Tories promise to fix disability support system

The Progressive Conservative party promised to “transform” Manitoba’s disability support system if it forms the next government.

“It will be a system that responds to individual needs, rather than forcing individual needs to adapt to a broken system,” PC Leader Obby Khan said at a news conference Thursday.

The Tories committed to implementing the 13 recommendations in the Integrated Adult Services pilot project final report released last month.

The report spelled out how to remove systemic barriers so that adults with complex disabilities can fully enjoy their rights and freedoms and participate in community life on an equal basis with others. Those barriers include benefit levels that do not keep pace with the real cost of adaptive equipment and rural service “deserts” for people outside of Winnipeg.

Nearly 1,000 Manitobans and 55 organizations signed a letter to Families Minister Nahanni Fontaine and Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara Tuesday urging the province to overhaul its disabilities support services system and carry out the recommendations from the pilot project.

The pilot was launched in April 2023 by the previous PC government in response to a 2016 human rights complaint from Tyson Sylvester and the late Amelia Hampton. They stopped receiving many services and supports that enabled them to live a full life in the community when they became adults.

The province decided its treatment of Manitobans living with complex disabilities had to be reviewed.

“Manitobans with disabilities should not be abandoned just because they reach a certain age,” said PC accessibility critic Jodie Byram, MLA for Agassiz.

“That includes creating a provincial transition policy that sets certain guidelines, goals and accountability so that disability supports are not interrupted or changed when people reach the certain age.”

The Integrated Adult Services report recommended replacing diagnosis-based eligibility with needs-based eligibility, ensuring supports continue for life, provincewide co-ordination between departments, adequate and dignified disability income and flexible, person-controlled portable funding for adults with disabilities.

As the mother of 14-year-old Nicholas, who has complex needs, and as a front-line emergency and urgent-care physician, Dr. Jennifer Anderson said she knows first-hand how difficult it is navigating a system that’s “fallen apart.”

“I spend most of my time as a single mom trying to navigate things for my son and also navigate things for my patients,” Anderson said at the news conference. “Throughout the years, things have gotten worse. I am seeing way more caregivers showing up with burnout, seeing a lot of complex-care individuals in our departments that are there because the system has fallen apart.

“I think that a lot of the implementation of these recommendations will actually prevent people from escalating their health concerns and showing up in the emergency department.”

Responding on behalf of the province, Fontaine said Thursday that she accepts all 13 of the recommendations and has six months to formally respond to the report.

“We’re taking our time to go through it thoroughly and thoughtfully,” she told reporters, expressing doubt at the Tories’ promise to overhaul services.

“At the end of the day… there will be change to disability services, to the supports for adults and children in Manitoba. When the PCs were in government, they froze funding to children’s disability services over four years.”

Since forming government in fall 2023, the NDP has announced a $5-million increase to support children with autism, expanded children’s disability services on First Nations and, in 2026, increased support services by $19 million for adults and children with intellectual disabilities.

“That’s a lot of work in the last 2 1/2 years,” said Fontaine, who was asked to provide more examples of funding for adult services.

“There’s still more work to be done,” she said.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca