2025 - Disability Poverty in Canada: Learning from Today to Make Tomorrow Better

On December 3, 2025, Disability Without Poverty (DWP) hosted a free, virtual symposium that brought together researchers with lived experience, service providers, academic and community researchers to talk about disability poverty in Canada. Our theme was Disability Poverty in Canada: Learning from Today to Make Tomorrow Better.

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES

The symposium featured two distinct streams.

Stream A: Curated Panels
Individual lecture presentations were submitted in advance and are available on the DWP YouTube channel. DWP curated these lectures into thematic panels, creating opportunities for deeper conversation and connection across topics. Viewers are encouraged to explore the full lecture recordings online to go further.

Stream B: Self-Contained Panels
Panels in this stream applied as complete units, with moderators and speakers already in place. These sessions offered focused, facilitated discussions on specific issues related to disability poverty.

Panel recordings from both Stream A and B are being released on a rolling basis.

Poster Presentations
In addition to live panels, the symposium included poster presentations to capture snapshots of research from across the country. They are available on the DWP YouTube channel.

Stream A 

Welcome Address, Launch of the 2026 Disability Poverty Report Card, Special Guests

See this Panel On YouTube Here.

Clare Li Research Collective

DWP shared a prerecorded tribute honouring Clare Li, celebrating her leadership, advocacy, and lasting impact on Disability Without Poverty and the Canada Disability Benefit. The DWP Research Collective now carries her name in recognition of her commitment to advancing disability justice and reducing poverty among disabled people in Canada.

Sandra Pronteau opened the symposium by inviting participants to approach the gathering with open hearts and minds, encouraging deep listening so attendees could leave informed, grounded, and ready to act.

Michelle Hewitt, DWP Board Chair, highlighted DWP’s research driven approach to advocacy, emphasizing that disabled people living in poverty often remain in a constant state of crisis. She described DWP’s grassroots work as a way of staying closely connected to the most marginalized disabled communities, informing initiatives such as Shape the CDB and the annual Disability Poverty Report Card. She encouraged audiences to explore DWP’s prerecorded lectures and poster presentations on YouTube.

Rabia Khedr, DWP National Director, reflected on the launch of the Canada Disability Benefit in 2025 and noted that funds are now reaching disabled people across Canada. She underscored both the progress made and the ongoing gaps in benefit accessibility, calling for continued advocacy to reduce red tape and improve delivery. She urged viewers to engage deeply with DWP’s third annual Disability Poverty Report Card and to recognize persistent barriers in food security, housing, transportation, employment, and other essentials.

Leila Sarangi of Campaign 2000 and Family Service Toronto, DWP’s partners on the report card, expanded on the findings, noting that progress remains limited. She reported that approximately 1.5 million disabled people in Canada continue to live in poverty and that nearly half of all people living in poverty are disabled. In 2023, disabled people living in poverty required roughly 30 percent more income to reach regional poverty lines, while unemployment remained significantly higher for disabled people than for non disabled peers.

Chantal Petitclerc, Senator, Paralympian, and disability rights ally, acknowledged that the Canada Disability Benefit represents a legal recognition that disabled people deserve targeted financial support. She emphasized that the true measure of success will lie in implementation and real world impact.

Patty Hajdu, Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion, thanked DWP for its leadership in advancing the Canada Disability Benefit and recognized that substantial work remains. She reaffirmed her commitment to continuing this work in partnership with disability communities across Canada.

Barriers to Housing for people in Quebec 

 See Marie-Eve Lamontagne's Lecture In French Here.

This panel, Barriers to Housing for People in Quebec, was the symposium’s only French language session and included simultaneous English and French interpretation as well as ASL and LSQ. It was moderated by Janet Rodriguez, Ontario Community Outreach Coordinator with Disability Without Poverty.

Marie-Eve Lamontagne, professor at Université Laval and an occupational therapist, spoke from her research with people living with traumatic brain injury. She described a severe housing crisis across Quebec that affects everyone, with adapted housing particularly scarce. Outside dense urban areas such as lower Quebec City, accessible housing is rare or nonexistent, especially in rural regions. Her research shows that housing needs go well beyond physical adaptations to include quiet environments, lighting, ventilation, and safety supports for memory and daily living. She emphasized that homelessness in Quebec includes people with mobility impairments and chronic pain, not only mental health or addiction related needs.

