PEI Government Disability Reform report fails to deliver election promises

Minister Doug Currie, promising reform and new spending December 2007 - delivering nothing today

Liberals have delivered nothing close to their promises and committee mandate as we predicted

By Stephen Pate, PEI Disability Alert, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada, May 8, 2009

PEI’s Minister of Social Services and Seniors released the final report of the Disability Services Review Committee (SRC). It fails to deliver on any of the promises Robert Ghiz made in the 2007 election. It also fails to deliver on the mandate of the Disability SRC.

The report is a white wash of the fact that 4,300 Islanders still need help from the Disability Support Program (DS) including 1,600 seniors.

Prior to the election in 2007, PEI Disability Alert had strongly advocated for reform of the DSP. The program was materially underfunded. It only supported 5% or 1,000 of PEI’s 19,000 persons living with disabilities. Anyone 65 years and older was excluded from the program based on their age.

Ghiz and his chief of staff Chris LeClair promised to reform the DSP including adding seniors during their second year in office, which ends in June of 2009.

The Disability SRC was formed in November 2007. I was contracted to act as a consultant to the SRC.

It became apparent that the SRC was not going to reform disability services. It appeared to be a stall tactic. I resigned from the Committee in January 2008.

What has the final report delivered?

1. “Forming a Disability Action Committee” – which would be another do-nothing committee like the old Ministers Advisory Committee that in more than 4 years recommended no material change;
2. “Hiring a new Disability and Community Development coordinator” – that position has been open since June 2007, nothing new here;
3. “Supporting the creation of a new eight-unit affordable housing facility for people with intellectual disabilities in Alberton” – that’s the payoff for Community Inclusions and a drop in the bucket – 8 units – against the needs of thousands of disabled Islanders for accessible housing;
4. “Developing accessibility guidelines for contractors who build new social housing” – adoption of the national building code for accessibility does not take development. The code is already a national standard. This is nothing new and not even a promise;
5. “Developing a public education and awareness campaign to shine a spotlight on the social isolation” – another empty program that will not alleviate suffering among the disabled.

Virtually nothing new is in this report. That was our prediction in March 2008.Premier Ghiz has totalled failed the Island disability community.

He did deliver “$205,100 in funding increases to a number of NGOs” which is a pay-off to the SRC board members who hide the facts of suffering and need among PEI’s disabled underclass.

Special thanks for towing the government line goes to SRC members Bridget Cairns, Theresa Aitken, Anna Duffy, Theresa MacKinnon, Kevin Porter, Twilah Stone, Corrina Costain, Sharon Gallant, Kathy Pilkington, Charlene Stevens, and Shelley Watts.

Faced with an opportunity to include seniors and 4,300 other Islanders under the DSP, they turned away their heads.