‘Not enough to be a game changer’: Perspectives of disabled people on the Canada Disability Benefit (CDB) – a suspected policy failure

Abstract

The Government of Canada recently passed the Canada Disability Benefit Act, introducing a benefit that has the potential to impact the financial security of disabled people in Canada. Many disabled Canadians live in deep and relentless poverty, thus hearing that policy changes were underway to remedy this structural problem was warmly welcomed by the disability community. In keeping with the Act, the federal government initiated a consultation process on the regulations establishing the Canada Disability Benefit (CDB). This study, adopting a thematic analysis and viewed through a Critical Disability Studies lens, asks: What are the perspectives of disabled people on the design and administration of the newly announced CDB? We analyze data gathered via interviews, focus groups, and written statements from a sample of disabled people across the country. We identified three key themes: the CDB’s fundamental inadequacy as a poverty alleviation tool, the application of narrow eligibility criteria that promote exclusion, and a faulty consultation process that failed to raise awareness about the CDB from a groundswell of disabled Canadians. We argue that the CDB introduced constitutes a policy failure across all the most salient metrics of evaluation. We argue that substantial revisions to both the design and implementation of the CDB are required to ensure it meets its intended objectives as set out in the Canada Disability Benefit Act.