Elizabeth Lowe works with Finautonome and is a board member of Disability Without Poverty. Living with cerebral palsy and an energy limiting neurological disability, she shared lived experience of the system’s failures. The waiting list for adapted housing in Quebec can be seven to ten years and openings often occur only when someone dies. She described how invisible disabilities are routinely questioned or dismissed and how subsidies to adapt private homes are extremely difficult to access. She also highlighted the punitive impact of means tested benefits, noting that living with a partner would result in losing a significant portion of her income support, effectively preventing cohabitation and reinforcing isolation.

In discussion, Janet Rodriguez raised how higher unemployment rates for disabled people intersect with housing affordability, often forcing people to remain with parents or alone in unsuitable housing. Elizabeth underscored how benefits penalize interdependence while governments promote self reliance, and how the lack of part time employment options further limits stability. Marie-Eve emphasized that many people face false choices in housing, where the option is either to accept what is offered or have nothing at all. Both speakers called for shared responsibility across governments, developers, and the public, stressing that accessible housing must be designed with disabled people involved from the outset so that social, sensory, and safety needs are integrated rather than retrofitted later.

Disability, Poverty, Housing: A Look Through the Lens of Lived Experience 

See Latonya Ludford's Lecture Here.

This panel, Disability, Poverty, Housing A Look Through the Lens of Lived Experience, centered lived experience as evidence and intervention. It was moderated by Michelle Hewitt, Board Chair of Disability Without Poverty.  

Steven Vine, creator of the Disability Diaries podcast, shared his experience of sudden disability following a workplace medical crisis in 2016 that resulted in blindness, an amputation, and an ostomy. After being placed in assisted living with much older residents, he was eventually told to move to a halfway house or live on the street. Steven described homelessness as a stripping away of dignity and autonomy, and spoke to how two programs changed his trajectory. The Right Fit matched him to housing removed from the general market, while Choices in Supports and Independent Living provided direct funded home care. With consistent support, he said his life became worth living again. He began his podcast because he felt voiceless and has since found strength and solidarity in disabled community.

Marie LeBlanc, a multidisciplinary artist originally from Manitoba and now living in Alberta, spoke about living with environmental sensitivities including multiple chemical sensitivities, electromagnetic hypersensitivity, and mold illness. Even minimal exposure can render housing uninhabitable. As a result, she lives nomadically in a van as a matter of survival, often traveling to the United States in winter to avoid freezing temperatures. She described the exhausting labour of mapping and verifying safe places to park, weighing physical safety against exposure risks, and navigating fragmented provincial systems that fail to recognize clean air as a basic housing requirement. She highlighted examples of possibility, including government housing for people with chemical sensitivities in Snowflake, Arizona.

Latonya Ludford, Canada Project Manager with The Shift, examined why Housing First approaches that have succeeded elsewhere have failed to take hold in Canada. She described a system that manages homelessness rather than ending it, including an example of a wheelchair user with complex health needs who remained in an encampment because it was the only place where daily health checks were possible. She introduced The Shift’s Hidden Housing pilot, which will work with municipalities to audit vacant and underused housing and activate it for people in need.

Across the panel, speakers emphasized that community is both survival and resistance. Steven spoke of finding extraordinary people through his podcast community. Marie described networks of artists and disabled people who support one another in ways formal systems do not. Latonya reframed encampments as communities that emerge in the absence of housing and can become collective pressure points that force governments to listen. Together, the panel made clear that housing solutions must restore dignity, autonomy, and belonging, not simply manage crises.

Navigating ODSP

See Asif Khan's Lecture Here. See Camille Deondra Stewart's Lecture Here.

This panel, Navigating ODSP, focused on the lived realities of accessing income support in Ontario. It was moderated by Erica Zacharias from Ottawa, who opened by sharing her personal experience of navigating ODSP after a neurological condition became unmanageable following her move to Ontario. Her future work as a palliative care nurse was put on hold. She described repeated barriers to eligibility including student loans treated as income and being financially assessed with a spouse despite separation, due to the housing crisis. She emphasized how, during a health crisis, the cognitive and physical labour required to navigate ODSP systems can be overwhelming and inaccessible.

