By Jeremy Abbott
In Alberta today, 77,000 people find themselves in the position of needing to access supports through the Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped (AISH) program. But changes and cuts implemented by the Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party (UCP) government are putting the program at risk, with far-reaching implications.
While its benefit levels are still below the poverty level in cities like Edmonton, AISH is a lifeline for people with chronic disabilities. Its maximum income exemption means that people can continue to receive benefits on top of employment income, which is a boost for those who can still work but experience barriers. The program also has provisions for people whose disabilities hinders their ability to retain a job.
The Alberta government has boasted that this program is among the most robust in the country, largely because of the significant funding boost and legislation the NDP put in place in 2015 to increase AISH payments to the rate of inflation.
But in 2020, the UCP government put measures in place to temporarily freeze the AISH increases and put more restrictions on eligibility requirements. While loans were given out to businesses, and payouts made to oil monopolies during a brief crash in oil markets, a freeze in AISH funding was put in place for a year. The legislation to increase payments to the rate of inflation remains in place but the provincial government has kept this program in its crosshairs to claw back gains made, in the midst of a growing trend towards austerity and privatization within Alberta’s public services.
Throughout the course of the past two UCP governments, changes have also taken place in AISH and Income Support offices, with department and office closures and the redivision of the workforce. This has restructured the way frontline staff can attend to clients, by removing caseloads and replacing them with a call centre structure in which workers are expected to handle a larger quota of calls.
As workers leave due to workplace stress from the high demands, they are replaced with part-time employees. Backlogs of paperwork have been increasing every quarter and processing is often 2-3 months behind due to insufficient staffing at every level.
Alberta Union of Provincial Employees (AUPE) president Sandra Azocar released a statement in February 2024, which was a scathing critique of the province’s handling of the AISH program:
“People with disabilities are tired of waiting to be assessed and to get support. Some have been waiting for more than two years because the government has instituted a freeze on handling new applications. The government has axed the jobs of dozens of case workers and is refusing to fill vacant positions.”
Since January 2025, the UCP government has implemented systematic cuts to disability advocacy programs including Voices of Albertans with Disabilities and the Centre to Empower All Survivors of Exploitation and Trafficking. With the mandate of “merit based programming” – not so different from the “performance based funding” models imposed on public universities and colleges in 2019 – and from the premier’s own mandate letters since coming to office in 2023, the province has been targeting AISH as a priority to cut back, starting with the advocacy programs that can help people go through the application to get into the program.
On April 25, the Alberta government announced that it would be clawing back benefits to recipients of the AISH financial assistance program. The federal government recently introduced an additional increase to the disability tax credit program across the country, and the Alberta government aims to implement this additional funding as non-exempt portions of income. Every AISH recipient must apply for the federal credit – they are at risk of losing their benefits altogether if they do not – but they will see no increase in their overall benefits provided.
Some critics have also pointed out that although all recipients of AISH must have a severe disability to apply, not all would receive equal benefits through the disability tax credit program. For instance, disabilities requiring the purchase of medical equipment which the program focuses on subsidizing would not be accommodated, and neither would those who may not get approved for the tax benefit.
The current provincial government’s plan is to pave the way for an intensified period of wage gouging, privatization, unhindered resource extraction, and repression against the working class. The government’s attack is particularly cruel and unrelenting against the most vulnerable people, because the markets demand it – funding cuts put us into this crisis, pitting worker against worker and using disability as a cudgel to threaten poverty and dispossession.
The fight to protect and uphold the rights of injured and disabled persons is one which forms along fault lines that emerge within capitalist societies. Workers, including injured workers, experience segregation due to the barriers to care imposed through privatization and austerity. Cuts to the social safety net increase as a result of austerity enacted by governments in the service to private monopolies seeking to maximize profits and minimize liabilities. Many people experience these issues within the context of the workplace and the health and social security system.
Cutbacks break down the state’s ability to provide basic necessities such as food and shelter. Workers who cannot work due to injury still face skyrocketing costs on these essentials.
Many longstanding fights and struggles have been taken on by the labour movement against these trends in capitalist society. These include the revolt against segregation of disabled people in Ireland’s Monaghan Asylum in 1919, and the formation of the Independent Living Movement in 1972 among impoverished people in the US and Britain who were confined to poor living conditions but fought for the right to adequate housing and access to dignified healthcare.
In Canada the creation of unemployment insurance in 1940 was the result of a struggle by workers for a social security net during periods of unemployment. A key moment in this fight was the 1935 On-To-Ottawa Trek, led by the Communist Party and other progressive organizations of working people like the Workers’ Unity League and the Workers’ Benevolent Association.
Throughout Canada’s history, advances in reforms for the working class have followed a pattern of “one step forward, two steps back.” Today, for example, the cost of living has largely outpaced wages while access to affordable housing and social supports is in rapid deterioration and decline.
Labour must again take on these struggles – for fundamental changes to improve working conditions, expand social programs, and provide support for injured and disabled workers. AUPE, which includes members working in AISH and Income Support call centres, received an unprecedented 90-percent strike vote in May, with 80 percent of members voting. With this kind of momentum, the union movement has an opportunity and an imperative to connect the fight for better wages with broader social struggles like that against austerity inflicted on injured and disabled workers.
[Photo: AUPE]
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