What Would Separation Mean for Albertans with Disabilities?

Happy Friday all! In today’s blog post, I continue to write on Alberta’s referendum questions. This week, I was inspired by the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy (SPP) report on the economic and fiscal implications of Alberta separating from Canada. I would encourage people to read it here (the overview is relatively short – for academics lol). The inspiration comes from what is outside of the report’s scope – how will separation affect persons who depend in large part on various income and social supports? In today’s post, I tackle what I think separation would mean for Albertans with disabilities, borrowing the report’s “smooth” and “difficult” scenarios.

Lethbridge Viaduct in Lethbridge, AB where I spent last weekend running

Introduction

On September 16^th, 2026, the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy (SPP) released its analysis of the potential economic and fiscal implications of Alberta separating from Canada. The SPP report was commissioned by the Government of Alberta, reviewed by an advisory panel chaired by Dr. Jack Mintz, and released ahead of the October 19 referendum, at which one of the ten questions asks whether Alberta should begin the constitutional process toward a binding vote on separation. It is a substantial piece of work — an overview report along with a set of technical papers and appendices running to several hundred pages — and its headline finding is that the increase in debt owing to fiscal impacts and transition costs is between $50.5 billion and $168.6 billion, with the range depending largely on whether negotiations with Canada went smoothly or were more difficult. The advisory panel supports the SPP report’s overall conclusion that “significant costs are incurred in the short term with separation and in the long run, net economic and fiscal benefits/costs are highly uncertain.”

I read it looking between the lines for a glimpse of what separation could mean for persons with disabilities. A large share of the income that Albertans with disabilities live on, along with savings vehicles and legal protections, is federal rather than provincial. AISH and the new Alberta Disability Assistance Program (ADAP) are provincial, but CPP disability benefits, the Canada Disability Benefit (CDB), the Child Disability Benefit, EI sickness benefits, the disability tax credit (DTC) and the Registered Disability Savings Plan (RDSP), along with the Canada Disability Savings Grant and Bond that go with it, are all federal, as are the Accessible Canada Act and the ratification of the UN’s Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

The report does not directly consider persons with disabilities — nor any particular group — in depth. To be clear, the report authors were asked to look at economic and fiscal impacts and were not asked to analyze legal, political or other factors — the report does what it says it does. But this means that a set of questions that matter enormously to a relatively large group of Albertans sits just outside the frame.

In Alberta Separation: How It Would Work, the authors write that a separate Alberta “would also find itself considering how separation will affect people whose well-being depends most directly on continuity in public services and legal protections,” and they name children, seniors, persons with disabilities, people with chronic health conditions, lower-income households, newcomers, and people in rural and remote communities. A footnote attached to that sentence reads:

“Changes to health care, education, housing, income supports, pensions, disability services or immigration status could have greater impacts on those who rely on existing systems or have fewer alternatives. Even temporary uncertainty about eligibility, funding, personal records or which government is responsible, could affect essential supports.”

I think that footnote is right and requires expansion and thought. The SPP report runs its estimates twice, once assuming that separation goes smoothly and once assuming that it does not. I use this same approach, asking how Albertans with disabilities would experience separation if things went smoothly, and how they would experience it if things did not.

The income programs themselves

CPP disability (CPP-D) is a federal program for working-age persons with disabilities. It is contributory in that to be eligible a person must have worked and contributed to CPP. In 2026 the maximum CPP-D benefit is about $20,894 a year, or about $1,741 a month.

Likewise, the Canada Disability Benefit (CDB) pays up to $2,400 a year for persons who have successfully attained a Disability Tax Credit (DTC) certificate. And EI sickness benefits—benefits paid for medium-term sickness to persons who contributed to EI—pay up to $729 a week for up to 26 weeks.

None of these are Alberta programs.

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

If the transition went smoothly, the likeliest outcome for these three programs is that a separate Alberta would take them over more or less as they are. The SPP report’s own account of a smooth separation has the new state relying temporarily on existing Canadian institutions while it builds its own, with Canada helping it do so — setting up the new state, the authors write, “would require co-operation and help from Canada, such as transferring systems and records” — so the people currently receiving CPP-D, the CDB and EI sickness benefits would keep receiving them, in the same amounts, out of the same files, with an Alberta department rather than Service Canada at the other end. That is a substantial administrative undertaking, and the SPP report’s estimate that a separate Alberta would need roughly 70,000 additional public servants is in part an estimate of what it takes to do this. Even then, smooth does not mean seamless, and the authors say so: “some temporary disruption in the provision of these programs and services would be expected even in the most positive scenario.” What a smooth transition buys is not the absence of disruption but the preservation of entitlement, in that nobody has to establish all over again that they qualify.

