Disability
2025 05 17
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I acquired a method of (so I'm told) contacting MPs directly that bypasses their office and goes straight to them. I took advantage of that to contact the Prime Minister regarding some topics of significance, import, or interest.
Greetings, Prime Minister Carney.
(This was initially composed prior to the announcement of your cabinet picks.)
I'll get straight to it.
When, after years of promising to lift disabled people out of poverty and then abandoning that promise completely and ignoring every recommendation made by the disabled (and their advocates, committees, supporters, et al), the disabled on assistance in this country were deeply hurt, wounded in a most disheartening way. Legislated poverty is inhumane, sir, and the governments of this nation perpetrate it daily, with every stroke of the pen, and every "wait”, "next time", "not fiscally responsible", and every comment that hearkens back to the "useless eater" commentary of the past.
I realise that, to capitalists of almost every stripe, anyone who isn't producing like good little grist for the mill should, support is seen as wasteful in that limited framework. But how can investing in people ever be a waste? It's sure not progressive, not to invest in people.
While people have this idea that the Liberal party is somehow progressive, you and I both know that's bullshit. They aren't. They do lip service very well, and put just enough effort into something to make it look like they did something, but it's never effort enough. Trudeau's line about "more to do” gave me the screams every time he said it. Of course, there's more to do. There's more to do because not enough was done - if anything at all - the first time. It sounds proactive, but it isn't.
Sadly, we're stuck with that Liberal bullshit because of the undemocratic ill that is first past the post. So, let us move on.
Disability is more a default than ability is. Disability impacts almost every human in one way or another between cradle and coffin. Disability is the least discriminatory condition there is. It intersects race, religion, gender, sexuality, economic status, and everything else. It does not care about any of those things. If disability wants you, it will come for you. We need to start acknowledging the humanity in disability in a way we never have before, and start building an infrastructure - both physical, social, and moral - that accommodates disability as the default. Accessibility, for example, can help more than just disabled folks. It helps the carriers of heavy loads, the deliverers of aid, and those who help those who need help.
We need to eradicate hostile architecture, create third places (for the disabled, children, youth, and others) that are free. These things encourage community. We need to stop treating accessibility like we're doing people a favour. We need to change more jobs to a task-basked model to accommodate flexible work for the disabled (and others who need or want it), and we absolutely need to actually provide sufficient financial support to those who are chronically ill, disabled, temporarily impacted, elderly, and those who care for them when they are unable to do this for themselves in a sufficient manner.
We also need a ministry portfolio whose sole purpose is disability - which addresses concerns of accessibility (and the ACA), labour issues, shortfalls as marked out by the UN (on which Canada has failed miserably in the past), health-related issues, education, training, financial supports, anti-disability bigotry and rhetoric, 100% voting accessibility, and other disability-related concerns, without putting in charge someone who is too privileged for their own - or anyone else's - good.
During the recent Ontario provincial election, for example, there were reportedly insufficient people to run mobile voting units (so many people didn't get to vote), advanced polling places were frequently hours away from a person's home, many polling places were not fully accessible (with ease) by public transit, the electoral season was too short to allow some folks to even receive their mail-in ballots at all (nevermind in time enough to get them back), and the weather impacted every part of this. Which was no doubt the entire point of having a completely unnecessary election during the worst weather of the year - to deliberately impact people's ability to vote. I had to climb over a nearly three-foot-high snow bank to get into the returning office to vote. Sure, to some, these sound like fringe issues. But we should be offended by them, not dismissing them.
The Canada Disability Benefit could have been a bright spark for those, for example, who depend on assistance. Instead, the former Liberal government took that hope and turned it into a useless, laughable, crushing insult. There was one Liberal document, and I frustratingly can't recall the name, that even espoused what I see as a far too right-leaning concept of "teaching us the value of work”. If even your government wants us to do that, you have to provide the means of it happening. You have to provide a style of work we can do (re: task-basked jobs, WFH, etc.), the supports needed to do that work (funds for clothing, equipment, transit, etc.), and the money to eat with so that people have the strength to work at all. A highly gatekept $200 a month isn't going to lift anyone out of next Tuesday, nevermind poverty itself - which was the Liberal promise, to lift disabled people out of poverty. Mentioning how historic it is as a benefit is like men who talk about giving women the vote. It was men who took it, forbade it, and giving people what they should have is not a "favour” one should be proud of.
Just so we're on the same page, I beg you to up that amount to at least 10x what it is (as it was for CERB), ensure the provinces and territories do not claw back the CDB amounts (because disability is more expensive than not being disabled, so the extra is needed badly by so many, especially in cases where provincial/territorial governments either don't provide, deny, or are cutting back on supports for aids, testing, needed transportation, etc.), remove the Disability Tax Credit as a gatekeeper to access, and remove the age restrictions. These, at the very least. I'm sure that former MPs such as Mike Morrice and Bonita Zarrillo who worked tirelessly on the CDB can offer you incredibly substantive materials on discussions and recommendations regarding it. I suggest you seek them out.
I have to tell you, watching you fold disability into a (however temporary) portfolio under a man who stumbled over the word disability at the podium and ended up calling us all handicapped instead, was galling. Just another dismissal of an issue that could, and likely will, impact us all - including you.
PS: If there were a way for me to convey my rage about disability being left out in the cold portfolio-wise without expletives, I'd tell you just how vile an oversight I find that omission. I'm not surprised by it, mind you. Of course you omitted disability. Since when have disabled people (a quarter of the electorate at least) mattered to anyone, particularly capitalists, and particularly conservative ones. I'd ask what the impetus was, but I'm not sure I want the answer. Suffice it to say, I should not have to expend my energy begging for recognition from someone who knows better and chooses not to do better.