Building a strong, thriving economy requires improving affordability for all Canadians, especially the most vulnerable. With record-high income inequality, the affordability crisis is hitting low-income households the hardest. Now is the time for bold social…
ISAC intervened at the Ontario Court of Appeal in a legal challenge concerning workers living with severe disabilities and their exclusion from receiving pandemic benefits. To be considered a “worker”, claimants must have earned at…
The Ontario Court of Appeal granted the Income Security Advocacy Centre (ISAC) intervener status in Jacob v. Canada (Attorney General). This legal challenge concerns workers living with severe disabilities and their exclusion from receiving pandemic…
The Income Security Advocacy Centre (ISAC)*, Pro Bono Ontario, and law firm Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP have partnered on a public interest project: the “CERB/CRB Pro Bono Program.” This program will provide pro bono…
Every federal budget cycle includes a period for public submissions well in advance of budget deliberations. The federal government first solicited submissions for Budget 2024 in August 2023 (you can read our August 2023 submission…
Every federal budget cycle includes a period for public submissions well in advance of budget deliberations. ISAC submitted recommendations to the Standing Committee on Finance during the first 2024 Federal Budget pre-budget submission period which…
On April 4, Nabila Qureshi, Staff Lawyer at ISAC, and Amy Brubacher, Staff Lawyer at Don Valley Community Legal Services, gave a workshop designed for community workers to help clients who are facing CERB and…
Recently, the federal Standing Committee on Public Accounts (PACP) met to discuss the Auditor General’s December 2022 performance audit report, Report 10 – Specific COVID-19 Benefits, on the treatment of pandemic benefits. ISAC’s analysis found…
Today marks the start of the broad roll-out of the GIS lump sum back-payment. Clients who: -lost who faced a reduction or loss of GIS or Allowance benefits from July 2021 onwards due to receiving…
ISAC’s Senior Policy Analyst Devorah Kobluk was interviewed for an article in The Hill Times about pandemic benefits interactions with regular benefits, which resulted in a loss of GIS for thousands of seniors who then…
On Friday February 25, 2022, ISAC’s Senior Policy Analyst Devorah Kobluk appeared as a witness before the Senate Standing Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology to speak to Bill C-12, An Act to amend the…
UPDATE – March 4, 2022: Bill C-12 passed without amendment and received royal assent on March 3, 2022. This is an important victory for low-income seniors who have accessed temporary pandemic benefits and may need…