If things went badly, the difference shows up less in the benefit amounts than in whether entitlement survives the handover at all. Without a negotiated transfer, a separate Alberta would be standing up its own disability programs, and the practical consequence is that people would have to apply again to a new agency with no history with any of the files. It would also be an agency without an appeal route: the SPP report’s appendix finds no Alberta equivalent of the Social Security Tribunal, which currently hears appeals on EI, CPP, OAS and Canada Disability Benefit decisions. People may turn to AISH/ADAP and Income Support while they wait, which are provincial programs and would presumably still be running. However, these are asset-tested programs (unlike CPP-D, CDB, and EI Sickness, which are not asset-tested) so a person with modest savings or a working spouse may have no fallback. The SPP report anticipates something close to this when it says the new government “could struggle to establish many new social programs all at once” and that “Employment Insurance cheques, pension payments and passports could all be significantly disrupted for a long period of time.”

CPP-D is the hardest of the three because eligibility rests on a contributory history accumulated anywhere in Canada — the test is contributions in four of the last six years, or twenty-five years of contributions including three of the last six — so a person who contributed for twenty years in Ontario before moving to Alberta holds a claim against a fund that would sit in another country after separation. Canada’s usual answer to this problem is a social security agreement, of the kind it already maintains with a long list of countries, under which periods of contribution in each can be combined to establish eligibility. Negotiating an agreement like this is exactly the sort of thing that does not happen or happens slowly in the difficult scenario.

A social security agreement also sets out which government pays for what. Canada’s existing agreements let periods in a partner country count towards qualifying, while the benefit each country pays is calculated on its own contributions, so a worker with twenty years in Ontario and five in Alberta would look to Canada for a benefit reflecting the twenty and to Alberta for one reflecting the five. Without an agreement, the Ontario years do not disappear, but they can stop being useful. CPP-D requires contributions in four of the last six years, so somebody who had been paying into an Alberta plan rather than the CPP would fail that recency test however long their earlier record, while the Alberta plan would hold only the five years contributed there — leaving each side looking at a record that falls short on its own terms.

The disability tax credit certificate gateway

The DTC has recently received increased attention. Since 2025, the DTC certificate has become the gateway to the Canada Disability Benefit (CDB) which provides a single adult with low income up to $2,400/year. The DTC certificate is also the gateway to the Child Disability Benefit, the RDSP, and the Canada Disability Savings Grant and Bond, among other programs.

For 2026 the DTC itself—the non-refundable tax credit—reduces federal tax owing by up to $1,448. For someone with little or no taxable income, this is worth nothing directly: if you don’t have taxes owing, you have no taxes to decrease. The DTC’s importance lies in that DTC approval is the gate to many other disability-related programs.

gate in front of a house

If the separation transition went smoothly, the DTC gateway could survive even though the federal credit behind it could not. Residents of a separate Alberta would no longer file a Canadian federal return, so there would be no federal tax for the DTC to reduce and no reason for the Canada Revenue Agency to certify anybody living here. Assuming Alberta continues the CDB and other programs that the DTC is a gateway to, Alberta would need a certification of its own from day one. In a cooperative separation it would set one up based on the existing test and Canada would hand over the certification records, so people already approved would be carried across without having to do anything.

If things went badly, Canada may not transfer the DTC records and the consequence is re-certification for everyone at once. DTC certification requires medical certification, so establishing afresh that every DTC holder in Alberta meets a disability test would require increased medical capacity. Further, a government facing the fiscal position the SPP report sets out under the difficult scenario has an obvious incentive to draw the gate more narrowly, reducing access to income supports.

Underneath both scenarios sit two issues that do not depend on the negotiation at all. First, the DTC test — a marked restriction in specified functions, certified by a clinician — is not the AISH or ADAP test for disability, and a separate Alberta already running two provincial disability tests may have little reason to stand up a third test. Second, a separate Alberta that already runs AISH/ADAP may deem that programs like the CDB are not necessary (particularly since AISH/ADAP is clawed back by the CDB as is).

What happens to money people have already saved

An RDSP is a savings plan that a person approved for the DTC can open at a financial institution. The federal government puts its own money in alongside whatever the family contributes through two separate programs. The Canada Disability Savings Grant matches contributions, and at lower incomes the match is higher. For a family income of $117,045 or less in 2026, the first $500 contributed attracts $3 for every $1, and the next $1,000 attracts $2 for every $1, so a $1,500 contribution brings in $3,500 of grant. Above that income level the match drops to $1 for $1 on the first $1,000. The Canada Disability Savings Bond requires no contribution to the RDSP at all — a family income of $38,237 or less attracts $1,000 a year, decreasing down to zero at $58,523 of income. Over a lifetime a beneficiary can receive up to $70,000 in grants and $20,000 in bonds. Both stop at the end of the year the beneficiary turns 49.

Two conditions on all of this matter for what follows. The beneficiary must be resident in Canada when the RDSP is opened and when each contribution is made. The entitlement to the grant and bond does not accrue for any year in which the beneficiary is either not a Canadian resident or not approved for the DTC. Unused entitlement can be carried forward for up to ten years, but only for years in which those conditions were met, so years spent outside the country are not recoverable later.