Asif Khan, research and policy analyst with the Income Security Advocacy Centre (ISAC), provided a system level overview. ODSP currently supports roughly 300,000 disabled people in Ontario, with a maximum monthly rate of about $1,408 for basic needs and shelter, leaving recipients approximately $1,100 below the poverty line. Drawing on survey data, he highlighted that experiences were consistently worse for Indigenous and rural recipients, with high levels of dissatisfaction related to unclear information, long wait times, stigma, and inconsistent communication. He noted that more than half of respondents said any additional income would go toward food and other survival needs, not discretionary spending.

Camille Deondra Stewart, an ODSP recipient since 2011, spoke about learning to build financial stability within the constraints of the program. She described the absence of representation for disabled people who look like her and the necessity of learning to read policy closely in order to understand what is permitted. She credited the ISAC Health Benefits guide published in 2025 as a key resource, and cautioned against the narrative that nothing exists, arguing instead that supports are available but deeply difficult to find and navigate.

Trevor Manson, Chair of the ODSP Action Coalition, spoke to the emotional toll of the system, noting that his organization regularly hears from people experiencing fear, anger, and anxiety while trying to survive on ODSP. He emphasized that means testing against family income can be dangerous, particularly for women in unsafe situations, contributing to the fact that nearly 90 percent of ODSP recipients are single. He shared practical strategies for survival and future planning, including understanding RDSP rules, using segregated funds, documenting all interactions, and following up verbal conversations with caseworkers in writing to ensure clarity and accountability.

Together, the panel made clear that ODSP is not merely difficult to navigate but structurally misaligned with health, safety, and dignity, requiring both systemic reform and shared survival knowledge to endure.

Just Societies: Canada's Drug Laws, MAiD, and Experiences of Homelessness

See Nicole Luongo's Lecture Here. See Ty Ragan's Lecture Here. See Emilio Toala's Lecture Here.

This panel, Just Societies: Canada’s Drug Laws, MAiD, and Experiences of Homelessness, examined how policy, practice, and social attitudes intersect to produce harm. It was moderated by Michelle Hewitt, Board Chair of Disability Without Poverty, who framed a just society as one where people are valued, supported, and meaningfully included in community. All panelists contributed prerecorded lecture videos available on DWP’s YouTube channel.

Nicole Luongo, Systems Change Analyst with the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition (CDPC), spoke from lived experience of homelessness and criminalized drug use in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Now based in Toronto, she described how Canada’s drug laws actively disable individuals and communities through prohibition, unregulated supply, and fear of seeking help while criminalized. She emphasized that many people who use drugs do not have substance use disorders and argued that abolition of prohibition, paired with regulation, is a necessary step toward justice, safety, and dignity.

Dr. Ty Ragan, based in Alberta, reflected on his work in housing, homelessness, and MAiD. He described entering doctoral research out of frustration with systemic barriers that limited access to resources for people exiting homelessness. In MAiD policy and practice, he identified coercion, loss of dignity, and underlying eugenic thinking, noting that wrap-around supports are often absent. He cited data showing that many caregivers feel unprepared to support disabled or unhoused people and warned that when MAiD is introduced in contexts of scarcity, it risks becoming a response to deprivation rather than choice. He challenged the framing of people as taxpayers rather than citizens and asked what must be built cradle to grave so people can truly thrive.

Emilio Toala brought both lived experience of homelessness and invisible disabilities and academic research conducted with organizations such as Unity Health Toronto and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. He described homelessness itself as a disabling condition and noted that disabled people are disproportionately unhoused. He pointed to the existence of over one million vacant homes in Canada and argued that justice requires activating this housing alongside wrap-around supports designed to meet the needs of people labelled as complex.

Together, the panel underscored that drug policy, housing systems, and end of life care cannot be separated from social values. A just society must dismantle policies that criminalize, abandon, or coerce, and instead invest in conditions that allow people to live with dignity, safety, and belonging.

Neoliberalism and Policies of Disability Management

See Stefan Sunandan Honisch's Lecture Here. See William MacGregor's Lecture Here.

This panel, Neoliberalism and Policies of Disability Management, examined how economic ideology shapes disability policy and produces poverty. It was moderated by Jen Rinaldi of Ontario Tech University. Both speakers contributed prerecorded lectures available on DWP’s YouTube channel and spoke from lived experience of disability. The panel framed disability poverty as a product of policy choices that push disabled people out of the working class while tying social worth to labour. MAiD was discussed as a policy often framed as progressive yet potentially reinforcing older ideas that value lives based on productivity.

