u/TA20212000

Again, I have a great deal to share...

If you don't want to hear it, please scroll down to the first line placed in the body of text below. There are actionable items and contact links available there.

*****

I DID get through to someone at the AISH office (FYI - it is now called Disability Income Assistance - DIA) after I made that first post the other day last week. I had to follow up here.

And this fascist shit garbage just gets wilder and wilder...

More than a decade ago, I had to drag my son through the entire process of applying for AISH. His application was denied and I was told that applying & being denied for PDD (Persons with Developmental Disabilities) needed to be done first before AISH could be applied for.

I spoke with the PDD people after that. Based on his last assessment, my son was a single IQ point TOO HIGH to qualify for PDD.

I remember the PDD lady on the phone back then being really wistful for us. She suggested that I speak with the psychologist who did my sons' final assement the day before he turned 18 and see if they would "knock off" an IQ point or two so my son could actually qualify for PDD.

Sigh. Of course, I couldn't do that.

That would have been wrong.

So, I had to reapply for him for AISH all over again.

The lady on the phone from the DIA office this past week, first told me that the GoA decision to move people over to ADAP is "Non-Appealable"...

Then she said that my son was moved off of AISH & over to ADAP because he does not qualify for PDD.

When I explained the single IQ point, she looked up his file, and then said that they had to follow the legislation.

I asked her what the plan is from here then.

For my son to be moved back onto AISH, she said he will have to be reassessed by a medical doctor, EVEN THOUGH the GoA AND the Federal govt BOTH have formal medical documentation ALREADY on file testifying that my sons' intellectual & developmental disability is severe and lifelong.

I asked her what happens now that they've made this move.

She said that contractors were being hired - I jumped in there and said that I'd heard that there was to be one-to-one employment coaching & skills training - she said that that's what the contractors were being hired for.

She also said that they had people working with employers to get jobs available for ADAP clients.

She didn't have details on any of that, but she emphatically told me not to worry and that we'd hear from the contracting company via letter in the future. She could not give me a timeline on that.

I asked her if neurotypical able-bodied people are having such trouble finding & securing reliable, stable employment in Alberta, how are they going to find employment for people with severe disabilities?

She said that the program was "still rolling out", not to panic and that those details weren't clear yet either.

The DIA lady did say that the threshold allowance for employment income when a person is on AISH has also been lowered and that it was higher on ADAP. She said it like I was supposed to be happy about the switcheroo.

Side note: I remember when my son was first on AISH, the AISH worker he had back then explained to me that if he WAS able to secure employment at some point, he was allowed to make $850/month at a job without losing any of the AISH support. He could STILL get full AISH benefits plus up to $850 in wages from a job without penalization....

That was maybe in 2017? 2018?

The DIA lady last week told me that AISH recipients are now allowed to only make $350/month in employment income before it impacts their AISH monies. She also said a person is allowed to make far more than that when they're on ADAP.

$1740+$350 is not enough to survive on in Alberta for a single person though! The poverty line in Alberta is lower than that. StatsCan recently placed the poverty line at $2,413 per month (~$28,956/year).

And what if my son can't do this? What if he ends up in an unsafe or abusive work environment? What happens then?

(My son tried out work experience in his last year of high school. He was not treated properly or equitably in his job placement. He also went to the Employabilities Program in Edmonton when we lived there. His reading comprehension/ability level was/is too low for any of that.)

The lady said that if being on ADAP doesn't work out, then we'd still have to reapply for AISH anyways in that case, do the medical assessment and then wait for the Medical Review Boards decision.

I asked how long the Medical Review Board takes to make their decisions. She said she wasn't sure and that it was listed somewhere on their website.

And then my phone died. F*ck.

🫠☠️🤯

By the time I got to a charger, the business day had ended and I gave up on calling that DIA lady back.

I came back here and responded & conversed with many of you who had commented.

And then I browsed around on different socmed platforms, reading what people had to say about what's been happening.

I've been doing that for a couple days now... I've read account after horrifying account of what people are going through....

• Others were told by the DIA call centre workers that the income allowance when on AISH is $300 - not $350 like I was told over the phone.

• Another gentleman who had been trying to access AISH for 2 years in this province was eventually asked by an AISH rep if he'd considered MAID. He was able to leave the province and get help elsewhere.

• AISH recipients also no longer have assigned workers, so they have to use a general call centre staffed by workers; many in the call centre haven't been trained in these changes, don't even know that the name of the GoA department they work for has been changed, and don't seem to have access to many details about this entire shittery at all.

