The Department of Social Development is loosening the rules around the household income policy but for advocates, it doesn’t go far enough.
On Friday, Minister Bruce Fitch said the change to the policy to allow roommates to be assessed separately is part of the department’s ongoing efforts to reform social assistance programs.
“Our main objective is to help ensure everyone has the chance to live with dignity and to succeed,” Fitch said in a press release. “Social assistance clients can be confronted with significant obstacles but we are committed to continue exploring ways to better support them.”
Currently, the policy defines anyone who lives together as an economic unit. With the change, that will no longer be the case. However, despite ongoing advocacy and calls for the elimination of the policy altogether, the policy is not extended to spouses.
“There is the individuals who are married and in that conjunctional relationship — they are considered as one unit,” Fitch said.
It means those who are married but wish to maintain their social assistance benefits cannot live with their spouse.
When speaking to reporters on Friday, Fitch didn’t explain why spousal relationships weren’t included in the new reforms. Instead, he reiterated the details of the announcement, including that the reforms would assist 2,000 people.
Ability NB executive director Haley Flaro said the reforms are positive but it is disappointing they haven’t included spouses and listened to what those with disabilities are asking for with reforms.
“We’ve got to do better. Government needs to do better,” she said. “There is a huge social implication for eliminating the household income policy for people with a disability but there is an economic case for it in New Brunswick as well with respect to poverty rates, with respect to helping lift them out of unemployment.”
She said the policy forces people with disabilities to choose between love and an income.
“People do better in life when they have people they can count on, when they have friends and family, when we have relationships,” she said.
Flaro said she hasn’t been able to obtain a cost for eliminating the household income policy or what it would cost to add spouses to the exemption but said there is a business case for it, which is what is missing in getting this policy eliminated.
“We have the second-highest rate of disability in Canada, second only to Nova Scotia,” she said. “People with a disability are the most impoverished people in our province and thirdly we have (a) significant rental and housing crisis.”
Fitch said more reforms are planned with the new budget expected later this month.
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