Raise the Canada Disability Benefit to $1,000 a Month, Lift Rates Above Poverty
The Issue
$204.20 a month doesn’t lift anyone out of poverty. It doesn’t even lift a dog out of poverty.
That’s the maximum Canada Disability Benefit in 2026-27: $204.20 a month, $2,450.40 a year, for a working-age adult with a disability who has already been approved for the Disability Tax Credit and who passes a low-income test.
It was promised as a benefit that would lift people with disabilities out of poverty. It doesn’t. Not close.
I hear every day from people choosing between rent and food, between medication and heat, between staying housed and staying alive. This is not an abstract policy debate. When income is set hundreds of dollars below the cost of surviving, people lose housing, lose health, and lose hope.
Canada can do better. Canada must do better.
The math is indefensible
Federal: Canada Disability Benefit:
Maximum $204.20/month, July 2026 to June 2027, based on the 2025 tax return. Up from $200 the year before.
A one-time $150 supplement began in September 2026 to help offset the cost of getting a Disability Tax Credit form certified. It is not a monthly increase.
You must be 18 to 64, already approved for the Disability Tax Credit, and you must apply to Service Canada. Many of the poorest Canadians never get through that gate.
Ontario: ODSP:
A single person on the Ontario Disability Support Program can receive at most $1,436 a month from July 1, 2026, $825 for basic needs plus up to $611 for shelter, and shelter is only paid up to actual rent.
That is $17,232 a year at the absolute maximum.
Add the full CDB and you get $1,640.20 a month, $19,682 a year, still about $9,600 a year short of the Market Basket Measure poverty line for a single person in Toronto, $29,328 a year.
Ontario: Ontario Works:
A single adult on Ontario Works still receives at most $733 a month, $343 basic needs plus up to $390 shelter. That rate has been frozen since 2018.
Maytree’s Welfare in Canada series puts total welfare income for a single person on OW in Toronto at $10,242 a year, about 33% of the official poverty line. Food Banks Canada’s 2026 Ontario Poverty Report Card puts it at 32.7%.
Prices have risen roughly 23-25% since that freeze began. The cheque has not moved a dollar.
Across Canada:
The Disability Poverty Report Card 2025, from Campaign 2000 and Disability Without Poverty, found that every one of the twelve provincial disability programs paid a single recipient below the official poverty line, and nine of the twelve left that recipient in deep poverty, below 75% of the Market Basket Measure.
2024 all-in monthly totals for a single recipient in that report: Alberta AISH $1,978, Newfoundland and Labrador $1,759, Prince Edward Island $1,692, British Columbia $1,654, Ontario $1,486, Quebec $1,422, New Brunswick $1,178.
No province passes. The “best” in the country still leaves a person below the poverty line. The worst leaves a person in deep poverty by design.
71% of Ontarians who receive government support say the rates do not cover the cost of living, the highest rate in the country, according to Food Banks Canada’s 2026 report cards.
This is legislated poverty.
The shelter trap
The $611 ODSP shelter maximum in Ontario is a ceiling, not a market rent. If rent is $900, $289 comes out of the $825 basic-needs amount. That leaves $536 for food, clothing, transit, phone, laundry, and everything else for a month.
If rent is $1,200, common in Ottawa and Toronto, the shortfall is $589. The person is still housed, on paper, and starving in practice.
The same trap repeats in every province: a shelter allowance frozen while rents soar, and a basic-needs amount raided to cover the difference.
The Disability Tax Credit gate
The CDB is locked behind the Disability Tax Credit. Getting a DTC requires a medical practitioner to certify a severe and prolonged impairment, often at a cost the applicant must pay up front, and many doctors charge for the form. Many people with disabilities, especially with episodic, mental-health, or multiple interacting conditions, are denied, delayed, or never apply because they cannot afford the process, cannot find a practitioner, or do not know the benefit exists.
A poverty benefit that only reaches people who can already navigate a complex medical-legal process is not a poverty benefit. It is a filter.
The federal government has now announced automatic filing of federal benefits for up to 5.5 million low-income Canadians, including the CDB. That is a step in the right direction, but automatic filing does not help if you are still blocked by the DTC itself.
Clawbacks must end, everywhere, by law
Ontario now exempts the CDB as income for ODSP, Ontario Works, and the Assistance for Children with Severe Disabilities program, so recipients keep both in full. That exemption must be locked in by law in every province and territory, with no clawback, no deduction, and no offset against housing, health, or other benefits.
