The New Alberta Disability Assistance Program: Will It Deliver on Its Promises?
In January 2025, the Alberta UCP’s announced plans for a new Alberta Disability Assistance program (ADAP). ADAP will exist alongside Alberta’ current Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped (AISH)—an income assistance program for adults with permanent and severe disabilities offering one of the highest benefit levels of all income assistance programs in Canada.
This week the Discussion Guide for ADAP came out. In this blog, I compare the Alberta UCP’s messaging around ADAP to the proposed design of ADAP as laid out in the Discussion Guide. I show that the UCP’s messaging is at odds with the proposed program design in at least two area’s: empowerment and earnings exemptions. As proposed, ADAP will fail to empower Albertan’s with disabilities: it removes their choice, decreases their power and authority, and increases their administrative burdens. ADAP will also not provide a higher level of earnings exemptions. In fact, the proposed earnings exemption will be significantly lower than they currently are under AISH, and, even where there is a lower claw back rate (which is not the same as an earnings exemption but maybe this is what they meant?), the good this might do is undermined by a reduction in the base benefit level and the reduced earnings exemption. Some, if not many, ADAP clients will be worse off financially even when working compared to if AISH remains unchanged.
Empowerment
Persons who are currently eligible and receiving AISH must provide proof that they have low-incomes and that they have a permanent and severe disability that prevents them from earning a living. The application itself is a long and time-consuming application process that requires that an applicant secure and pay for acceptable medical documentation. Moreover, the application already requires people to show that their disability reduces their ability to work.
ADAP has been touted as a program that will “empower Albertans with disabilities to pursue fulfilling job opportunities while continuing to receive the supports they need”. It stresses that ADAP is to be a program to support the employment endeavours of persons with disabilities currently eligible for AISH. The Hon. Jason Nixon is quoted as saying “people with disabilities shouldn’t have to choose between getting the support they need and having the opportunity to pursue a meaningful career”.
While this rhetoric sounds good, the proposed ADAP design is at odds with it. In particular, the Discussion Guide says that all AISH clients will be moved to the ADAP program as of July 2026. Regardless of a person’s want, willingness, or ability to be employed, all AISH clients will be moved on to a program to “help” persons become employed.
To move from ADAP to AISH it is proposed the-now-ADAP-clients will need to be re-assessed. They will need to fill out a Disability Assistance Medical Report, which may be supplemented with information regarding ability to work. This information will be reviewed by a disability assistance adjudicator and, if appropriate, referred to the AISH Medical Review Panel for a final AISH eligibility determination. If not successfully re-assessed, there will be no chance to appeal the decision.
After having to already prove they have a severe and prolonged disability, previously-AISH and-now-ADAP clients will have to again prove their inability to work. This increases the administrative burden and is a humiliating choice as it requires people to prove what they cannot do (and a second time no less!). Moreover, this decision cannot be appealed, denying ADAP clients applying for AISH re-assessment due process.
This choice to make ADAP the “default” program, increase administrative burdens, and deny the chance to appeal decision reveals that ADAP is not about empowering Albertans. To empower people, persons must be given power and authority. ADAP removes power and authority from persons with disabilities, forcing them on to a program which they may or may not have chosen to be on. In a way, Jason Nixon’s quote becomes true—people no longer have to choose between the support they need or “the opportunity to pursue a meaningful career”: the choice has been made for them to reduce financial support (a point I’ll come to next) and increase their employment supports. Choice has been removed.
Earnings Exemptions
It has also been proposed that ADAP will “provide higher earning exemptions than any other program, meaning Albertans on ADAP can earn more from working while continuing to receive their financial benefits.”
The ADAP Discussion Guide proposes that the earnings exemption for ADAP and AISH clients be $350/month. This is down from the current AISH earnings exemption of $1,072/month—a clear violation of the claim that ADAP will “provide higher earnings exemptions”. This is combined with a proposal that the new base benefit for ADAP clients be $1,740/month—$200 less than AISH clients who will receive $1,940/month.
However, perhaps the claim that ADAP will “provide higher earnings exemptions” was a mis-speak. Not all policy makers are experts in cash transfer designs. Maybe what they really meant was ADAP will have a lower claw back rate so that ADAP client can keep more of their earned income.
A “claw back” is, after the earnings exemption is applied, for each additional dollar of earned income above the earnings exemption, some of the ADAP benefit is reduced. The “claw back rate” tells us by how much. For example, if the claw back rate is 50% and an ADAP client makes $360/month, $350 is exempt and the ADAP benefit will be reduced by $5 (=(360-350)*0.5).
