Questions for You to Ask Federal Election Candidates (Poverty Alleviation)

Poverty Alleviation (Income Security (CRPD Article 28) and Employment (CRPD Article 27))

Will your party commit to alleviating poverty for people with disabilities, particularly women and girls with disabilities and others facing multiple forms of discrimination, by:

• Making the Disability Tax Credit (DTC) refundable?
• Harmonizing the eligibility rules between the DTC and CPP Disability, whereby every person with a disability of a year’s duration who receives Canada Pension Plan-Disability (CPP-D) would automatically be qualified for the Disability Tax Credit?
• Extending the duration of the Employment Insurance (EI) sickness benefit from the current maximum duration of 15 weeks to 50 weeks, for those eligible who have a prolonged or episodic serious illness or health condition.
• Increasing investment in the Opportunities Fund and the Labour Market Agreements for Persons with Disabilities, federal transfers to provinces and territories?
• Enhancing targeted initiatives focused on building employer confidence and demand for recruiting and hiring people with disabilities?

Inform Candidates about Poverty and People with Disabilities

Throughout the working years (15-64 years of age) people with disabilities remain about twice as likely as those without disabilities to live with low income.

People with disabilities are much less likely than people without to have jobs.

Even where employed, people with disabilities are 1.5 more time likely than people without disabilities to live with low incomes.

18.4 % of working-age women with disabilities in low income households are lone parents compared with 9.9% of their counterparts who live above the low income measures used by Statistics Canada and 7.9% of women without disabilities.  Only 4% of men with disabilities who live on low incomes are lone parents. (Disabling Poverty, Enabling Citizenship)