About 70 people with disabilities and their advocates held a protest at the North Vancouver SeaBus terminal Wednesday against a provincial government plan to claw back the costs of bus passes from recently announced increases in disability pensions.
“I want to show that people with disabilities want a different life,” said Elizabeth Barnett, executive director of the North Shore Disability Resource Centre. “They don’t want to be in poverty,” she said. “I want the citizens of British Columbia to understand what the government’s action really means.”
In the recent provincial budget, the government announced a $77 a month increase in the rate for people living on a disability pension. But the government also eliminated a free bus pass for people on disabilities worth $52 a month – meaning the net increase is only $25 a month,
said Barnett.
For people whose social assistance rate has been frozen at $900 a month for many years, that’s not good enough, she said.
Barnett said she wants the government to rethink the policy. “I don’t think they’ve thought about the whole scope of it.”
Access to transit means everything from transportation to work to a chance to get out and socialize in the wider community, she said.
David Delatorre, who uses the services of Community Living, said not having a bus pass will make it difficult to get around. “It makes me mad,” he said.
Michael Lewis, a support worker who works with the disabled, said using the bus is crucial to being able to get people with disabilities out into the wider community.
“I have people who love being on the bus and love being on the SeaBus,” he said.
Similar rallies were held in communities around the Lower Mainland on Wednesday.
