There are no “perks” to being an AISH recipient in Alberta. To suggest there are any perks at all to living with a disability shows a lack of empathy for the challenges persons with disabilities face daily.
Persons with disabilities in this province have the right to be fully covered both for healthcare and prescriptions. That is not a perk to be granted through the benevolence of government, it is a human right.
AISH recipients have every justification for worry: they are not receiving enough to meet the basic daily needs of life and there are no plans by the UCP government to raise or index AISH incomes to the cost of living.
According to the principles of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (DRPD), AISH eligibility should be based solely on medical opinion, and government should not be second-guessing the medical community in order to justify austerity efforts.
The Declaration was ratified by Canada on March 11, 2010 and committed federal, provincial, and local government to its terms. Premier Kenney was a federal cabinet minister in the government which ratified it. Albertans need to remind him of that.
Jim Rahn, Edmonton AB