AUPE, Guest Opinion: Alberta government punching down with new attacks on the disabled

By Sandra Azocar on January 29, 2025.

Why is the Alberta government and cabinet member Jason Nixon obsessed with attacking the disabled?

Sure, the world has entered an era defined by bullying and bravado (particularly in the politics of U.S. President Donald Trump and his attacks on Canada, Mexico, Greenland and Panama, but the Alberta government has reached a new low in punching down.

The UCP government is attacking severely disabled Albertans and their families, those least able to defend themselves.

Nixon, the UCP government’s Minister of Seniors, Community and Social Services, is cutting about 40 staff in the Family Support for Children with Disabilities (FSCD) and Persons with Developmental Disabilities (PDD) programs.

Case workers have warned the government about the short-staffing crisis for years. The government applied a band-aid last summer by hiring these 40 case workers, but now they are ripping that band-aid off, with all the pain that implies.

The result?

AUPE members working in PDD are reporting caseloads of up to 200, while cases in FSCD are at 130 and rising. Workers in both departments are facing caseloads far above the recommended maximum of 95-100.

This has left about 12,000 Alberta families with severely disabled family members waiting months on end for their cases to be assessed. Some have waited more than two years.

Not satisfied with this attack on vulnerable Albertans, Nixon has also chosen to cut funding to four disability advocacy groups – the Self Advocacy Federation in Edmonton, Disability Action Hall in Calgary and Southern Alberta Individualized Planning Association (SAIPA) in Lethbridge.

These groups, which have helped families for many years, had three-year contracts that were due to expire in March 2026. They were told last week that their contracts would be cancelled within 90 days.

Inclusion Alberta saw a cut of more than $500,000 for the coming year, halfway through its two-year contract.

The future of disability support in our communities is now uncertain. Families who rely upon them have almost no time to find alternatives.

Government case workers and the advocacy groups provide vital tools that allow the severely disabled to live safe and dignified lives. Without them, many families are left to lead lives of constant struggle.

Nixon claims “no frontline services are affected” by the cuts to the advocacy groups or by the axing of government case workers jobs.

That’s nonsense. The government staff and the advocacy groups work directly with families.

Government case workers guide them to the resources they need (and to which they are entitled). Among other things, the advocacy groups help the severely disabled develop skills to advocate for themselves.

It gets worse. The same government – this time Finance Minister Nate Horner – has shown no respect for the important work of educational assistants who help children with complex needs in school, leading to strikes across the province.

But why? Who benefits from further disadvantaging the disadvantaged? No one, of course, but the government won’t let sense get in the way of their ideological agenda.

No one should be surprised at this point.

After all, one of the first things the UCP did after forming government in 2019 was de-indexing payments for Albertans enrolled in the Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped (AISH) program, a decision that pushes already meagre payment deeper and deeper beneath the rising costs of living.

Now, the government is attacking the vulnerable again. New premier, same approach.

There are many words to describe the kinds of people who punch down. Most of them can’t be published, but we can say definitively that this is bullying of the worst kind.

Minister Nixon should meet these families face to face, if he has the guts, to explain his decisions. Don’t hold your breath.

Sandra Azocar is a vice-president of AUPE, Western Canada’s largest union. Members of the union will hold a rally to expose these cuts in Medicine Hat on Wednesday, Jan. 29.

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