Further, the government’s money is not unconditionally the beneficiary’s. The government retains a claim on it called the assistance holdback amount, which is the total grant and bond paid into the plan over the previous ten years, less anything already repaid. If money is taken out of the plan before the age of 60, $3 of grant and bond must be repaid for every $1 withdrawn, up to that holdback amount. Because grant and bond stop being paid at the end of the year the beneficiary turns 49, this claim winds down over the following decade and is gone by the time the beneficiary is 60 — which means it falls hardest on people who need to draw on their savings earlier in life. In some circumstances the whole holdback amount becomes repayable at once rather than proportionally: if the plan is closed, if it is deregistered, or if the beneficiary dies. The practical effect is that an RDSP built up over two decades carries a contingent debt equal to roughly the last ten years of government contributions, and that debt comes due if the plan stops being a registered plan.

If the separation transition went smoothly, the first thing worth establishing is that the money already in these RDSPs would most likely stay in them. A beneficiary who ceases to be resident in Canada keeps the RDSP, with contributions and grants suspended rather than reversed, and a beneficiary who loses DTC approval keeps it too — the grants and bonds already paid in “are not required to be repaid solely due to the loss of the beneficiary’s DTC approval.” A cooperative separation would presumably confirm that treatment rather than disturb it. What cooperation cannot do on its own is keep the RDSP growing by the grant and bond amount, because the residency and DTC conditions are written into Canadian law: continuing to pay grants and bonds into the RDSP of people living in another country would require Canada to amend its own legislation for the benefit of foreign residents. That is a larger request than transferring records and would be a real concession rather than an administrative courtesy.

If separation negotiations were difficult, nothing in the RDSPs is confiscated, but everything about them stops. Accrual would end on the day Albertans ceased to be Canadian residents, and because unused entitlement carries forward only for years in which the residency and DTC conditions were met, the years after separation could never be made up later, so a nineteen-year-old with thirty years of grant and bond entitlement ahead of them would simply not have it. The holdback is the harder problem. Withdrawals before the age of 60 still require $3 of grant and bond repaid for every $1 taken out, calculated on what was paid into the plan in the ten years before DTC approval was lost, which appears to mean the window stops moving — so rather than winding down over the decade after a person turns 49, the claim would sit frozen at whatever level it had reached when Alberta separated.

It’s worth repeating here: money already saved is not clawed back in either scenario.

The legislation would not come with us

The Accessible Canada Act applies to the federal government and federally regulated sectors, requiring them to publish accessibility plans, set up feedback processes and report on progress. It is supported by Accessibility Standards Canada and by the Office of the Chief Accessibility Officer. The SPP report’s appendix finds no direct Alberta equivalent for either and states: Alberta created an Office of the Advocate for Persons with Disabilities under the Advocate for Persons with Disabilities Act, but “Alberta has no stand-alone accessibility legislation.”

That is not a new observation. In 2023 the province’s own Office of the Advocate for Persons with Disabilities recommended that Alberta adopt accessibility legislation, noting that disability policy here is spread across more than thirty separate pieces of legislation with no comprehensive framework. Ontario, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia all have accessibility legislation. Alberta does not.

Photo by Sasun Bughdaryan on Unsplash

Regardless of how the separation transition goes, the loss of the Accessible Canada Act would happen. The Act binds the federal government and federally regulated sectors. After separation the banks, airlines, railways, broadcasters and telecommunications companies operating in Alberta would stop being federally regulated, so their obligations would fall away whether or not anyone intended them to. The prospect of Alberta adopting similar legislation does not look promising: Alberta has had the option of enacting such a statute for as long as the seven provinces listed above have had theirs and has not done so. New proactive obligations on Alberta businesses are likely not what a government working through a separation will reach for first.

Canada has also ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. If Alberta were to separate, acceding to a treaty in its own right requires other states to recognise that it exists, and the SPP report is explicit that “if Canada opposes Alberta’s exit or disputes its borders, international recognition will become much harder to obtain,” and that Alberta would have to “separately enter into and otherwise manage thousands of international treaties previously held by Canada.” The UN Convention would be one item in that queue, competing with trade agreements and civil aviation.

The honest summary is that the Accessible Canada Act’s obligations and the UN Convention ratification end on the day of separation in either scenario, because they attach to federal jurisdiction. The SPP report’s own way of describing choices like this is the right one: discussing the Canadian Dairy Commission, its appendix notes that because supply management is a policy choice, “an independent Alberta may choose to forgo this functionality.” Accessibility legislation and the Convention are policy choices in the same sense.

Why I think this matters now

Persons with disabilities make up 27.5% of Albertans aged 15+ (about 906,100 people). This is not a small group, and when thinking about whether Alberta should separate from Canada, care and thought need to be given to persons with disabilities to ensure, at minimum, much needed supports are not lost, even temporarily.

Running the SPP report’s two scenarios over these programs shows that some of what happens depends on the negotiation and some of it does not. What follows from the fact of separation alone, rather than from how well it is handled, is also important because those are losses that occur no matter what. This includes: RDSP accrual would end, and the years lost could not be made up later. And the obligations in the Accessible Canada Act and the UN Convention would fall away because they attach to federal jurisdiction.

The October 19 vote is non-binding, and the question on the ballot is about whether to begin a process rather than about leaving. If that process ever begins in earnest, more analysis will be needed, particularly with a focus on how it impacts different groups of persons, including persons with disabilities.