A federal increase that a province simply deducts is not an increase. It is a transfer from Ottawa to a provincial treasury, using a person with a disability as the conduit.
WHAT WE DEMAND
- FEDERAL: Raise the Canada Disability Benefit to $1,000 a month, now, with a legislated path to the poverty line
Raise the maximum CDB to at least $1,000 a month in the next federal budget, indexed to inflation every year.
Legislate a binding timetable to raise the combined federal + provincial income for a person with a disability to at least 100% of the Market Basket Measure for their region, no more open-ended promises.
Publish the cost, the timetable, and annual progress against the Market Basket Measure, so Canadians can hold the government to it.
$204.20 was a starting point that was never enough. $1,000 is the minimum credible next step. The destination is the poverty line, not a token above destitution.
2. FEDERAL: End the Disability Tax Credit barrier
Decouple CDB eligibility from the DTC, or at minimum create a CDB-specific disability determination that is free, accessible, and does not require the applicant to pay a doctor to prove they are poor and disabled.
Fund DTC applications in full, no applicant should pay out of pocket to access a poverty benefit.
Automatically enrol everyone already receiving a provincial disability benefit, and everyone already approved for the DTC with low income.
Publish disaggregated data on who applies, who is denied, and why, by disability type, age, gender, race, Indigenous identity, and region.
3. FEDERAL + PROVINCIAL: No clawbacks, anywhere, by law
Every province and territory must legislate a full exemption of the CDB from social assistance, disability assistance, housing benefits, and rent-geared-to-income calculations.
No province may reduce any other benefit because a person receives the CDB.
The federal government must make future CDB increases conditional on those exemptions remaining in force.
4. PROVINCIAL: Raise every disability and social assistance rate to adequacy, and index it
Every province and territory must raise its disability assistance rate so that, together with the CDB and tax credits, a single recipient reaches at least 100% of the Market Basket Measure for their region.
As an immediate first step, Ontario must substantially raise ODSP and end the eight-year freeze on Ontario Works. A single adult on OW at $733 a month in 2026 is living on a 2018 income in a 2026 economy.
Index all rates to inflation annually, by law, with no freezes, no discretionary pauses, and no below-inflation increases.
No province may meet adequacy by cutting eligibility, tightening medical reviews, or pushing people off assistance.
5. PROVINCIAL: Fix shelter, pay real rent
Set shelter allowances to actual local housing costs, tied to CMHC average rents for the community, not to a statutory cap set years ago.
End the practice of forcing rent shortfalls to be paid out of food money.
Protect rent-geared-to-income tenants from losing housing when a benefit increase is counted as income.
6. PROVINCIAL: Stop punishing work, savings, and relationships
Raise earnings exemptions substantially in every province, Ontario’s $1,000-a-month ODSP exemption should be a floor, not a ceiling.
Raise asset limits so people are not forced to stay broke to stay eligible.
End spousal deeming and household rules that cut benefits when a person with a disability lives with a partner, a family member, or a roommate for safety or affordability.
End punitive medical re-assessments for permanent disabilities.
7. ACCOUNTABILITY: Measure it, publish it, answer for it
Every government must publish, every year, the total income of a single recipient on disability assistance and on general assistance in each region, compared with the Market Basket Measure and the deep-poverty line (75% of MBM).
The federal government must report annually on CDB take-up, denial rates, and the gap to the poverty line.
If a government misses its legislated adequacy timetable, it must table a public remediation plan in its legislature, not a press release.
WHY THIS PETITION, WHY NOW
The federal budget is imminent. Provinces are setting their next budgets. The CDB is still new enough to fix, and small enough that fixing it is a choice, not a fiscal impossibility.
Disability poverty is not inevitable. It is the predictable result of rates set below the cost of living, frozen for years, gated behind paperwork, and clawed back when Ottawa tries to help.
We are not asking for charity. We are asking for adequacy. For income that covers rent, food, medication, transit, and dignity, in every province, for every person with a disability, without exception.
Sign if you believe no Canadian with a disability should live in legislated poverty.
Sign if you believe $204.20 a month was never a plan to end poverty, and $733 a month frozen since 2018 was never a safety net.
Sign, share, and tell your MP, your MPP/MLA, and your premier: raise the benefit, raise the rates, end the clawbacks, and bring every person with a disability up to the poverty line, at minimum.
Start with home. Start with enough to live.
