Manitoba court case momentous

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/03/2022 (1473 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THIS week, Manitoba is the scene of an important constitutional case that will determine whether Canadians with disabilities have the right to live a life free from extreme poverty, with all the risks to health, well-being and dignity this implies.

As of today, a single person who has worked, paid provincial and federal taxes, contributed to the Canadian Pension Plan, and subsequently is diagnosed with a disability that restricts continued employment, will be further victimized by a bureaucratic system that may best be described as political buck-passing.

In short, a person who qualifies for both Canadian Pension Plan Disability payments and provincial social assistance, in this case Manitoba Employment and Income Assistance (EIA) and Income and Assistance for Persons with Disabilities (IAPD), will see the provincial benefits clawed back dollar for dollar based on the federal amount. As a further indignity, supplemental benefits not covered by provincial health insurance such as free prescriptions that are part of EIA, are also lost.

This is the situation for a man named Paul Hutlet, but his is a story shared by many Manitobans and people with disabilities across the country. It is time to fix it.

How Canada arrived here is worthy of consideration.

In 1966, the government of Canada ushered in a program called the Canada Assistance Plan (CAP) that shared in the costs of provincial and territorial social assistance (welfare) programs at 50 per cent. The twofold purpose of CAP was to continue the process of cementing national standards among Canada’s income security programs while recognizing the fiscal imbalance between provinces, territories and the federal government.

As part of the CAP agreement, the federal government stipulated — as a condition of flowing funds — that social assistance programs for persons with disabilities and others would deduct all federal income security payments from benefits paid. The rationale for this rule was that the federal government did not wish to pay twice for clients they had in common with provinces and territories: once through their own programs like CPP and again through cost-sharing.

All well and good, until the government of Canada pulled the plug on the CAP program in 1996 and now shares a much smaller percentage of social assistance payments than the previous 50-50 formula.

Fast-forward 26 years later and the federal government still does not share in social assistance costs equally. Provinces and territories that had gone through a giant upheaval in the 1990s that resulted in welfare cuts in almost every sub-national jurisdiction found that clawbacks became a very convenient way to keep costs down.

In 2022, every jurisdiction in Canada continues to deduct CPP (and EI) from their social assistance payments even though the historical rationale is long gone and cost containment is the only justification.

Hutlet has the profile of someone who suffers the most from the present system. Whereas Hutlet’s income is now limited to the CPP Disability payment of less than $1,200 per month, the Market Based Measure (MBM) for a single person living alone in Winnipeg in 2022 is $24,552.00 annually. This does not take into account disability-related expenses, which can, and for Hutlet does, amount to several thousands of dollars more per year.

Does a person with disabilities subjected to extreme and preventable poverty amount to a violation of their rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms’ rights to life, liberty and security of the person?

With governments failing to act responsibly, we are about find out through the court.

Sid Frankel is an associate professor in the faculty of social work at the University of Manitoba who studies poverty reduction policy