Stefan Sunandan Honisch of University of British Columbia argued that poverty management under neoliberalism avoids addressing the economic relations that create poverty. He positioned means testing as a tool that manages scarcity rather than reducing inequality, locking disabled people into poverty traps created by capitalist social relations. He challenged whether MAiD, when presented as a response to disability poverty, represents progress or an organized abandonment of people deemed economically unproductive. He asked whether universalist policies grounded in economic justice are required to meaningfully end disability poverty.

William MacGregor of York University focused on the erosion of the welfare state. He described a shift from governments protecting people from the economy to protecting the economy from people, resulting in a market society where worth is measured by income generation. Disabled people are disproportionately harmed as income supports are reduced while the accommodations needed to access work are also cut. He warned that functional poverty among disabled people is systematically undercounted and that neoliberalism dissolves collective responsibility, reframing structural deprivation as individual failure. For him, the distribution of wealth is inseparable from the distribution of power.

Together, the panel made clear that disability poverty is not accidental. It is produced by policy regimes that prioritise markets over people and individual blame over collective care.

Intersectionality Within Disability and Poverty

See Rayanne Banaga's Lecture Here. See Danielle Landry's Lecture Here.

This panel, Intersectionality Within Disability and Poverty, explored how overlapping identities shape exclusion and belonging for disabled people in Canada. It was moderated by Meenu Sikand, Vice Chair of the Disability Without Poverty board, who framed the discussion through human rights and disability justice lenses. She warned that policies affecting disabled Canadians are eroding the sense of belonging and value for disabled and racialized people, and asked how that loss can be meaningfully addressed.

Rayanne Banaga from Race and Disability Canada described work on the Cultural Diversity and Inclusion project, which examines how disability is shaped by culture. She critiqued economic framings that reduce life to productivity and dehumanize disabled people, arguing instead for networks of care that bridge gaps left by policy. Her research model centres communities as experts, compensates community researchers, and redistributes financial power back into the communities involved. She also challenged narratives that cast immigrants as resource drains, noting that cross cultural learning builds resilience and expands how belonging is imagined.

Danielle Landry of Toronto Metropolitan University presented findings from her project Accounting for Ableism: The Hidden Costs Disabled People Bear. Using qualitative interviews and a grounded theory approach, her research examines how disabled people understand their lives at the intersection of disability, labour, and culture. She argued that costs are too often framed only in financial terms, obscuring the extensive labour disabled people perform to navigate inaccessibility. True accessibility, she emphasized, is ongoing and means being able to bring one’s whole self into a space.

Together, the panel made clear that disability poverty cannot be separated from race, culture, migration, and labour. Addressing it requires justice based frameworks that value lived experience, redistribute power, and rebuild belonging.

Employment, Entrepreneurship and Finding Benefits

See Edna Appiah-Kubi's Lecture Here. See Sarina Mawji's Lecture Here.

This panel, Employment, Entrepreneurship and Finding Benefits, examined how disabled people navigate work, income, and opportunity within systems that often penalise participation. It was moderated by Brittany Finlay of the University of Calgary.

Edna Appiah-Kubi, based in Toronto with Prosper Canada, presented their national benefits finder tools. She shared findings from a 2023 longitudinal study showing more than 300,000 people had accessed the tools, with usage doubling since. Designed as a free, one stop resource covering every province and territory, the tools strip away jargon and are frequently updated to reflect policy changes, significantly reducing barriers to accessing benefits.

Sarina Mawji, a social services and change management leader, focused on the untapped potential of disability employment. She framed inclusion as a strategy rather than charity and argued that accessibility is a right, not a favour. Employers, governments, and workers all play a role, but employees need power rather than permission. She challenged employers to move beyond tokenism, value strengths over deficits, leverage assistive technologies, and embrace remote work. She also stressed that income support systems must stop penalising people for working.

Cindy Christensen, a policy analyst and researcher based in Ottawa, explored creative arts as a pathway out of poverty for disabled people. Drawing on lived experience of invisible disability, she examined how inclusive cultural policy, accessible digital technologies, and skills building can support artists. She noted that while funding exists, arts spaces are highly competitive and often dominated by the same recipients. Through her Amare collective, she emphasised collaboration, micro grants, and alternative pathways such as paid mentorships and internships alongside, or instead of, formal education.

Together, the panel highlighted that meaningful employment and entrepreneurship require accessible systems, supportive policy, and a shift away from structures that punish disabled people for participating in work and creative life.

