This started because I was pissed off.
Not in some grand political way. I didn’t wake up one morning and decide I was going to start a campaign. I was pissed off about money. More specifically, I was pissed off about what disability does to your ability to make money, keep money, and have any real control over your financial life.
I worked. I had a career. I paid into long-term disability insurance. I did all the things you’re supposed to do.
And then I got sick.
Now I live in this weird reality where I still have skills. I still have ideas. I still want to work, create things, build things and make money. But disability changes the math. My capacity is different. My energy is different. My body is different.
And even when I can earn something, my long-term disability arrangement can reduce my benefit dollar for dollar. If I earn a dollar, they take a dollar away.
I found myself getting increasingly frustrated by the feeling that I was trapped.
And then, at some point, I had to kick myself in the ass.
Okay, buddy. What are you actually complaining about?
Because the truth is, I have resources. I have a wife. I have a family around me. I have a home. I have long-term disability income, even if I have a whole lot of opinions about how little it actually leaves me with.
I am not doing this alone.
And that made me think about the disabled person who doesn’t have any of that.
What happens if you don’t have a partner with an income? What happens if your parents can’t help you? What happens if there isn’t somebody around who can cover a bill, help with rent, buy groceries or absorb some of the financial damage disability creates?
What are you supposed to live on?
Right now, I receive roughly $1,300 a month in federal disability income.
Try doing the math on that.
Rent. Food. Transportation. Clothing once in a while. Medical costs that aren’t covered. Internet.
And yes, internet counts.
Because apparently we’ve decided that healthcare, government, banking, paperwork and basic participation in society increasingly require you to have an internet connection and some kind of device to access it.
You don’t get to call the internet a luxury and then make the entire world function online.
So I kept thinking about one question: what would actually make a meaningful difference?
Not solve everything. Not make somebody wealthy.
Just give someone room.
I kept coming back to $1,000 a month.
An extra thousand dollars means groceries, transportation, keeping the phone connected, replacing clothing or paying for something your disability requires that nobody else covers.
But it can also mean something less obvious.
It can mean leaving your house.
It can mean saying yes sometimes.
Because poverty doesn’t just mean you can’t buy things. Poverty removes you from life. You turn down invitations. You stop seeing people because seeing people costs money. Your world gets smaller.
Disability already does enough of that on its own.
You already had a portion of your life taken away by disease, and then you’re punished with poverty.
So society takes what’s left.
That is the part I can’t get past.
And the burden doesn’t stop with the disabled person. It lands on partners, parents, children, brothers and sisters. The people around you start carrying pieces of the cost.
I know that because my family carries pieces of mine.
So then I started doing the math.
What if we gave an additional $1,000 a month to roughly 600,000 low-income disabled Canadians receiving the Canada Disability Benefit?
That’s $12,000 a year per person, or about $7.2 billion a year.
Seven point two billion dollars sounds enormous.
Of course it does.
Governments deal in numbers that are almost impossible for normal people to get their heads around.
So I kept breaking it down.
The federal government brought in about $511 billion in revenue in 2024–25.
That’s:
$511,000,000,000.
The cost of adding $1,000 a month for roughly 600,000 low-income disabled Canadians?
About $7.2 billion a year.
Or roughly 1.4% of federal revenue.
And that stopped me.
1.4%.
That was the moment this stopped being just me being frustrated about disability and money.
Because suddenly the question changed.
It wasn’t:
How could Canada ever afford to do something this big?
It was:
Would Canada choose to spend roughly 1.4% of federal revenue to dramatically improve the lives of about 600,000 disabled Canadians — and ease the burden carried by the families supporting them?
Those are very different questions.
And once I saw it that way, I couldn’t really unsee it.
So I started emailing people. Government ministers. MPs. Anyone I thought might actually have some influence over where the money gets spent.
And now I’m turning it into something bigger.
The 1.4% Campaign.
The ask is simple: an additional $1,000 a month for low-income disabled Canadians receiving the Canada Disability Benefit.
Approximately 600,000 people.
Approximately $7.2 billion a year.
Roughly 1.4% of federal revenue.
I don’t know how far this thing is going to go. I’m not pretending one disabled guy with a website and an email account is suddenly going to rewrite federal disability policy.
But sitting around being angry about something I think is wrong isn’t particularly useful either.
So this is me doing something.
Maybe it works. Maybe it moves the conversation. Maybe somebody with actual power looks at the number and realizes this isn’t as impossible as we’ve been trained to think it is.
Maybe it goes nowhere.
I don’t know.
But I know this:
It isn’t impossible.
It’s a budget choice.
And I’m starting with 1.4%.