• Many recipients are now dealing with NSF charges via their financial institutions because their cheques never came or are coming very late. This is not an isolated one off. Thousands of people did not get their AISH benefits on time this month.

• One commenter said that the AISH (DIA) call centre recieved 15,000 calls last Monday from recipients whose payments either did not come, were completely incorrect or had been switched over to ADAP while still meeting the criteria for AISH.

• Disabled people AND THEIR CAREGIVERS are also LITERALLY experiencing psychological & physiological responses (breakdowns, heart issues etc.) due to the unnecessary stress, anxiety & terror the UCP have created through this fascist dick move.

• I read account after account from people who are falling through the cracks due to government red tape, oversight, technical errors...

There have also been many comments I've read - both on here and on other platforms - over the past week where I would finish getting through reading what someone had written and I would sit back, knowing that the person writing what they just shared with the world, is not going to make it.

They cannot & will not stick around for any of this for much longer.

The torment and anguish they are experiencing is not tolerable for them, let alone acceptable. Life was already so hard for them before this massive dumpster fire got rolling.

They have been forced into such a stranglehold of a position that they have zero ability to move or breathe in any direction.

So this is where the desperation that I wrote about in my other post comes in, you know?

People have ended their lives over such things, ended their lives for far less than what is at hand currently.

To be real frank, of course I had extremely dark thoughts when I sat there outside my house, panicking, crying & hiding from my son, looking at that letter that has me listed as the "Vendor" with my sons' name listed no where on it, realizing that he'd been booted from AISH onto ADAP already when I'd just received a letter from them back in May saying they weren't doing anything till December of 2027.

After doing a bit of hopping around on the interwebs this morning, I came across more details that have me horrified & raging all over again.

Back when my son first went on AISH, like I said earlier, the employment income allowance was $850.

I learned this morning from [this news article](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/adap-multinational-contractor-aish-alberta-changes-9.724942), that over the last ten years that amount had been raised to $1,072.

But as of July 1st this year, that amount has been slashed to $350.

So not only has the UCPs clawed back the Federal Disability Benefit (the $200) from their AISH benefits...

On top of that, the UCPs are only allowing them to make $350 more in employment income before they start further withholding even more of their AISH benefits.

I also learned in my little interwebs journey, that the IQ threshold to be eligible for PDD is no longer 75 like it was nearly 15 years ago, it's been changed & lowered to 70, again making more difficult for people with disabilities to get what they need....

I found the names of the two main companies who have been contracted to manage this new DIA program, including the skills training and employment supports program...

Here is a quick clip someone put together after researching Serco Canada 🤯👹 [[[I had to post it in the comments as this page doesn't allow socmed links]]]

AKG Canada is the other company. I couldn't find much online about them. Hoping someone out there is digging.

And like... As a side note... How did the UCPs ending up choosing Serco when there's so much terrible info out there about them?

WHY would/did they choose THEM? ☠️

And at this point, I don't know what to tell myself after trying to take in & process everything that's unfolded & everything I've learned this week...

Maybe the UCPs just want mass suicide? Maybe society thinks that anyone "less than" the whole do not deserve to exist? Maybe they think their lives & our society would be so much "better off" if all of the "undesirables" were dead, you know?

Maybe that's the underlying theme in all of this across the country....? Cruelty is the point?

I mean, poor people have been going through it across the country for a long, damn time. Seniors, too. Families with special needs children (the wait list for a FSCD assigned worker is two YEARS in Alberta currently) as well. Always and of course Indigenous ppl get the shit end of the stick in all things all over this country. Veterans. Everyone else with disabilities in every other province are barely making it. The collapse of the health care & education systems.... I just..... Sigh.

I remember standing on a street corner in downtown Edmonton for an entire day in the winter of 2012 with a sign that said "43% of Food Bank users in Alberta are Children". When that stat came out, I was so heartbroken. I had to go share that information with others...

And I am near certain that stat has gotten far, far worse since then.

That was nearly 15 years ago.

Tens of thousands of seniors, women & children are turned away from Alberta shelters every fucking year.... 31,248 people (40% of that number were kids) to be exact, in the 2023-2024 report from the Alberta Council of Women's Shelters (ACWS).

And jfc, let's circle back to this issue with AISH & ADAP....

Is where we are now, indicative of who we are as a society? Is what we've allowed and not put our bodies on the line for, what all of us really want for each other and for ourselves going forward as a collective?

Is this who we've become?

I also not sure what people who are being so nasty about all of this are thinking :/

Life is so fragile and unpredictable....

