BC Disability Caucus

Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) is back in the news and in the court system today.

Here is a refresher on why Inclusion Canada and a coalition of disability organizations and citizens have deep concerns.

Most people in Canada believe MAiD is only available for people at the end of life.

But the federal government added a second tier—for people with disabilities and only them—who are not dying.

Instead of making it easier for people to die – our governments should be addressing the root causes of their “suffering”: high poverty, inadequate housing, lack of disability supports and social isolation.

Learn more about MAiD’s harmful impacts on people with disabilities.

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Disability Alliance BC (DABC) unequivocally condemns the public comments made by Tara Armstrong MLA for Kelowna-Lake Country-Coldstream on July 13th, 2026, regarding people receiving Disability Assistance (known as PWD). MLA Armstrong stated that “the government’s welfare law hands out disability payments to drug addicts simply because they use drugs.” This statement is false, misleading, and deeply harmful.

People do not qualify for PWD designation simply because they use substances. Eligibility for PWD is determined through a rigorous and extensive application process that assesses whether an individual has a severe and prolonged disability that significantly restricts their ability to carry out daily living activities. Suggesting otherwise misrepresents the PWD system and fuels harmful myths about people with disabilities.

MLA Armstrong’s comments are dehumanizing towards people living with addiction or substance use and those with co-occurring disabilities. Substance use does not exist in a vacuum; it is often intertwined with mental health, poverty, homelessness, discrimination and systemic barriers in accessing healthcare and other living supports. Many people with disabilities who may also live with addiction experience these realities simultaneously. To reduce their lived experience to a dismissive stereotype is not only inaccurate, it is profoundly offensive.

Disability Alliance BC calls on Tara Armstrong to:

-Publicly retract her misleading statements;
- Issue a sincere apology to people with disabilities and those affected by substance use; and
- Resign from the Legislative Assembly if she is unwilling or unable to uphold the standards of respect, and dignity expected of her role.

Read our full statement here: https://disabilityalliancebc.org/disability-alliance-bc-calls-on-mla-tara-armstrong-to-resign-following-harmful-and-misleading-comments-about-people-with-disabilities/

I want to submit this anonymously please post to bc disability caucus :

Hey *****, I was just thinking more about my crap mental healthcare. They refused to do a ‘circle of care’ with me. I spent a year on committee developing it. I even asked more than once to some evasive non answer. My mom couldn’t come to the Karen appointment where the cops were frivolously called on me for trying to be assess. Didn’t get up out of my chair or yelled or anything just refused to leave until assessed that I was ultimately denied. I was denied a second opinion here, in Kelowna, and here again. I was not privy to my own diagnoses including BPD and somataform or the lack of bipolar diagnosis, hEDS, migraines, post concussion, the traumatic stress that was currently happening, and definitely not the AuDHD. A BPD/somataform diagnosis means one is re****ed when it comes to insight about one’s physical and emotional health. (Yes the r word is derogatory. All of this was derogatory). They caused a mania in hospital and let me out fully manic/psychotic, but that didn’t fit their narrative, so they just denied it was mania. The control they held over all this meant no one could say otherwise. No way to contest any part of their diagnosis conversion therapy. This is how autistics, tbi sufferers, and complex trauma victims end up in the street at staggering rates. It almost happened to me.

Just get a job. That's what our provincial government loves to tell everyone struggling to survive on inadequate, poverty-level Disability Income Assistance.

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Same goes for anyone who doesn’t have access to this technology such as poverty, disability, etc.

I would also like to add technology that helps in security and keeping in communication and entertainment. Eg Google home, television, no more PVRs, must use wifi connected TV. Lot of the streaming services have great shows for seniors, but it is too complicated to access for many. TV as become unnecessarily inaccessible to many seniors because of complicated commands and remotes that even those who aren’t seniors have to access the Internet if they can to get online help as that is the only way to get help outside of phoning if the number is readily available . I was recently talking to telephone support with a tv and internet provider, and they told me they are taking much longer to help clients who phone them because tv, streaming, and internet services have become so much more unnecessarily complicated for their customers.

Image text: "A society that forces a ninety-year-old to use a smartphone in order to access basic rights is not a modern society; it is a society that has decided to cast aside its own elders. By 2026, everything has become an app, a code, a portal. Yet the very people who built this country with their own hands now find themselves illiterate in their own homes. If booking a medical appointment or paying a bill requires the help of a son or granddaughter — assuming there is one — then the system has failed.This is not innovation. It is exclusion.Technology should serve people, not determine who is still entitled to dignity.When we leave behind those who came before us, we are not evolving. We are merely becoming more comfortable — and more selfish."