Samuel Rizzotto
4
The Issue
$204.20 a month doesn’t lift anyone out of poverty. It doesn’t even lift a dog out of poverty.
That’s the maximum Canada Disability Benefit in 2026-27: $204.20 a month, $2,450.40 a year, for a working-age adult with a disability who has already been approved for the Disability Tax Credit and who passes a low-income test.
It was promised as a benefit that would lift people with disabilities out of poverty. It doesn’t. Not close.
I hear every day from people choosing between rent and food, between medication and heat, between staying housed and staying alive. This is not an abstract policy debate. When income is set hundreds of dollars below the cost of surviving, people lose housing, lose health, and lose hope.
Canada can do better. Canada must do better.
The math is indefensible
Federal: Canada Disability Benefit:
Maximum $204.20/month, July 2026 to June 2027, based on the 2025 tax return. Up from $200 the year before.
A one-time $150 supplement began in September 2026 to help offset the cost of getting a Disability Tax Credit form certified. It is not a monthly increase.
You must be 18 to 64, already approved for the Disability Tax Credit, and you must apply to Service Canada. Many of the poorest Canadians never get through that gate.
Ontario: ODSP:
A single person on the Ontario Disability Support Program can receive at most $1,436 a month from July 1, 2026, $825 for basic needs plus up to $611 for shelter, and shelter is only paid up to actual rent.
That is $17,232 a year at the absolute maximum.
Add the full CDB and you get $1,640.20 a month, $19,682 a year, still about $9,600 a year short of the Market Basket Measure poverty line for a single person in Toronto, $29,328 a year.
Ontario: Ontario Works:
A single adult on Ontario Works still receives at most $733 a month, $343 basic needs plus up to $390 shelter. That rate has been frozen since 2018.
Maytree’s Welfare in Canada series puts total welfare income for a single person on OW in Toronto at $10,242 a year, about 33% of the official poverty line. Food Banks Canada’s 2026 Ontario Poverty Report Card puts it at 32.7%.
Prices have risen roughly 23-25% since that freeze began. The cheque has not moved a dollar.
Across Canada:
The Disability Poverty Report Card 2025, from Campaign 2000 and Disability Without Poverty, found that every one of the twelve provincial disability programs paid a single recipient below the official poverty line, and nine of the twelve left that recipient in deep poverty, below 75% of the Market Basket Measure.
2024 all-in monthly totals for a single recipient in that report: Alberta AISH $1,978, Newfoundland and Labrador $1,759, Prince Edward Island $1,692, British Columbia $1,654, Ontario $1,486, Quebec $1,422, New Brunswick $1,178.
No province passes. The “best” in the country still leaves a person below the poverty line. The worst leaves a person in deep poverty by design.
71% of Ontarians who receive government support say the rates do not cover the cost of living, the highest rate in the country, according to Food Banks Canada’s 2026 report cards.
This is legislated poverty.
The shelter trap
The $611 ODSP shelter maximum in Ontario is a ceiling, not a market rent. If rent is $900, $289 comes out of the $825 basic-needs amount. That leaves $536 for food, clothing, transit, phone, laundry, and everything else for a month.
If rent is $1,200, common in Ottawa and Toronto, the shortfall is $589. The person is still housed, on paper, and starving in practice.
The same trap repeats in every province: a shelter allowance frozen while rents soar, and a basic-needs amount raided to cover the difference.
The Disability Tax Credit gate
The CDB is locked behind the Disability Tax Credit. Getting a DTC requires a medical practitioner to certify a severe and prolonged impairment, often at a cost the applicant must pay up front, and many doctors charge for the form. Many people with disabilities, especially with episodic, mental-health, or multiple interacting conditions, are denied, delayed, or never apply because they cannot afford the process, cannot find a practitioner, or do not know the benefit exists.
A poverty benefit that only reaches people who can already navigate a complex medical-legal process is not a poverty benefit. It is a filter.
The federal government has now announced automatic filing of federal benefits for up to 5.5 million low-income Canadians, including the CDB. That is a step in the right direction, but automatic filing does not help if you are still blocked by the DTC itself.
Clawbacks must end, everywhere, by law
Ontario now exempts the CDB as income for ODSP, Ontario Works, and the Assistance for Children with Severe Disabilities program, so recipients keep both in full. That exemption must be locked in by law in every province and territory, with no clawback, no deduction, and no offset against housing, health, or other benefits.