Stream B 

Locating Legislated Poverty in the Structuring of Ontario’s Disability Service Provisions

The panel Locating Legislated Poverty in the Structuring of Ontario’s Disability Service Provisions, presented by Dr. Jen Rinaldi and Dr. Heather M. Shearer, examined how Ontario’s disability systems actively produce and maintain poverty through policy design. Across two linked papers, the panel traced how funding structures, eligibility rules, and service delays function less as supports and more as mechanisms of exclusion.

Drawing on the perspectives of disability support workers, Dr. Rinaldi’s paper highlighted the crisis created by Ontario’s shift from agency-based funding to individualized direct funding models for people with intellectual disabilities. Workers described a system that offers the appearance of choice without meeting basic needs, captured starkly in the quotes: “You can have a TV, but you’re living in a tent.” “You can go to the movies, but you can’t buy food.” The findings underscore how neoliberal reforms offload responsibility onto individuals while stripping away the collective infrastructure required for care, stability, and dignity.

Dr. Shearer’s research focused on children’s treatment centre waitlists in the Durham region, revealing a parallel form of legislated deprivation. Between 2012 and 2023, waitlists for essential developmental services (PT, OT, SLP) grew exponentially, impacting thousands of children. Families reported waiting so long for care that children often aged out before becoming eligible, effectively denying access altogether. Together, the papers exposed how policy-driven scarcity doesn’t just delay support, it systematically erodes people’s chances of receiving it at all.

Every Canadian Counts: How to Advance Economic and Social Inclusion for those with Lifelong Disabilities in Canada

The panel Every Canadian Counts: How to Advance Economic and Social Inclusion for Those with Lifelong Disabilities in Canada made a clear case for structural reform, arguing that piecemeal programs cannot address the scale or permanence of disability-related poverty. At the centre of the discussion was Every Canadian Counts’ proposal for a National Disability Insurance Plan (NDIP), a federally coordinated, portable system designed to provide lifelong, needs-based supports regardless of where someone lives in Canada. As outlined by Hubert van Niekerk, the NDIP would establish a new social and economic infrastructure encompassing health and medical supports, personal care and caregiving, housing and independent living, transportation and mobility, community participation, and family caregiver support.

The panel drew heavily on international evidence to underscore both feasibility and urgency. In a recorded presentation, Bruce Bonyhady described Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), launched in 2013 as a world-first social reform. He noted that Australia pre-NDIS closely resembled Canada today, and that the NDIS has since delivered universal access for people with significant disabilities under 65, grounded in a social model of disability and individualized funding based on need, while also generating substantial economic growth. The panel further connected systemic under-support to human consequences: registered clinical counsellor Ryan Yellowlees highlighted how inadequate disability supports contribute directly to mental illness, raising serious concerns in light of MAiD’s planned expansion to mental illness in 2027. Closing the panel, James van Schaik situated the NDIP within Canada’s international legal obligations, noting that the UN has repeatedly cited Canada, since 2006, for failing to uphold the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Together, the panel framed the NDIP not as aspirational policy, but as a long-overdue legal, economic, and moral necessity. 

Universal Design and the Disability Industrial Complex

This panel brought together two distinct but connected conversations, led by Shelley Petit and Murielle Pitre of the New Brunswick Coalition of Persons with Disabilities (NBCPD). The first examined the Disability Industrial Complex, a system in which governments, non-profits, and corporations often profit from disability while leaving disabled people materially worse off. Using Saint John, NB, as an example, they described how targeted public investments intended to improve outcomes instead expanded third-party service providers and administrative infrastructure, with little direct benefit to disabled residents. They challenged audiences to question charitable and service-driven models that reward donors and organizations, while excluding disabled people from decisions about how resources are allocated.

The second focus turned to Universal Design in housing as a concrete, preventative solution. Distinct from “accessible” or retrofit design, Universal Design creates homes that are usable by everyone across changing needs throughout one's lifetime. Citing Australian models and research from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, they noted that most Universal Design features add little to no cost at the build stage, while retrofitting later is significantly more expensive and often inadequate. Through a guided visualization of navigating a home using a wheelchair, the panel highlighted the many hidden barriers embedded in conventional housing and called for Universal Design to be mandated in new builds across all levels of government.