All of us AND our children and loved ones are one accident, one incident - one moment away - from being in the exact same or very similar position as those far less fortunate than us.

NO ONE is IMMUNE to Life.

Any mountain of money in our bank account or stocks or shares or wherever, won't save us if we cannot raise a fork to our mouths or wipe our own butts or recover our memory or executive functioning or restore us to full and complete health & wellness...

Yes, that money MIGHT make life easier, maybe.

But WHAT ABOUT EVERYONE ELSE??

I wish those people would consider that.

These are all questions I am genuinely asking myself and ruminating on.

Anyways...

[Bill 12 - The Financial Statutes Amendment Act, 2025] (https://docs.assembly.ab.ca/LADDAR\_files/docs/bills/bill/legislature\_31/session\_2/20251023\_bill-012.pdf) MUST be rescinded.

This is the piece of legislation that has brought all of this to bear.

This is the piece of legislation that folks making $100k-$200k/year have decided upon and cranked out for some of the poorest of the poor and most vulnerable and it is pretty fucking evil.

If anyone has a clear breakdown of how fucked Bill 12 is, I'd love to see it. It's 64 pages long and I'm no lawyer, but I can read. And there is some seriously heinous shit in there.

---

On a final note, I've seen many able-bodied, neurotypical people across the interwebs, asking what they can do to help.

Anyone who wants to truly engage will have to dig deep and find the energy & time - and the political will - to deal with such things.

I know that this is no small thing...

And.... It's those UCP folks & their pals AT THE WHEEL and they don't give a fuck about anyone who isn't THEM or ISN'T LIKE them.

I think many of us already know this.

Being an instrument of change takes action, courage, conviction, creativity & hope. And heavy amounts of discomfort, and at times, humiliation. Being armed with the knowing what your rights are is also important. Study them.

Here are some ideas:

• Start organizing wherever you are. Reach out in your local social media groups. See if there are others where you are who feel the way you do. Talk with people. Info share.

There IS safety in numbers.

\> Find out who your MLA is: [https://www.elections.ab.ca/voters/members-of-the-legislative-assembly/\](https://www.elections.ab.ca/voters/members-of-the-legislative-assembly/)

\> And your MP: [https://mymp.ca/search\](https://mymp.ca/search)

\> And the Cabinet Ministers: [https://www.alberta.ca/contact-a-cabinet-minister\](https://www.alberta.ca/contact-a-cabinet-minister)

Send emails, letters, messages or any other form of communication, often... To All Of Them.

They NEED to be BOMBARDED.

As a side note, each letter IS recorded in their systems. As far as I remember, by law, it has to be recorded.

• Visibility & optics is also a big deal especially when creating awareness in others who have zero clue what's going on.

Sit ins - inside & outside buildings where legislators are meeting. Make yourself known at the Prayer Breakfasts, the Economic Development Breakfasts, check out the news in relation to the political people who attend them and their whereabouts & attend with your people if you can.

Protests at the Legislature in Edmonton in the late afternoon, evenings or on weekends are pointless.

There is NO ONE in the People's House. No one is even home to hear you.

The media may publish something on it. But if you want legislators to FEEL IT, those folks making these awful decisions, need to be IN the Leg, on site.

• Write letters to your local papers & local news media about any/all of this.... Create awareness that way.

• Write to your municipal & county councils and request that you be allowed to speak at their next council meeting. And then speak openly & plainly about such things.

Municipal & county councils ARE in constant communication with the province.

As a resident of either, you ARE allowed, BY LAW, to be present at their meetings, there is simply a process that is followed to gain access to speak. It's trash, I know.

And, those are the just two of the arenas that need to be engaged.

You have every right to sit in on their meetings, asked to be placed on their agenda to speak about these issues and so on.

• And finally, seriously consider running for local, county, provincial, federal governments. Now. Or down the road. It doesn't matter when. Just consider it.

I'm telling you... The number of politicians I met for the brief time I was in office in rural Alberta, who knew someone that knew someone and got into office that way, was CRAZY.

They had NEXT TO NOTHING for serious life experience and had NO genuine qualifications to be there. And it showed.

The fact that we were in our positions to create, amend and rescind law ONLY, WHILE IN SERVICE TO THE PEOPLE WE WERE EMPLOYED BY (the rate payers, the residents - people like you and people like me now currently)..... That was the only power we had, and that concept was - very often - lost on most of them.

They had money & ease of access applied heavily towards entering into their political positions because of the money, nepotism & cronyism that is rampant in Alberta.

They were business men. Christo-fascist men. Industry men. Anti-human men.

