| Historical Information |
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| This post is about a previous Session of Parliament. Any legislation here that did not receive Royal Assent has been terminated. |
C-422 – An Act to amend the Canada Disability Benefit Act – removes any restrictions based on marital status or household income to get any benefit under the Canada Disability Benefit Act.
Not a lot to say here, Bonita wants to explicitly exclude marital status and household income from being used to determine if someone qualifies for the Canada Disability Benefit. When it comes to income requirements on qualifying for the benefit or determining how much someone should get only their personal income should be considered.
Why It’s Important
So I’m going to add some context to this one because I’m sure a lot of people don’t know why this matters. Though I can only speak for Ontario and the Canada Disability Benefit, these types of programs generally count household income when determining if someone qualifies and how much they should get. While that may make sense on paper in practice it leads to a lot of problems.
The main problem is it can easily create a lot of restrictions on someone’s ability to marry or live with a romantic partner. For example, in the case of the Canada Disability Benefit if you marry someone who makes more than $70,500 your household income will be too high to claim the benefit. That means someone on that benefit could be contributing very little to the household and become fully dependent on their partner, who now has to cover all the expenses for two people. If your partner is only making $70k that might not work out too well, especially if you have large medical costs to go with your disability.
The second part of the problem with this is it can quickly result in situations where someone’s trapped in a bad relationship. If you rely on disability benefits to cover your expenses but are married to someone who makes too much for you to qualify it can become extremely difficult to save money. You become entirely dependent on your spouse, and if the relationship turns abusive you have no way to leave.
Now the current version of the Canada Disability Benefit does set the thresholds much higher than most provincial programs do. It’s currently at $58,500 household income before reduced benefits (about $1,125/week) and $70,500 before being cut off. This is quite a bit more than Ontario’s ODSP, which starts cutting back on the benefit if your spouse is making more than $200/month.
Progress of C-422
C-422 is currently outside of the Order of Precedence.
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