While the ADAP Discussion Guide doesn’t tell us the claw back rates, there are examples given that can be used to back out what they could possibly look. One possible claw back rate schedule that fits all the information given in the Discussion Guide is, after the earnings exemption of $350, for every dollar between $350 and $1,500, the benefit is reduced by $0.15 (15% claw back rate). For every additional dollar between an earned income of $1,500 and $2,500, the benefit is reduced by $0.41 (41% claw back rate). For every additional dollar between an earned income of $2,500 and $3,000, the benefit is reduced by $0.82 (82% claw back rate), and finally, for every dollar of earned income over $3,000/month, the ADAP benefit is reduced by $1 (100% claw back rate).
Last, but not least, the Discussion Guide reveals for AISH clients who are moved onto ADAP and are successfully re-assessed for AISH, their claw back rate will be 100% after the earning exemption of $350/month.
The current claw back for AISH is, for each additional dollar of earned income over $1,072/month, $0.50 (50%) of the AISH benefit is deducted up until an earned income of $2,009, after which the claw back rate is 100% (i.e., for each additional dollar earned, AISH benefits are reduced by $1). Comparing the claw back rates of the current AISH program and proposed ADAP is somewhat complicated and is best assessed via a visualization.
Figure 1 provides a visualization of what this looks like. The horizontal axis plots monthly net employment income (i.e., employment income after payroll taxes, federal taxes, and provincial taxes are paid) while the vertical axis plots the monthly benefit amount. The blue line is the estimated monthly ADAP benefit dependent on monthly net employment income. The red line is the estimated monthly AISH benefit dependent on monthly net employment income. And the green line is the AISH benefit if no changes occur to the AISH program.
For an ADAP client who earns $2,000/month, they will receive an ADAP benefit of $1,360/month for a total income of $3,360/month. Had the program not changed and AISH remains as it currently is, that same person would earn $2,000 and receive an AISH benefit of $1,412 for a total income of $3,412. For this ADAP client, despite the lower claw back rate, they retain less of their combined working income and benefit than had AISH remained as is. An ADAP client will only be able to retain more of their employment income and benefit—making them financially better off compared to the current AISH program—if they have employment income over $2,114/month.
Likewise, under the proposed new AISH design, AISH clients who earn over $395/month will be worse off financially than if the program doesn’t change.
These results occur because, despite lower claw back rates over some employment income (compared to AISH as it currently is), the decreased earnings exemption coupled with the decrease in base benefits have the potential to reduce the overall income of ADAP clients with certain employment earning amounts.
The impact of this on ADAP clients as a whole depends on what we might expect ADAP clients to earn and thus where on the distribution of employment income they fall. In 2023/24, only 16.4% of AISH clients had employment income. This suggests that 83.6% had zero employment income thus 83.6% of AISH clients will be worse off financially under ADAP or see no change under the new AISH program (if they are successfully re-assessed).
There is no public data on the average earnings of AISH clients. However, in Canada in 2023 30% of persons with disabilities had employment income of less than $20,000/year ($1,667/month) and another 23.8% had employment income between $20,000/year ($1,667/month) and $39,999/year ($3,333/month). Thus, it is probable that many ADAP clients will receive a level of ADAP benefits that are less than what they would have received with AISH unchanged.
This suggests that the Alberta UCP’s messaging is incorrect: ADAP will not provide a higher earnings exemption for ADAP clients. Even granting them some leniency in thinking maybe what they really meant to say was claw back rates and not earnings exemptions, we see that despite lower claw back rates, the decrease in the earnings exemption and the decrease in the base benefit level result in ADAP clients who are financially worse off.
Parting Thoughts
In my opinion, ADAP is designed by government for government. It will likely result in the Alberta government saving a lot of money that would have otherwise been spent on AISH. While I fully support increasing employment supports for persons with disabilities and would possibly even support ADAP if people could choose whether they wanted ADAP or AISH (with no changes to AISH), this should not be done at the expense of the financial health and loss of empowerment.
The document I’ve looked at in this blog is only a “Discussion Guide” and is not set in stone. If you are an Albertan and you would like to have an impact on how the design of ADAP proceeds, please consider learning more about ADAP (links below). There is also a survey you can fill out, two telephone town halls you can participate in, and you can submit a written submission (all links below).
Links:
More on ADAP generally: https://www.alberta.ca/alberta-disability-assistance-program-engagement
ADAP Discussion Guide: https://www.alberta.ca/system/files/alss-transforming-disability-income-assistance-discussion-guide.pdf
ADAP Survey: https://your.alberta.ca/adap/surveys/public. Closes September 12th.
Written Submissions: send to adapengagement@gov.ab.ca by September 12th.