2SLGBTQ+ People with Disabilities and Experiences of Poverty in Canada

Led by Nick Mulé (York University), this panel, 2SLGBTQ+ People with Disabilities and Experiences of Poverty in Canada, presented the first national, $2.5-million, six-year community-based study examining the prevalence and impacts of poverty on 2SLGBTQ+ people in Canada. It engages roughly 94 project members doing the work and will track outcomes through 2029. Speakers grounded the data in lived experience and regional realities: Dani Hummel from St. Catharines highlighted that in the Niagara region, Indigenous people make up over half of the unhoused population, with disabled people the second largest group, underscoring how poverty, disability, and isolation intersect despite community lifelines like the Willow Arts Community. Drawing on a large sample of nearly 2,000 participants, Michael Martel (New York) reported that 43% of the participants identified as disabled, and had severe food insecurity, a weak sense of belonging, and income assistance systems that effectively penalized working. From Winnipeg, Luca Gheorghica linked poverty to the erosion of community, punitive policy responses, and barriers to gender-affirming care. The study takes a JEDDI approach (justice, equity, diversity, decolonization, and inclusion) where communities lead and policymakers listen.

Education and Disabled People: A Tool to End Poverty

The panel Education and Disabled People: A Tool to End Poverty, featuring Diane Driedger and Nancy Hansen of the University of Manitoba, positioned education as a critical lever for dismantling disability poverty. Dr. Driedger traced the post-WWII history of disabled people’s access to education in Canada, noting that early disability rights leadership emerged from disabled students who entered post-secondary institutions in the 1970s, often in deeply inaccessible environments. While accessibility offices and targeted grants now exist, campus supports remain underfunded and understaffed, even as more than 27% of Canadians identify as disabled and post-secondary enrolment continues to rise.

Dr. Hansen grounded the discussion in lived experience, recounting her path from Ontario’s segregated “special education” system, where disabled children were long excluded from public schooling, into university and academia. They discussed the persistence of aversive ableism in higher education: institutions that see themselves as progressive yet resist listening when disabled people point out systemic failures. For both scholars, the academy has been simultaneously liberating and obstructive, marked by performative inclusion rather than structural change. Their conclusion was clear: education transforms lives and societies only when disabled students are genuinely welcomed, supported, and treated as leaders shaping the future, not problems to be accommodated after the fact.

Navigating Disability Policy Across Canada: Current Status and Future Directions

The panel Navigating Disability Policy Across Canada: Current Status and Future Directions was moderated by Brittany Finlay, Senior Research Associate at the University of Calgary. She opened with an overview of the ADVANCE Network (Alliance for Disability Voices, Advocacy, and National Community Empowerment), a national initiative analyzing disability programs and services across Canada to identify what works, what doesn’t, and where gaps persist. ADVANCE’s work is organized around four core policy lenses: program types and government efficiency, access trajectories, eligibility and design, and access and exclusion. While the 4 research Fellows below are appointed for one-year terms, the network is positioned as a multi-year effort aimed at moving beyond research toward capacity building and knowledge mobilization.

Meaghan Reitzel, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Calgary and McMaster University, is focused on eligibility criteria and access. Grounded in occupational therapy, her work centers equity as a starting point, not an afterthought. She highlighted how inconsistent definitions of disability across provinces and territories create inequitable access, particularly for people deemed “not disabled enough” despite clear need. Her research compares jurisdictional definitions against the UNCRPD and examines the downstream impacts on caregiving supports and life transitions.

Laura Mudde, a professor at the University of British Columbia Okanagan, has examined individualized funding and vocational inclusion for youth transitioning out of education. Drawing on critical disability justice and crip theory, she interrogates Canada’s fragmented policy landscape to identify who falls through eligibility cracks, often due to navigational, language, and systemic barriers. Her ADVANCE work focuses on early intervention and developmental supports, revealing how exclusion compounds for the most marginalized.

Kelsey Seguin, a PhD candidate at the University of Ottawa, brings a multidisciplinary and lived-experience lens to the issue of wait times for disability services. Her research explores how geography (rural vs. urban), diagnosis prioritization, and prolonged delays affect access, often leading to missed early interventions and cascading developmental consequences.

Sarah Raza, a policy specialist and researcher based in Ottawa, addressed the fragmentation of disability programs across Canada. Bridging clinical research and health policy, she examines how responsibilities are distributed across ministries and jurisdictions, resulting in duplication, gaps, and confusion for families and providers. Her work calls for stronger federal–provincial coordination, centralized information systems, and a shift away from medicalized frameworks toward inclusion as a public good that benefits everyone.

