Disability Poverty is a Human Rights Violation

Despite Canada’s massive wealth, more than 1.5 million people with disabilities live below the poverty line. People with disabilities continue to face significant barriers to entering the workforce, including inaccessibility and discrimination. Because of this, they experience higher unemployment rates than people without disabilities and receive lower wages on average. Other socio-economic factors exacerbate these issues. For example, people of colour with disabilities have an employment rate almost 20% lower than people without disabilities. Regardless of whether a person is able to perform paid work, everyone deserves to live with dignity. The Canada Disability Benefit, scaled back significantly from its initial promise, has been deemed a woeful failure, and disability justice advocates warn it will not lift people out of poverty.

Canada is failing to uphold the human rights of people with disabilities. That is why I was shocked and appalled to learn that Carney’s Liberals have abolished from their government cabinet any representatives responsible for diversity, inclusion and persons with disabilities, appointing no minister or secretary of state for these files.

Reinstate Ministers of Diversity, Inclusion, and Persons with Disabilities

People with disabilities are being forced into legislated poverty. Approximately 27% of Canadians over the age of 15 identify as having one or more disability, and researchers indicate that number will only increase as the population ages. Meanwhile, disability poverty rates are rising, and the level of poverty experienced is deepening. It is unconscionable that the Liberals would dissolve a ministerial position responsible for solving this crisis.

At a time when diversity, equity, and inclusion are under attack by American legislators, and when Conservative politicians here in Canada are mimicking anti-DEI rhetoric, we must be firm in rejecting this regressive politicization of human rights. Carney’s Liberals must reinstate ministers responsible for diversity, inclusion, and persons with disabilities.