| Christina Stebanuk, a single mom in Calgary, dreams of taking her seven-year-old son to the zoo or camping in the Rockies.
However, the reality is that she often doesn’t have enough money to buy food for her son’s lunch and she blames the Klein government for their predicament.
Stebanuk has Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and can’t work due to her disability. She receives $855 a month from the provincial government under the AISH (Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped) program. Stebanuk lives in subsidized housing and receives medical benefits from the government, but she says she and her son often have to resort to the food bank. Stebanuk says she can’t afford to buy her son a bus pass or any new clothes or shoes.
"It’s really, really hard. I get really frustrated because the Klein government doesn’t listen to us. He thinks we’re not living in poverty, but we are," says Stebanuk.
Alberta Employment and Human Resources minister Clint Dunford acknowledges funding for disabled people is not enough money to live on, but he says increasing it is not a priority for Albertans.
There’s no shortage of stories such as Stebanuk’s in Alberta at the moment. Sue Bente, who also suffers from Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and lives on AISH, says she often sits in the dark because she’s afraid her electricity bill will be too high to pay for.
"When I don’t watch TV, I sit in the dark and look out the window," says Bente.
Bente also describes going to the grocery store and feeling depressed because she can’t afford to buy the food she wants.
"I see meats in the store – roasts and steaks – I just stand there and look at them," she says. "(The government) doesn’t necessarily think of us, to put it nicely. They don’t think about what we need."
Stebanuk and Bente’s stories are representative of the experience of many Albertans living on AISH, says Colleen Huston, co-ordinator at Calgary’s Disability Action Hall.
"It’s resignation. People being completely beaten. Silence. Just thinking it won’t get any better," she says.
Members of Calgary’s Disability Action Hall are hoping to raise public awareness about the plight of people such as Bente and Stebanuk through a rally on May 28. They’ll be calling on the provincial government to increase AISH to $1,100 a month. As well, participants will be asking the province to subsidize bus passes for people with disabilities on a low income.
This will be the sixth such rally the Disability Action Hall has held and Huston says very little progress has been made since then. A poignant indicator of this is the fact that protestors will still be able to use the same signs they made six years ago.
Dunford says he knows AISH alone is not enough money to live on, but without a push from everyday Albertans to increase funding, his hands are tied. "When you ask people on the street what is important, you don’t hear about disabled people. You hear about health care, education and roads…. You can’t blame the government for trying to give people what they want," Dunford says. "You don’t have powerful ministers that can do what they want."
Dunford says he’s frustrated by the lack of interest from the public.
"It’s too easy a criticism to say ‘Why doesn’t Clint just raise the rates?’ You can’t do that in the system we’ve got set up…. When Martha and Henry start mobilizing their MLAs and say the government has to do something about the poor and disabled, you’d be surprised how soon things will happen," he says.
Dunford says the government will be reviewing AISH this fall.
"I don’t think there’s any question that the majority of people, even people in government, don’t think $850 is very much to live on," says Dunford. "We have people who are barely getting by."
Dunford says part of the problem is that everyone the government determines to be severely disabled receives the same income, regardless of their assets. He says a person who owns a house, a car and has up to $100,000 in the bank can receive $850 per month, the same amount as a severely disabled person with no assets.
Dunford says he’s also concerned that the number of AISH recipients has increased by 10,000 in the last five years. Even though the government hasn’t increased AISH since then, it is now spending $120 million more than in 1999. |
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