We need your help to make all MLAs aware of the issues of importance to children and adults with intellectual disabilities and their families. There are many upcoming opportunities (summer BBQs, constituency association meetings, etc.) to meet with MLAs, share your priorities and ask them questions. Below we suggest a list of questions that you can ask MLAs. Pick those that relate to you, as its most powerful when you connect your question with your family’s story. Start the conversation by asking whether they are familiar with the policy or program you have a question about (e.g. PDD, FSCD). Be prepared to provide a high-level overview.  If they are unfamiliar with the program, they may not be ready to provide a substantive answer to your question, but it’s still valuable for you to get them thinking about it and for you to discover their understanding of and feelings about the issue. If you let us know how the conversation went it will inform Inclusion Alberta’s efforts to raise the consciousness of MLAs.   

As explained in our response to the 2024 provincial budget, Inclusion Alberta is concerned that no funding increase has been provided to serve the growing number of children and families requiring Family Supports for Children with Disabilities (FSCD) supports. The budget provides an increase to PDD equal to population growth but not inflation.  Our advocacy begins now for funding in Budget 2025 that appropriately funds FSCD and the Persons with Developmental Disabilities (PDD) program, critical components of Alberta’s social and economic infrastructure. We will continue to unrelentingly advocate for protection of parental choice for an inclusive education for students with intellectual disabilities to be educated in regular classrooms, with appropriate supports for both students and teachers. 

Find out about events your MLA is attending by following them on social media or contacting their constituency office.  In addition to attending events where you can speak with MLAs, there are other opportunities to influence the political process through party membership.  

United Conservative Party of Alberta 

Buying a membership for $10 in the United Conservative Party provides you with the opportunity to attend the UCP Convention in Red Deer on September 13 and 14, 2024 where you can vote on policy resolutions. In addition, the UCP has many events in which Albertans can meet the premier, cabinet ministers and MLAs.  

Alberta NDP Leadership Race 

Buying an NDP membership for $10 by April 22, 2024, provides you with the opportunity to vote in selecting the next party leader June 22, 2024. Ideas discussed in the leadership race may be influential in shaping the party’s future policy commitments, so it’s a significant opportunity to raise issues of importance to individuals with intellectual disabilities and their families. Whether or not you are a NDP member, there are many events at which you can speak with leadership candidates and MLAs about the issues that matter to you. The NDP is also asking Albertans to submit questions that will be asked in leadership debates. We encourage you to submit a question using their form, customizing it and stating who you are and where you’re from.  

Inclusion Alberta is non-partisan and makes no suggestion or recommendation as to which party you should support. Here is a list of other Alberta political parties.  

Suggested questions to ask MLAs 

 Persons with Developmental Disabilities Program (PDD) and Family Support for Children with Disabilities (FSCD)  

• Alberta’s unprecedented population growth has added pressure to the Persons with Developmental Disabilities (PDD) program and Family Supports for Children with Disabilities (FSCD) program as families move to the province for work. As funding for these programs has not kept up with inflation and population growth, many individuals with intellectual disabilities and their families are already struggling without services or with insufficient services. Will you advocate for annual increases to the budgets for PDD and FSCD that fully account for inflation and caseload growth?
• Decisions governing the province’s Persons with Developmental Disabilities (PDD) program are being made without the government hearing directly from the individuals served by the program and their families. How will you advocate to ensure that government creates processes and mechanisms to hear from adults with intellectual disabilities and their families before making decisions about this program? 
• Currently supports for adults with intellectual disabilities are not available within First Nations due to unresolved jurisdictional differences between the federal and provincial governments. Will you advocate that the Government of Alberta negotiate with First Nations and the Federal government to ensure the availability of Persons with Developmental Disabilities (PDD) program funding on reserves? 
• Indigenous populations not living on reserves also access Persons with Developmental Disabilities (PDD) and Family Support for Children with Disabilities (FSCD) at a disproportionally lower rate than the rest of the population. The lack of Indigenous operated or culturally knowledgeable resources in Alberta compounds the level of disadvantage faced by Indigenous people in Alberta. And while First Nations’ families with children with disabilities can access FSCD on and off reserve, it is vastly underutilized putting children and their families at risk. Will you advocate the Government of Alberta collaborate with Indigenous Albertans to develop culturally relevant supports and services, including access to PDD and FSCD, for Indigenous people where they live? 

