Overdue support to disabled just first step

The Toronto Star, (Canada's largest daily newspaper ), by HELEN HENDERSON, Aug. 29, 2006.

Kudos to Sudbury community legal worker Marie Lalande for setting in motion the action that led to Ontario finally agreeing to pay $25 million in overdue support to some 19,000 people with disabilities.

As reported by the Star's Rob Ferguson, cabinet approved the payout last week in response to a blistering attack by Ontario Ombudsman Andr Marin. Marin called it "morally repugnant" that the province was taking an average of eight months to process disability support applications but would pay only four months of retroactive benefits to those whose applications were accepted.

The four-month cut-off was cancelled May 31, the day Marin released his report, but the system was so backlogged, there was no immediate relief.

The province is to be commended for acknowledging its responsibility and moving quickly to correct an inequity that has created so much unnecessary hardship. But as Lalande and other advocates point out, this is by no means the only flaw in the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP).

With a surplus in its coffers, Queen's Park should move to help people with disabilities rise above subsistence levels. It would pay off big time and long term, improving general health and helping them reach their full potential.

That means offering sufficient funds to cover the cost of special diets and raising monthly payments to put some dignity back in lives. The maximum disability shelter and living support payment for an individual is $959 a month. Most of the 215,000 people on the books get little more than half that.

It can take two to three years of fighting bureaucratic red tape for qualified people to be formally accepted into the program in the first place. During that time, they subsist on about $535 a month from the welfare system. Out of that they must pay rent, utilities and food, not to mention disability-related necessities not covered by OHIP.

"You eat or you pay the rent," says Lalande.

Two years ago, a report stemming from province-wide consultations initiated by the community ODSP Action Coalition, exposed the disability support program as seriously flawed.

Called "Denial By Design," the report showed that even some people deemed to be "81 per cent disabled" by the system's confusing set of bureaucratic definitions are turned down for support. In 2001, it noted the province's Social Benefits Tribunal overturned almost half of the decisions it heard on appeal.

As Nancy Vander Plaats, chair of the ODSP Action Coalition, put it then: "Representing people who have been denied ODSP is the single largest area of law for legal clinics, consuming a huge percentage of Legal Aid's financial and human resources."

In many ways, little has changed. Still the province's decision to pay $25 million in overdue support offers hope. The money owed to an estimated 19,000 people isn't expected to start flowing until November, pending development and implementation of a computer program to administer everything. Some 13,000 of those qualified are still on the support program's books but the remaining 6,000 will have to be tracked down.

Community and Social Services Minister Madeleine Meilleur told the Star's Ferguson that the ministry is hiring more staff and devoting 20 experienced employees to tracking down cases and reviewing claims dating back before 2002 when the system was not computerized. But it could take nine months before everyone is paid, she said.

Meanwhile, the ODSP Action Coalition is hoping for more constructive change.

If you'd like to support their efforts, e-mail vanderpn@lao.on.ca. The group's website at www.odspaction.ca is under renovation but should be up and running again soon.