Canadian Gov’t Tax Changes Look to Cancel Disability Tax Credit for Type 1’s

Wow, our LIberal Government Finance Minister, Bill Morneau, is looking to cancel the tax credit for Canadian diabetics that receive it, and it looks like few new patients applying for the credit are getting approved. Seriously Morneau? I’d say PM Trudeau’s band of merry men is stooping to new lows. The article is here:

Let you’re local MPs (and definitely the opposition ones) know this is a bad idea - because it is.

May the fleas of a thousand camels infest their tents.

1 Like

I’m a US citizen but I lived and worked in Canada for a few years myself while T1, and I never got this. Even though I paid through the nose in income taxes.

The current 14 hours-per-week documentation requirement, I think is meetable by some diabetics but I doubt that all of us would be able to meet it. Does reading TuDiabetes count towards the 14 hours? Tax credits available to people with diabetes - Diabetes Canada

I do understand why parents of T1 kids might need extra help but I’m not sure a tax credit is the right way to do it. There are several other ways the Canadian and provincial governments need to step up and help diabetics, that they are not doing. I’m thinking about Canadian problems related to diabetes discrimination in schools, workplace, and immigration.

Well, sure, but my complaint is that there is funding for the pump in some provinces (great funding in Ontario), but no government funding for CGMs. I can’t think of a device that has improved my control more than the CGM, and the DTC was one way of helping pay for it.

1 Like

I’m an Accountant and a T1 living in Canada.

In all fairness to the Liberals, most T1 diabetics never did qualify for the DTC. To qualify requires 14 hours a week of direct therapy time limited to the following:

  • checking blood glucose levels
  • preparing and administering the insulin
  • calibrating necessary equipment
  • testing ketones
  • keeping a log book of blood glucose levels

I’ve done the math over and over, and I don’t qualify - especially using an insulin pump and being on a CGM.

That said, excluding diabetics from the financial benefit of the DTC has always been a sore spot with me. It’s not about the “time” to administer life-sustaining therapy, it’s about the “cost” of administering life-sustaining therapy.

A diabetic takes a HUGE financial hit of approximately $15,000/year in medical costs. I’ve been diabetic for 31 years. Doing the math, that means my family and I are down approximately $465,000.

Since most diabetics never did qualify, the liberals are actually targeting those diabetics who MOST need the tax credit and take the biggest hit. They are targeting those in kidney failure, with amputations, with blindness, with chronic pain. They are targeting, those who may not be able to work. They are targeting parents of young children who have a to look forward to a lifetime of sickness and disability.

This disgusting approach reminds me of taking away treatment for children over 5 years old dealing with autism.

My understanding is that people with just diabetes who meet the 14 hours a week are being denied. Someone who is blind or has another major disability will qualify for the tax credit regardless of whether their blindness or other disability was caused by diabetes or something else. If the CRA has set out the 14 hours as a qualification, and an applicant has documented that they meet those 14 hours and has had a physician complete the paperwork, they should not be denied. my understanding, based on reports I e seen and a letter from Diabetes Canada, is that this is what’s been happening.

I live in Canada and I qualified for the benefit a few years ago. I notice that on last year’s tax I had not lost it.

This latest outrage is typical of the government of our brainless photo-op ‘please vote for me because I look pretty’ Prime Minister. Very few of the election promises are being kept out of fear that they will lose votes for doing anything substantive, since the Liberals pin their hopes for re-election on the personal appeal of their leader. The few things they actually do are stupid or evil, like their refusal to follow the Supreme Court’s ruling on the assisted dying legislation, which required that anyone in intractable suffering be allowed help to die, but instead they substituted the rule that those eligible had to be facing a reasonably foreseeable death. Now those in terrible suffering but not near to death will just have to scream until the window panes rattle, since the dumb son of the smart Trudeau decided not to let them. No doubt many diabetics in the final stages of their disease will have to suffer because of this.

With respect to the original poster, it has nothing to do with minister of finance, and does not appear to be a government-directed plan to cancel the credit. As the government itself says, they have been taking steps to better publicize the grant in the past couple of years. I didn’t know about it myself before I joined this list last December.

Some news reports say that the change coincides with CRA no longer using registered nurses to review applications, leaving that task to bureaucrats who may have no idea what’s involved in managing diabetes. Spokespeople for both CRA and the minister of revenue (not finance) were mystified by the change and had no explanation. Apparently a review is under way, and registered nurses are to be hired again.

According to the minister of revenue’s office, one reason for the rising number of declined applications is that more people are using pump therapy, which reduces the amount of time a person spends managing their diabetes. (This is, as many of us know, debatable.)

How did you get past the 14 hour rule?

I have some other autoimmune diseases which also require time and effort to manage, so that plus highly intrinsically variable blood sugar levels prompted my GP to qualify me.