Inclusive education: Ensuring access and quality 

• Obtaining access to a quality inclusive education for children with intellectual disabilities in the regular classroom setting with appropriate supports is a yearly challenge for thousands of Alberta families. This remains true 14 years after Canada ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), including Article 24 which requires the provision of inclusive education. Many Alberta schools and school districts offer inclusive education but others, with the same funding, deny the request of a parent for their child with an intellectual disability to be educated in regular classrooms where both students and teachers are adequately supported. Are you committed to advocating for an end to the inequitable access to inclusive education for children with intellectual disabilities in Alberta? 
• While the Choice in Education Act increased choice for some parents, it did not do so for parents of children with intellectual disabilities. Obtaining access to a quality inclusive education for children with intellectual disabilities in the regular classroom setting with appropriate supports remains a yearly challenge for hundreds of families. While some of our local school districts honour the choice of parents who want inclusive education for their child, in other districts this choice will only be honoured if the school principal chooses to.  Will you commit to supporting the right for families to choose a fully inclusive education as defined in Ministerial Order 015/2004 (specially designed instruction and support in regular classrooms and neighbourhood schools)? 
• Even as the curriculum has changed to advance representation of other historically marginalized groups, both the current experience of people with disabilities and the history of eugenics, institutionalization, stereotyping, ableism and discriminatory segregation continues to be ignored in Alberta’s curriculum. What is your position on ensuring that curriculum updates consult people with disabilities and their families on the design and content of curriculum, and that the curriculum advances the rights and value of persons with disabilities? 

Early Learning and Childcare 

• Families of children with disabilities face barriers in accessing childcare, and some are receiving no benefit from childcare subsidies and the new spaces being created. Childcare providers may refuse to register a child with a disability or may tell the family that the child can only attend if the province’s Family Supports for Children with Disabilities (FSCD) program approves funding for a one-on-one aid. Getting an eligibility decision after applying for FSCD takes 9 months, and then getting a decision on the request for an aid takes additional weeks or months. How will you advocate that government begins listening to families of children with disabilities about the barriers we face in accessing childcare, and then ensures the system being built has the capacity to serve all children, including those with intellectual disabilities?  
• The best developmental outcomes are achieved, and funding spent most cost-effectively, for 3- to 5-year-olds with intellectual disabilities when early learning programs include them together with non-disabled peers who model communication and social engagement. The outcomes achieved by Alberta Education’s Program Unit Funding (PUF) have been undermined by changes in the funding manual made in 2020 that had the unintended consequence of shifting the provision of inclusive early learning services for children with intellectual disabilities away from inclusive preschool and ECS settings into programs that congregate children with disabilities and delays. Do you support revising the PUF funding manual to ensure that PUF supports are again widely available in inclusive preschool and ECS settings? 

Expanding inclusive housing and ending institutionalization 

• The provinces of BC, Saskatchewan, Ontario, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador have closed their large institutions. Manitoba is in the process of closing its remaining institution and recently signed a major settlement to provide restitution to those who were institutionalized. Nova Scotia is implementing a plan to provide people with disabilities who were institutionalized with supports in the community and choice over where to live. Decades of international research clearly shows the harm caused by institutions. Alberta remains only one of two provinces in Canada without a commitment to closing its remaining institutions. What is your position on closing Alberta’s remaining institutions and not funding any new ones?  

Improving income security and increasing employment opportunities 

• One cannot say our society is inclusive until those with disabilities enjoy the same level of employment as those without disabilities. Why is the Alberta Public Service not publicly committed to being an inclusive employer of individuals with intellectual disabilities, particularly when the private business community has employed so many more individuals than the very government that is funded by tax dollars? Will you advocate that our public service, Alberta’s largest employer, becomes the largest inclusive employer of people with intellectual disabilities in the province? 
• The federal government’s proposed Canada Disability Benefit (CDB) will be an effective poverty reduction measure for people with disabilities only if the Government of Alberta exempts these payments from eligibility and benefit calculations for existing provincial income benefits, health benefits, transportation allowances, affordable housing, adaptive equipment programs, employment supports, and other in-kind benefits for people who receive the Canada Disability Benefit (CDB). Will you advocate for no provincial clawbacks related to the Canada Disability Benefit (CDB) and to exempt CDB income from eligibility calculations for any programs, when the CDB is introduced? 
• People with disabilities who are employed make the same EI contributions as anyone else and so they should benefit fully from EI. The AISH policy which deducts Employment Insurance (EI) earnings dollar for dollar is unfair and contrary to the intent of AISH to encourage Albertans with disabilities to seek employment whenever possible. Will you support changing the AISH Policy to treat EI as earned income, to be deducted only in accordance with earned income and not dollar for dollar?