Maggie used to live on $1,368 a month. She has lived with a disability since 1986 when she was hit by a drunk driver.
The $1,368 Maggie got is the maximum a single person receiving Ontario Disability Support Program benefits (ODSP) could get in 2024.
She also received benefits through the Canada Pension Plan Disability program (CPPD) after contributing to the Canadian Pension Plan for 40 years, but the province clawed that money back in full.
In February 2025, she’s only getting $1,228 a month. Of that, $39 is from the province’s ODSP benefits. The adjustments have been made because after 14 years on a waitlist, she is now living in below-market-rent housing in Barrie, Ontario.
Maggie tells The Grind that each month she only has $100 to cover all her costs for medicine, monthly mobility injections and food. This leaves her $400 short. Every month.
“I’m no better off,” she says.
There are around 500,000 people receiving ODSP in Ontario. Another 427,000 are on Ontario Works (OW). And, like Maggie, many are struggling due to limited payments and a complicated system of benefits that can cancel each other out or disqualify you altogether.
Brad Evoy, with the Disability Justice Network of Ontario, says this is by design in order to “force people out of these programs.”
When first elected in 2018, the PCs cut a previously announced rate increase in half. The Liberals had pledged a three per cent increase to ODSP and OW rates. But the PCs only increased them by 1.5 per cent and then cancelled pledged increases for the next two years.
Since then, OW rates have remained “punishingly inadequate,” the Income Security Advocacy Centre says. The max is $733 for a single person. This hasn’t changed despite an 18 per cent increase in the prices of essential goods and services and a record high cost of living in the last six years, meaning the rates were effectively cut.
To their credit, in 2022 the PCs increased ODSP rates by five per cent, then tied them to inflation beginning in July 2023. That brought the maximum for a single person to $1,368 for basic needs and shelter. The threshold of how much a person can earn before benefits are clawed back were also raised from $200 to $1,000, though it doesn’t apply to spouses or partners who are not disabled.
But Evoy says “that amount barely covers the rent” for disabled people.
Trevor Manson is an ODSP recipient and co-chair of the ODSP Action Coalition. He says rates are “40 to 50 per cent below the poverty line, guaranteeing ‘legislated poverty’ in perpetuity.”
The NDP, Liberals and Greens have pledged to double and ODSP rates if elected, and the Greens and NDP promised to double OW as well.
A new campaign called End Austerity is pushing for improvements to the system and pledges to keep at it “no matter who wins the next election.”
CORRECTION, Feb. 26, 11:52 a.m.: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the Ontario Liberals had promised to double the OW and ODSP rates. They promised only to double ODSP, not OW. The Grind regrets the error.
This article appeared in the 2025 Feb issue.