Alberta NDP calls on UCP to reverse cuts to AISH recipients

More and more Albertans are feeling the pinch in their wallets due to inflation. But those living on a fixed income may be feeling it even more particularly since the province stopped adjusting compensation according to the cost of living.

NDP Finance Critic, Shannon Phillips and Marie Renaud, MLA for St. Albert, were in Lethbridge calling on Travis Toews and other UCP leadership candidates to immediately return to the legislature and reverse their cuts to AISH, the Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped. 

According to Renaud this includes people with Down Syndrome, spinal cord injuries, brain injuries and stage four cancer.
“People with disabilities and medical conditions have additional expenses that most of us do not,” says Renaud.

According to Lethbridge-West MLA and Finance Critic Shannon Phillips, Leadership candidate Travis Toews de-indexed the benefits of the province’s most vulnerable.

“He froze benefits of people with disabilities…meaning their benefits don’t keep pace with inflation,” says Phillips, adding that Toews, “literally picked the pockets of those Albertans who have the least in our society and gave billions of dollars in giveaways to already profitable corporations.”

BCN reached out to Travis Toews for comment, but did not receive a response.

There are currently around 70,000 Albertans who receive AISH.

Jeannette Rocher

Born in Puerto Rico, raised in Minnesota and Manitoba, Jeannette has had the opportunity to live in a variety of places including New York, Arizona, and Nevada. After completing college and a paid internship with CBC Winnipeg, Jeannette embarked on her journalism career by moving overseas to take a job on the island of Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands. While overseas she covered stories in Fiji, Guam and Japan including the 2011 tsunami that hit Japan and its surrounding islands. She covered a mass shooting, an Earth quake, murder cases and other substantial court cases. In 2013 she moved to Alberta where she covered the devastating floods of High River and Medicine Hat for CTV News. She then went on to produce and host Go! Southern Alberta for Shaw TV. She now calls Miracle Channel home. In addition to reporting in the field, you can catch her anchoring daily weather reports, as well as longer interview segments on BCN, and the week-in-review show on BCN Weekends. 

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