Real Pay-Meaningful Work: Addressing Employment Barriers for Marginalized Deaf and Disabled Women & Gender Diverse Peoples

The panel Real Pay Meaningful Work Addressing Employment Barriers for Marginalized Deaf and Disabled Women and Gender Diverse Peoples was moderated by Dr. Doris Rajan of the New Society Institute (NSI). She opened by outlining NSI’s mandate to center grassroots and lived expertise from highly marginalized communities through applied research and social development. The panel drew on a three year project, funded by Women and Gender Equality Canada, that examines barriers Deaf and Disabled women and gender diverse people face in securing and sustaining employment. It builds on NSI’s Accessibility Exchange platform which enables Deaf and Disabled people to be paid for their expertise by federally regulated sectors.

Panelists grounded the research in lived experience. Kelly Johnson from Toronto described workplace tokenism, unhonoured accommodations, and how generational trauma and systemic labeling shape judgments about her capacity as an Indigenous disabled mother. Ben Akuoko, originally from Ghana, shared how employers assumed his disability would require excessive resources despite his education, forcing many disabled workers to accept poor fit or low paid jobs simply to survive. Skyler Wolfe from Winnipeg spoke to layered exclusion as an Indigenous 2SLGBTQ plus person whose disability was repeatedly framed as a liability by employers.

Perspectives from Atlantic Canada further underscored structural gaps. Lina Gharbiya works in Saint John, NB supporting newcomers with disabilities navigating employment systems. Aya Murad, a visually impaired immigrant who arrived in Canada in 2012, described being met with sympathy rather than practical support and excluded from government employment placements, leading her to create her own catering business to sustain herself and nourish her growing community. Bianca Okine, Manager of Social Development at NSI, outlined NSI’s applied research across Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal, Iqaluit, and Saint John, documenting barriers both to getting a job and keeping one, identifying what genuinely accessible workplaces require in policy, practice, and training, and pointing to a forthcoming publication sharing these findings.

In discussion, panelists emphasized allyship as action rather than performance. Ben called for collaboration alongside disabled workers rather than speaking for them, while Skyler stressed the importance of trusted advocates in the workplace who can help remove barriers in real time.

‘Not enough to be a game changer’: Perspectives of disabled people on the Canada Disability Benefit (CDB) – A Suspected Policy Failure 

The panel ‘Not Enough to Be a Game Changer’: Perspectives of Disabled People on the Canada Disability Benefit examined the policy failures of the Canada Disability Benefit through the lens of lived experience. The discussion was led by Tracy Smith-Carrier, Professor and Canada Research Chair at Royal Roads University, alongside Alfiya Battalova, Assistant Professor in the School of Humanitarian Studies at Royal Roads University, and Sid Frankel, Senior Scholar in the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Manitoba.

Dr Battalova opened by outlining the study’s purpose: to understand how current and future recipients perceive the CDB in terms of adequacy, fairness, and its ability to reduce poverty. Grounded in disability justice and policy failure frameworks, the research rejects narrow social versus medical models and centers the material realities of disabled people. The team situates the CDB within a long history of welfare policies that create a disability poverty trap marked by surveillance, control, austerity, and privatization. Their findings will be published in the Canadian Journal of Disability Studies.

Dr Frankel then detailed the methodology and key findings. Using purposive sampling, the researchers engaged 73 participants across all regions of Canada, supported by an advisory committee and researchers with lived experience. Across diverse impairments and circumstances, the same themes emerged repeatedly: the benefit is not enough. Not enough money, not accessible enough, and not enough meaningful consultation. Participants raised concerns about exclusion of episodic disabilities and called for ongoing, consistent engagement so the benefit can evolve rather than stagnate.

Dr Smith-Carrier closed by reflecting on what these findings reveal about the design and rollout of the CDB. Many participants experienced the process as opaque and tokenistic, signaling a lack of genuine government commitment to transformative change. While the study’s findings are transferable rather than generalizable, the implications are clear: the CDB is far from the basic income it was once framed to be and functions instead as a limited income supplement with uneven equity across the country. Panel discussion emphasized reforms needed to make the benefit meaningful, including raising the rate to ensure adequacy, accounting for different costs associated with different impairments, valuing lived experience as expertise, and sustained advocacy to hold the federal government accountable to its stated obligations to reduce disability poverty.