There were only a very, very small handful of them that I crossed paths with across the province, who were NOT that.

People who KNOW what it is to SUFFER need to be steering us. People who know what it is to truly STRUGGLE need to be making decisions that impact the whole. People who are educated or experienced in the humanities.

Anyone else occupying those political positions means that we will continue to see more of the same - on repeat - for any and all subsequent governments at every level...

---

Sorry for the long read. Thank you for listening. I know it's a lot. I took the time to write it <3

I hope that something here helps someone somewhere. I am really tired. It's been a very long week.

My thoughts are with those who are currently being curbstomped by the UCPs. And with the rest of us who care and must act.

We must value change for survival.

We can do far better than this for ourselves, for each other and for the future.

May we find a way out of this deplorable trajectory we are on together.

I'm about ready to lose my ever loving mind. Please excuse my tone, language & demeanor, I am at my f*cking breaking point.

Recieved a letter from the GOA maybe a month or two back stating that my adult son who has a severe developmental and intellectual disability MIGHT BE moved to ADAP as early as December of next year.

I wrote about it on the local social media where I live to create awareness. And jfc, there are some wickedly cruel shitbirds out there....:

***Derp. Look see? I took some screenshots of Googles AI search tool saying that the GoA won't remove severely handicapped people from AISH... YOU'RE A LIAR. Derpity derp derp.... People need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and stop being so LAZY***

Yeah, that was the kind of garbage ☠️

Anyways, every month around the end of the month, my son would recieve (c/o myself) the reciept of his AISH benefits, plus his health benefits card.

This month, I - not my son, but me, it was addressed to me - recieved a letter from the GoA...

It's a one pager "Statement of Deposit Non-Negotiable".

And under the "Payment Details & Program Message Section", it lists a "Transition Benefit" of +$200, a "CDB Deduction Client" of -$200 and an ADAP LIVING ALLOWANCE.

And there's NO Health Benefit card attached.

So he's already been moved over to ADAP. He's been on AISH for more than a decade. He cannot take care of himself. He can barely navigate the goddamn world or hold a conversation or talk to his own fucking doctor face-to-face and these psychopaths want him to get a job?!?

WHERE?! EMPLOYERS DON'T WANT HANDICAPPED PEOPLE WORKING FOR THEM EXCUSE ME!!!! WHO IS GOING TO HIRE THEM?!? The word "ret*rd" has made a FULL comeback, neurotyps themselves can't find meaningful, sustainable employment and SOMEHOW.... Those folks who are less abled - in WHATEVER way, shape or form - are EXPECTED to find & secure work... and NO ONE gives two shits about the people next to them who are suffering. This is infuriating. Intolerable. And grossly unmanageable.

Sorry. I'm still ranting and venting and crying while I write this. This is the level.

This is the level where desperation takes over. This is the level where desperation takes over and people die. People do crazy shit. People lose their minds.

I'm making phonecalls trying to sort this out... And I can't get through. Anywhere.... It goes to voicemail... Please call back later.... Or there is no voicemail available... Larger call volume than normal... Please call back later....

I DID see that things did not go as per usual for enough folks in the province for it to make soc med & the news. So I KNOW the call volume is going to be high already.... And, I wonder if this was purposeful.

"Switch them over to ADAP, fuck with what little financial stability they have, they won't care if we've kicked them off AISH, they'll just be grateful they got anything period." ~ maniacal laughter ensues

And I can't even tell my kid about any of this.

Hiding outside my house, typing this to you folks and bawling my eyeballs out because he would not understand... Even IF I could break it down for him and try to translate intellectually WHAT IN THE SAM HILL FUCK is going on right now.... He still wouldn't be able to grasp it. But goddamn he would try so hard. He would see how important and vital to our stability, security & survival as a family unit, how shook his mother is and know that this sure feels like and looks like a life or death issue lol ☠️

This is too much.... This is FAR, FAR too much.

We are on a fast rolling track to an ever-growing list of "undesirables" (issuing a huge one fingered salute to ANYONE who thinks like this) being exiled from society - and essentially - any sort of life worth living.....

This is some seriously grim, dystopian shit. I do not believe most - if not all - of what this letter asserts. I am terrified for and heartbroken over those who have no advocate for them whatsoever.

These are some sick-assed, cowardly times we're living in.

That is all ☠️

The Maintenance Dept is losing their workshop. The Nutrition Budget for the students is being cut. EAs are being cut. Our division got a bunch of their funding cut.

Anyone hearing or seeing anything where they are??