Tarra Shipman stopped receiving AlSH payments eight years ago because her husband’s salary was too high for her to qualify.
When she left him, she wound up “homeless, living off Chef Boyardee for six months, waiting for a divorce.”
Now that she’s remarried, she’s off AISH again. Instead she receives Canada Pension Plan Disability benefits (CPPD), Canada’s benefit for people under 65 who contribute to CPP.
But the announcement of a possible Alberta-run pension plan has her worried the benefit might disappear.
“I’ve been having nightmares of my husband dying, and waking up with dry tears on my face,” she said.
Shipman’s autism and ADHD make it difficult for her to find and keep full-time work. Currently, she has a part-time job as a caretaker for people doing self-managed care, and receives $900 a month from CPPD.
“You cancel out my CPPD, you take away the one thing that makes me feel like I’m contributing to my household,” she said. “I worked hard for that money and dealt with a lot of abuse on the job to get this.”
A caretaker for most of her life, Shipman said she was often bullied on the job by coworkers who didn’t understand her conditions.
Her husband suffers from high blood pressure and other health complications that she fears could force him to quit his job.
“My husband and I cannot afford to lose $900 off my CPPD,” she said. “It would destroy us. And if he dies, where will I be other than homeless?”
The idea of being financially reliant on her husband also brings back traumatic memories from her previous marriage.
“It's almost like as if you have a disability, you're born to be punished,” she said. “You’re forever begging landlords to have a place to live; you’re forever begging government systems so that you can have food tomorrow; you're forever robbing Peter to pay Paul, as in you're borrowing from family and friends just to eat tomorrow. You're forever trying to pawn your [belongings] in order to have food in your fridge or have a phone … I’m begging just to exist.”
Shipman is a founding member of the Alberta Hummingbird Project, an advocacy group for people with disabilities, and she said that she’s not alone in her concerns about the plan.
Trenton Riopel is one of Shipman’s clients. Riopel, who lives near downtown Edmonton, collects AISH and CPPD. However, because the province deducts the $710 he receives in CPPD from his AISH cheques, he receives only $1,000 a month.
“I'm struggling just to eat,” he said. "I'm waiting on Christmas Bureau gift cards just to get food for the next three weeks.”
Riopel has degenerative disc disease, fibromyalgia, two bulging discs and a hyper blood clotting problem, which leave him reliant on an electric wheelchair.
“My biggest concern is there's absolutely no plans for an Alberta pension plan disability,” he said.
He doesn’t trust the province’s track record with AISH — or that an Alberta-run pension would offer the same level of financial support to disabled people that is currently provided by CPP.
“They’ve proven over and over again they don't give two figs about disabled people or anyone on social services,” he said.
In an email, a spokesperson for Treasury Board and finance said an Alberta-run plan would not cut disability benefits.
“In order for a province to withdraw from the Canada Pension Plan, the Canada Pension Plan Act requires the province’s new pension plan to offer equivalent benefits and pensions to what the CPP offers,” the spokesperson said. “This includes all benefits provided under the CPP, including disability, survivor, retirement or children’s benefits, among others.”
Danielle Smith’s UCP government also re-indexed AISH to inflation and payments increased by 4.25 per cent on Jan. 1.
But St. Albert MLA Marie Renaud, the NDP critic for community and social services, said the province hasn’t provided enough information about how an Alberta plan would cover disabilities.
“People with disabilities on CPPD, they’re worried,” Renaud said. “They don’t know how it’s going to impact them, and they certainly haven’t been consulted in any meaningful fashion.”
She said her office has been overwhelmed by calls, especially from people with disabilities, concerned about changing to an Alberta plan.
In November at the legislature Renaud asked Seniors, Community and Social Services Minister Jason Nixon about the province’s plans for CPPD.
Nixon said the province had increased funding to Persons with Developmental Disabilities (PDD) by $120 million and was “laser-focused” on reducing PDD waiting lists.
Renaud believes that Nixon didn’t know about CPPD.
“That was just sort of icing on the cake,” she said.
The LifeWorks report on an Alberta pension plan, released in September, states the “adjudication of disability claims … would need to be addressed in order to administer an APP.” The report also factors disability claims into its calculations and outlines how CPPD works.
The province solicited feedback about the importance of an Alberta pension disability benefit in one section of the Alberta Pension Plan survey.
