When we contribute to the Canada Pension Plan, we do so in good faith. We expect that if we later become severely and prolongedly disabled, the disability benefit we earned will be protected — just as the retirement pension is protected for others.
CPP is one pension with two pathways to eligibility. For decades, both pathways carried the same fundamental legislative protection. That changed in the mid-1990s. The 1996 Auditor General’s Report showed the government already pursuing “harmonization” with Workers’ Compensation Boards and private insurers explicitly as a cost-saving measure.
One year later, Bill C-2 was rammed through Parliament with almost no debate and quietly added section 65(3) to the Canada Pension Plan Act.
This was the exact moment the CPP was viewed through a different lens.
Our pension was no longer treated as a statutory entitlement. It became a tool of cost-cutting. Pensions belonging to disabled contributors were regarded as less important and were given lesser safeguards than those of non-disabled contributors.
By identifying CPP recipients by their disability, the government created the false impression that CPP and CPP Disability were two different things — and that disabled contributors could legitimately have their protections reduced. This was not an accident. It was a deliberate policy choice to remove safeguards from one group of contributors based solely on disability.
Section 65(3) only ever authorized a one-time deduction from a disabled contributor’s CPP Disability benefit to reimburse an approved disability income program for amounts it had paid that would not have been paid if CPP had already been approved. It was never intended to justify ongoing monthly offsets that permanently reduce the benefits disabled people receive. Yet that is exactly how it is used today.
Section 65(3) is deliberately vague. It contains:
No definition of “administrator of a disability income program”
No statutory criteria for who can be approved
No transparency around approval decisions
No clear limit on what payments can be recovered
This vagueness and lack of protection exists only for disabled contributors. Retirement contributors remain fully protected under section 65(1). Once disability becomes the pathway through which someone accesses their CPP, the security around that pension is significantly weakened.
This is ableism.
Disabled contributors paid into the same plan as everyone else. Yet Parliament created a disability-specific exception that is imprecise, lacks meaningful safeguards, and allows private entities to reach into our earned pensions with minimal oversight. We are expected to accept less certainty and fewer protections precisely because we are disabled.
These mechanisms have never been properly reviewed against Canada’s obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. We are calling for the full repeal of section 65(3) and the regulatory framework that enables ongoing offsets. Our CPP Disability pensions must be treated as the protected contributory entitlements we paid for — not as tools for cost recovery.
Please sign and share this petition.
Every signature helps push back against this disability-specific erosion of earned rights. Thank you.