A federal increase that a province simply deducts is not an increase. It is a transfer from Ottawa to a provincial treasury, using a person with a disability as the conduit.
WHAT WE DEMAND
- FEDERAL: Raise the Canada Disability Benefit to $1,000 a month, now, with a legislated path to the poverty line
Raise the maximum CDB to at least $1,000 a month in the next federal budget, indexed to inflation every year.
Legislate a binding timetable to raise the combined federal + provincial income for a person with a disability to at least 100% of the Market Basket Measure for their region, no more open-ended promises.
Publish the cost, the timetable, and annual progress against the Market Basket Measure, so Canadians can hold the government to it.
$204.20 was a starting point that was never enough. $1,000 is the minimum credible next step. The destination is the poverty line, not a token above destitution.
2. FEDERAL: End the Disability Tax Credit barrier
Decouple CDB eligibility from the DTC, or at minimum create a CDB-specific disability determination that is free, accessible, and does not require the applicant to pay a doctor to prove they are poor and disabled.
Fund DTC applications in full, no applicant should pay out of pocket to access a poverty benefit.
Automatically enrol everyone already receiving a provincial disability benefit, and everyone already approved for the DTC with low income.
Publish disaggregated data on who applies, who is denied, and why, by disability type, age, gender, race, Indigenous identity, and region.
3. FEDERAL + PROVINCIAL: No clawbacks, anywhere, by law
Every province and territory must legislate a full exemption of the CDB from social assistance, disability assistance, housing benefits, and rent-geared-to-income calculations.
No province may reduce any other benefit because a person receives the CDB.
The federal government must make future CDB increases conditional on those exemptions remaining in force.
4. PROVINCIAL: Raise every disability and social assistance rate to adequacy, and index it
Every province and territory must raise its disability assistance rate so that, together with the CDB and tax credits, a single recipient reaches at least 100% of the Market Basket Measure for their region.
As an immediate first step, Ontario must substantially raise ODSP and end the eight-year freeze on Ontario Works. A single adult on OW at $733 a month in 2026 is living on a 2018 income in a 2026 economy.
Index all rates to inflation annually, by law, with no freezes, no discretionary pauses, and no below-inflation increases.
No province may meet adequacy by cutting eligibility, tightening medical reviews, or pushing people off assistance.
5. PROVINCIAL: Fix shelter, pay real rent
Set shelter allowances to actual local housing costs, tied to CMHC average rents for the community, not to a statutory cap set years ago.
End the practice of forcing rent shortfalls to be paid out of food money.
Protect rent-geared-to-income tenants from losing housing when a benefit increase is counted as income.
6. PROVINCIAL: Stop punishing work, savings, and relationships
Raise earnings exemptions substantially in every province, Ontario’s $1,000-a-month ODSP exemption should be a floor, not a ceiling.
Raise asset limits so people are not forced to stay broke to stay eligible.
End spousal deeming and household rules that cut benefits when a person with a disability lives with a partner, a family member, or a roommate for safety or affordability.
End punitive medical re-assessments for permanent disabilities.
7. ACCOUNTABILITY: Measure it, publish it, answer for it
Every government must publish, every year, the total income of a single recipient on disability assistance and on general assistance in each region, compared with the Market Basket Measure and the deep-poverty line (75% of MBM).
The federal government must report annually on CDB take-up, denial rates, and the gap to the poverty line.
If a government misses its legislated adequacy timetable, it must table a public remediation plan in its legislature, not a press release.
WHY THIS PETITION, WHY NOW
The federal budget is imminent. Provinces are setting their next budgets. The CDB is still new enough to fix, and small enough that fixing it is a choice, not a fiscal impossibility.
Disability poverty is not inevitable. It is the predictable result of rates set below the cost of living, frozen for years, gated behind paperwork, and clawed back when Ottawa tries to help.
We are not asking for charity. We are asking for adequacy. For income that covers rent, food, medication, transit, and dignity, in every province, for every person with a disability, without exception.
Sign if you believe no Canadian with a disability should live in legislated poverty.
Sign if you believe $204.20 a month was never a plan to end poverty, and $733 a month frozen since 2018 was never a safety net.
Sign, share, and tell your MP, your MPP/MLA, and your premier: raise the benefit, raise the rates, end the clawbacks, and bring every person with a disability up to the poverty line, at minimum.
Start with home. Start with enough to live.
Samuel Rizzotto
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Petition created on November 2, 2026