Page - 424 - in VULNERABLE - The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19

VULNERABLE424 law professor Samuel Bagenstos led to the government withdrawing a ventilator rationing policy that discriminated against people with intellectual disabilities, dementia, and severe traumatic brain injury.15 Intersections: Income Security, Poverty, and Disability COVID-19 highlights stark and persistent financial inequalities that have plagued the disability community long before the current virus.16 Compared to people without disabilities, they are far more likely to experience poverty, have lower levels of education, and be un- or underemployed, and are less likely to live in adequate, safe, and afford- able housing.17 Even before the pandemic, social assistance rates for persons with disabilities in Ontario were far below the poverty line,18 insufficient for coping with additional needs and increased cost of liv- ing while in quarantine, including transportation costs as a result of the suspension of transit services. Federal income support strategies, like the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), exclude per- sons with disabilities who are not able to meet the minimum income thresholds. In Ontario, the rates for persons with disabilities receiving benefits under the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) are far below the rates offered to workers laid off during the pandemic. The economic disruption caused by COVID-19 particularly undermines the income security of persons with disabilities and is the product of unconscious biases or injurious stereotypes about the value of their labour. As Marta Russell and others have shown, dis- abled people have been devalued by prioritizing conventional neo- liberal understandings of productivity, which link a person’s value to 15. “Alabama Withdraws Discriminatory Ventilator Rationing Policy and Issues Directive About Non-Discrimination in Accessing Life-Saving Treatment” (8 April 2020), online (pdf): Center for Public Representation <www.centerforpub- licrep.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/AL-OCR-press-release_4.8.20.pdf>. See also Samuel R. Bagenstos, “May Hospitals Withhold Ventilators from COVID- 19 Patients with Pre-Existing Disabilities? Notes on the Law and Ethics of Disability-Based Medical Rationing”130 Yale LJ Forum (Forthcoming in 2020). 16. Eldridge  v  British  Columbia  (Attorney  General), [1997] 3 SCR 624 at para 56, 151 DLR (4th) 577. 17. “As a Matter of Fact: Poverty and Disability in Canada” (23 September 2009), online: Council of Canadians with Disabilities <www.ccdonline.ca/en/socialpolicy/ poverty-citizenship/poverty-disability-canada>. 18. “Accessing Income Support in Wake of COVID-19” (26 March 2020), online: Income Security  Advocacy  Center <incomesecurity.org/public-education/accessing-income- support-in-the-wake-of-covid-19-updated-march-26/>.