmens, “we’re getting rid of this idea that we will first try the least interventionist measures. There is no jurisdiction in the world other than Canada that frames this as just a medical intervention. It means a life-ending action.” He continued, “We’re basically sending the message that persons with disabilities who are not dying have an understandable reason to end their life. And this is discriminatory.”

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities reported in 2021 that the eligibility criteria in Canada appears to violate the right to life, as protected by Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Special Rapporteur continued to express “grave concern that the provisions contained in (Bill C-7) may be contrary to Canada’s International obligations to respect, protect, and fulfill the core right of equality and non-discrimination of person with disabilities.” This bill also failed to “nurture the receptiveness to the rights of persons with disabilities to promote positive perceptions and greater social awareness towards person with disabilities.”

Luca Patuelli, a choreographer and hip-hop dancer despite the neuromuscular condition in his legs, credited much of his success to the financial and moral support of a close family. “I think that as a society, we should encourage individuals of all abilities of the possibility to discover their true potential. And the biggest thing that we can do is lift people up.”

Abilities can change in a heartbeat. Be it a car accident, developing medical condition, failed surgery, or more, disabilities can permanently alter the lives of those who may not have been born with them.

Les Landry told Global News that he experienced just that – a life-changing condition and surgery that took away his livelihood. When he turned 65, he went through a “bureaucratic loophole” that eventually caused him to lose his disability benefits. Now, “I’m just a senior in poverty.” At the time that the Global News article was written, Landry was making plans to end his life by MAiD before the rising cost of living caused him to be homeless. “I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die,” Landry told Global News, “I just can’t see me living like this for the rest of my life.”

The fact of the matter is that Canadians with disabilities are being told by the government that their only way out of living in poverty is by dying.

Systemic inequality for Canadians with disabilities has no place in our Canadian culture. These Canadians deserve much more than what is being offered right now. They deserve assistance in living, not assistance in dying.