In 1997, Premier Mike Harris’s government brought in the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP), to replace financial benefits for the disabled under the old Family Benefits Act. The program has been disastrous, without even considering the underlying philosophical implications. Here’s what people going through the process have to put up with:

The person applying for benefits is given a package of forms.

Two forms — the Health Status Report and Activities of Daily Living report — are filled out by a “qualified person,” as defined in the regulation; most often a physician.

As James Mullin, an Ottawa psychiatrist, expressed it, the doctor must have very detailed knowledge of the person and ask specific questions. It takes, he said, “an incredible amount of time, and most doctors don’t have a lot of time to spend like that.” As well, he added, “We are not trained to do detailed assessments on how a condition impacts on the patient’s day-to-day activities.”

According to Mullin, because the payment for form completion is low ($50 for one form and $25 for the second, or $70 if the same person completes both), the paperwork is often completed with insufficient detail, resulting in people with disabilities being turned down.

When turned down, there is a time-limited two-step appeal process.

  • First, there is a request for an internal review.
  • Then, if still found inadequately disabled, as almost all are, there is an appeal.

Many people do not ask for the review. For those who do, when a review upholds the original decision, many do not appeal.

When the process was explained to a woman with a mental-health problem, who had been on the old Family Benefits program, she exclaimed, “If I could follow all those procedures, I wouldn’t need ODSP!” Ontario Liberal MPP Richard Patten said that the centralization of the whole process in Toronto has made it extremely difficult for many, “especially if English is not their first language.”

The decision on eligibility is made by the Disability Adjudication Unit (DAU).

The adjudicators frequently make decisions contrary to medical knowledge. Personality disorders are ordinarily very long-term, yet the DAU is apt to complain about absence of recent psychiatric assessments. Hepatitis C can cause serious symptoms at any stage of the liver disease, but the DAU will frequently comment that a case is not serious because the liver is not sufficiently impaired. And so on.

The appeal goes to the Social Benefits Tribunal, made up of political appointees.

Their decisions are in many cases ill-informed. A psychiatrist wrote a report stating that an appellant was unable to work in his current condition. The tribunal ruled against the man in question. The psychiatrist wondered whether he was wasting his time doing such assessments.

So let’s say that our applicant is successful in becoming a client of the Ministry of Community and Social Services. What next?

The client needs to be in touch with a worker to deal with some problem. The person picks up the phone and calls. There is no particular worker, just a case pool. As Patten expressed it, staff are overworked and, because of the case pool, they often have no chance to build a relationship with the client and lack a grasp of the person’s problems.

The Cassidys, Maureen and Michael — who was the former Ontario New Democratic Party leader — provide a graphic illustration of the shortcomings of the program. Their son is schizophrenic and on ODSP. He received a letter summoning him to an annual review. It indicated that failure to show up would lead to cancellation of his benefits. He was immediately frightened. It listed the documents he would need to bring with him. It took the Cassidys two weeks to pull the papers together. When Maureen and her son went to the session, there was a disturbance in the waiting room. He was spooked and ran out, leaving Maureen to smooth things over and set up another appointment. Said Maureen, “Without our help, he couldn’t have done it. He would have lost his benefits.”

Requests for a statement for this article from the communications staff in the office of the Minister, the Honourable John Baird, went unanswered.