‘Further into poverty’: disability benefits clawback decried

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This article was published 26/01/2024 (667 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A cost of living increase to federal disability benefits is having the opposite effect on a Manitoba man whose provincial benefits were clawed back as a result.

“It puts me further behind, like further into poverty,” said Grandview resident Calvin Yarush.

The 57-year-old qualifies for the Canada Pension Plan disability benefit and benefits under the Manitoba Supports for Persons with Disabilities program. His severe anxiety and depression make him unable to work and limit his daily activities.

Each January, CPP benefits are reviewed to keep pace with the cost of living.

They increased 4.4 per cent for 2024; Yarush’s CPP disability benefit went up by about $36 a month. The increase takes effect in February.

Last week, he received a letter from Manitoba Supports informing him, as a result, his provincial benefits would be decreased.

The federal bump is being deducted from his provincial sum because it is considered unearned income and is not exempt from being deducted dollar-for-dollar under Manitoba’s regulations — despite decades of work by advocates who’ve been chipping away at systemic inequalities for low-income Manitobans.

A spokesperson for Employment and Social Development Canada acknowledged Friday it is a “long-established practice” for many provincial programs to consider CPP the “first payer” and use the federal program to offset provincial benefits.

Provincial disability benefits are due for a cost-of-living raise in July. Yarush questions how he’ll make ends meet until then.

He has to live on a maximum budget of $1,313.34 per month to cover all living expenses and needs.

For years, Yarush said he accepted any federal increases would be deducted, but now that the cost of living is so high, he’s calling for change. He’s reached out to provincial and federal politicians, including his MLA, with no response as of Friday.

The former educator said he can’t afford to buy groceries in Grandview and relies on his parents to take him in their vehicle some 45 kilometres to Dauphin, where they shop at a discount grocery store.

He doesn’t have a computer. His cellphone costs roughly $80 a month, but his disability benefits provide only $32.44 per month for a phone.

“People who have disabilities don’t choose to have them. They have no option other than to seek this support,” Yarush said.

If income-assistance programs don’t keep up with inflation, he added, “I don’t think that’s reasonable.”

Provincial social assistance programs are set up to function as a last resort, which is typically justification for the deductions.

Expecting an adult to live on $1,300 a month, below the poverty line, is not providing a dignified quality of life, said Josh Brandon, a community animator with the Social Planning Council of Winnipeg.

He said social programs should be designed to help people pull themselves out of poverty, but too often “they become a trap for people, keeping them in poverty.”

Advocates have been calling for Manitoba’s social assistance benefits to at least match the poverty line based on Manitoba’s market basket measure in 2022: $26,000 a year for an individual ($2,166 per month) or $51,000 a year for a family of four.

The issue of provincial disability benefit clawbacks is one of the most frequent complaints from low-income Manitobans to staff at the Public Interest Law Centre, said director Byron Williams.

“This is a systemic and longstanding problem,” he said, one that has persisted for his 30-year career at the centre.

The Winnipeg centre has been taking on legal cases that challenge the list of income exemptions under Manitoba regulations that form the grounds for the province to deduct federal increases to income-support benefits.

The complicated list of what’s exempt and what’s not “looks pretty capricious and arbitrary,” Williams said.

The centre has argued federal and provincial programs should complement each other, rather than create a tug of war.

The courts haven’t always agreed. The Public Interest Law Centre won income support-related cases at the Manitoba Court of Appeal in 2020 and 2021. But in 2022 (in a case not handled by the law centre), the Court of King’s Bench denied a Manitoba man’s plea to stack federal and provincial disability benefits.

That decision was disappointing, but there’s still a case to be made, Williams said.

“A strong argument remains that the design of income assistance programs such as the (Manitoba) disability support program denies equal benefit of the law to vulnerable and constitutionally protected groups.”

In 2023, provincial disability benefits under Manitoba Supports increased by about $27 per month for inflation, the provincial government stated.

The province estimates about 10 per cent of Manitobans receiving provincial disability benefits also get CPP benefits: about 1,000 out of the approximately 9,800 Manitoba Supports recipients.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca