When a person living with disabilities receives Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) income support, they have a responsibility to pursue other government benefits that they may be eligible for. ODSP may withhold income support to account for the income an ODSP recipient obtained, or should have obtained, from other government benefit(s). For example, if an ODSP recipient gets $900 in monthly Canada Pension Plan Disability benefits, ODSP withholds or “claws back” $900. This clawback can have severe financial consequences. A person may owe thousands of dollars in overpayments if ODSP failed to claw back their income support to account for their receipt of other government benefits. In addition, a person’s income support may permanently be reduced every month to account for the income they are expected to receive from other benefits.
But what happens if a person on ODSP receives a parental benefit that was re-directed to them?
The Income Security Advocacy Centre provided support to Waterloo Region Community Legal Services to advocate against deducting a re-directed parental benefit from their client’s monthly ODSP income support. The client’s father is a veteran who qualifies for a federal disability pension and an additional “incapacitated child benefit” pension payment because his son, the client, is unable to “earn a livelihood” due to his disability. To ensure his son benefitted from this money, the veteran decided to direct the Department of Veterans Affairs to pay this benefit directly to his son, the client, instead of directly to the veteran. However, since the benefit was directed to the client, ODSP treated this as a government benefit that the client applied for. ODSP charged the client an overpayment and deducted the “incapacitated child benefit” amount from his monthly ODSP income support on a go-forward basis. Had the benefit instead been paid to the client’s father, and then gifted to the client, ODSP would have considered this amount a gift, not income.
This case was settled in advance of the Social Benefits Tribunal hearing.
Read about this client’s story here for more details.