Recently, I attended a conference in Vancouver on income security for people with intellectual disabilities. Sadly, what I heard there is consistent with what the Senate Subcommittee on Cities heard during its extensive study on poverty, housing and homelessness.
Persons with disabilities in Canada are more than twice as likely to live in poverty as other Canadians, and their poverty has persisted over the years. As a social group, persons with disabilities are highly marginalized, they face exclusion from quality education, they have lower employment rates, and they are over-represented among those with the lowest incomes in Canada.
Additionally, for Canadians living with intellectual disabilities the facts are just as startling. According to the Canadian Association of Community Living, over 70% of adults with intellectual disabilities are unemployed or out of the labour force, and are also three times more likely than nondisabled Canadians to live in poverty.
One reason we are failing Canadians with disabilities is that there is no coordinated policy response to the poverty of persons with disabilities. Instead, there is a patchwork of local/provincial/territorial and federal programs that overlap, grab back and fail to provide adequate income and basic supports required to remove barriers associated with disability.
Also, benefit levels for persons with disabilities on social assistance has declined in real dollars in the period from 1997 to 2005, by percentages ranging from 1.5% in New Brunswick to 19.2% in Prince Edward Island. In seven of 10 provinces, assistance rates in 2005 for persons with disabilities were the lowest they had been since at least 1986.
I believe that we need to have a coordinated approach between all levels of government when supporting Canadians with disabilities. We need to ensure that Canadians with disabilities have enough income so that they no longer have to live in poverty.
Our country’s progress and prosperity in the years to come will be determined, to a great extent, by how we support Canadians with disabilities, how we breakdown the social and employment barriers they face and how we enrich their lives.