Changes to low-cost bus passes announced last month will push people with disabilities further into social isolation, according to protesters at the Metrotown SkyTrain station in Burnaby yesterday.
“If they don’t have the money to buy the monthly pass, they’re going to become more isolated and disconnected than they already are,” said Bernice McCann, whose 31-year-old daughter Melissa is on disability. “Survival? We’ll all keep pushing on and we’ll figure it out – not in good ways, but we’ll figure it out, even if it’s dumpsters or whatever – but to lose the social connections with this small community … is where the sadness is going to really hit.”
McCann and her daughter were at Metrotown to protest changes to the B.C. Bus Pass.
People with disabilities currently pay a flat $45 fee for the one-year pass, but starting in September, they will also have to pay a $52 monthly fee.
The province announced the changes last month at the same time it announced the monthly disability assistance rate would be raised by “up to $77 a month” to $983.
For those who opt to keep their B.C. Bus Pass, however, that increase will amount to only $25 per month because they will have to pay the new $52 monthly fee.
“What’s going on here is a big sham,” said Ed Harkness, another protester at Metrotown. “As a low-income senior, I get the bus pass. Why can’t low-income disability people get the bus pass as it was? … Essentially they’re giving these people extra money, so they call it, and then they’re clawing most of it back.”
The province, however, said the changes create more fairness, especially for people with disabilities living in small communities without public transportation.
About 45,000 people on disability assistance don’t currently get any kind of transportation subsidy because they live in places without public transit, according to a Ministry of Social Development and Social Innovation press release.
Those people will now get the full $77 per month increase.
“While I understand that people hoped to see a larger increase in rates, these changes do ensure everyone receiving disability assistance will benefit,” said Minister of Social Development and Social Innovation Michelle Stilwell in an emailed statement.
An online petition (http://tinyurl.com/buspasspetition) calling on the province to raise the monthly disability assistance rate to $1,200 by October and to eliminate the $52 monthly bus-pass fee has garnered more than 12,500 signatures in about two weeks.
