Download the Fall/Winter 2021 edition of Transition magazine here: https://disabilityalliancebc.therightfitbc.org/transitionfallwinter21web/!

The focus of this edition is Ending Legislated Poverty.

Our Transition team is always glad to receive feedback and to consider articles or creative work from our community partners and from people living with a disability. If you’d like to send along your ideas, we’d love to hear from you at transition@disabilityalliancebc.therightfitbc.org.

On September 7, 2021, DABC sent letters to the leaders of the Conservative, Green, Liberal, and New Democratic parties of Canada to seek their party’s platform response on the Canada Disability Benefit.

DABC is affiliated with Disability Without Poverty (DWP), which is a national movement led by people with disabilities who are committed to ensuring people with disabilities are involved in all stages of securing a Canada Disability Benefit from design to legislation to implementation. We have written to these four parties to ask if they will commit to implementing a Canada Disability Benefit in close consultation with the disability community as outlined in the five points below, should they be successful in forming government after September 20^th, 2021:

“We respectfully request that your party make the following commitments:

• Introduce legislation on a Canadian Disability Benefit and follow through on the promises of the previous government.
• Establish a streamlined, easily accessible application process that can expand the benefit to ALL those eligible.
• Implement an accelerated consultation process to also be authentic, which means people with lived experience must make up the majority of any policy design team.
• Recognize a Disability Poverty Line above the Market Basket Measure, as not to do so would be to perpetuate the inequity faced by Canadians with disabilities.
• Ensure that existing benefits for Canadians with disabilities continue alongside a new Canada Disability Benefit.”

DABC will share with our network any and all responses we may receive from these four parties.

February 2019

Dear Community Partner,

BC’s Budget 2019 was released on February 19, and the provincial government has announced that it will be implementing several changes which will impact many British Columbians with disabilities.

Some of the key changes pertaining to people with disabilities and their families are:

• Provincial disability (PWD and PPMB) and income assistance rates will be increased by $50 per month, effective April 1, 2019
• A new B.C. Child Opportunity Benefit will be introduced in October 2020; it will allocate families living on low incomes with one child up to $1,600 per year, two children up to $2,600 and three children up to $3,400
• $26 million will be invested in income and disability assistance enhancements to the B.C. Employment Assistance program, with the aim of lessening barriers to supports
• $6 million per year will be put toward respite services for parents who provide care for children with disabilities. Waitlists will be reduced and the respite benefit will be increased by 10%.

Disability Alliance BC (DABC) is encouraged by these changes and welcomes any increase to disability and income assistance rates, but acknowledges that the increase is insufficient to meet the needs of many British Columbians living on disability and income supports.

DABC looks forward to learning more about the provincial government’s Poverty Reduction Strategy, which will be introduced this spring.

To read more about Budget 2019, please read the provincial government’s press release: https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2019FIN0019-000248. The full strategic plan is also available here: http://tinyurl.com/y26euf3r.

If you have any questions about this, please feel free to contact our Advocacy Access Program by phone at 604-872-1278 or 1-800-663-1278 or by email at feedback@disabilityalliancebc.therightfitbc.org to talk to an advocate.