What the AISH Changes Actually Mean for People Who Rely on It
A close look at how AISH and ADAP actually work, why the math doesn’t add up, and who bears the real risk when disability policy prioritizes ideology over supporting those with disabilities.
I’ve been watching the Alberta government frame changes to AISH and the introduction of ADAP under Bill 12 as “modernization”, as if this is about creating opportunity, encouraging employment, and keeping people financially secure.
From where I sit, that framing doesn’t match the reality that AISH recipients face.
I’ll describe the ADAP program more in a moment.
Instead, what I see is further instability being introduced into the lives of people who are already struggling.
I am concerned that the government is more focused on shifting people off AISH than actually improving employment opportunities for people with disabilities.
How AISH and ADAP Actually Differ
AISH and ADAP are now two separate programs, built on very different assumptions and criteria.
AISH is intended for people with severe disabilities whose ability to earn a livelihood is significantly limited or impossible. It was designed to provide long-term stability, while still allowing people to work when and if they are able, without immediately losing the support they rely on.
ADAP, by contrast, is structured around an expectation of employment. It places people into a different category based on how employable the system believes they are, with a lower base benefit and much tighter limits on how much income can be earned before benefits are clawed back.
In practical terms, that means people placed on ADAP will face more pressure to work in order to potentially avoid being financially worse off, even when their health or disability makes consistent employment difficult or impossible.
The key difference isn’t just administrative. AISH is built around stability and recognition of long-term limitations, while ADAP introduces more conditions, more scrutiny, and more risk. For people whose lives already involve unpredictability and narrow margins, that distinction has real consequences.
AISH Was Never About Saying People Can’t Work
One of the most important clarifications in the recent Real Talk podcast discussion came from Trish Bowman, CEO of Inclusion Alberta, who explained what AISH actually is and what it isn’t. An audience member, Avery, also gave her thoughts. She is an advocate for adults with mental illness, and a former government employee who worked with AISH early in her career.
Trish said:
“As AISH existed, it meant that you had an impairment that provided a significant limitation in your ability to earn a livelihood. It didn’t say you were unable to work.”
Under the new framework, she explains:
“The definition of AISH now becomes: you are permanently unable to work. That was never the AISH definition before.”
From my perspective, this forces people to either declare themselves permanently unemployable, or accept being placed in a program that pays less and expects more.
I worry that some of those on AISH will no longer qualify for it when things change and receive less financial support as a result, which makes anyone who needs AISH very nervous.
What is the Alberta Disability Assistance Program (ADAP)?
ADAP is a provincial income-support program for people with disabilities who are assessed as having some capacity to work.
It provides a LOWER base monthly benefit than AISH, with stricter limits on how much income recipients can earn before benefits are reduced.
ADAP is structured around an expectation of employment and requires people to rely more heavily on earned income to potentially avoid being financially worse off.
Unlike AISH, which is designed to provide long-term stability for people with severe and permanent disabilities, ADAP introduces greater conditionality, reassessment, and financial risk for recipients.
Everyone on AISH Will Be Moved to ADAP First, Then Reassessment Comes Later
One of the most troubling aspects of this change is the order in which this happens. People currently on AISH are not reassessed first. They are moved first, regardless of their needs.
As Trish Bowman explained:
“What we understand is everyone will be moved to ADAP and then, if they want to reapply for AISH, they will need to be reassessed.”
That means those on AISH will face significant financial instability before eligibility is even reconsidered. People don’t transition into ADAP by choice. They’re placed there automatically and told to reapply if they believe they still qualify for AISH.
Avery then laid out what that actually means in practice, and why the reassessment process is unrealistic.
She said:
“If I figure, looking at the math, there’ll be at least 27,000 applications by people who want to go from ADAP to AISH.”
She went on to explain the timeline and volume the system would be expected to handle:
“So they’re going to be, between July 1st, 2026 and the end of December next year, they’re going to have to try to process 27,000 applications, assuming that 27,000 people just give up and stay on ADAP or they’re already working.”
And then she was blunt about what that means:
“There is no way the system has the capacity to do that.”
She spelled out the likely outcome just as clearly:
“So what will happen is people will just stay on ADAP.”
That’s not because they don’t qualify for AISH. It functions as a bottleneck, and some people won’t get through it or will just give up, which, by definition, means there will be fewer people on AISH, a development the government seems poised to celebrate.
The assumption baked into that process is that many people won’t even try, not because they don’t qualify, but because the process is overwhelming, uncertain, and stacked against them.
The Math Simply Doesn’t Work
What stood out to me in the discussion is that the math simply doesn’t add up.
As Avery explained, drawing on both her advocacy work and her experience inside government:
“Even the most generous assumptions say that there would need to be 42,000 new supported jobs for people with serious permanent disabilities for this to even out.”
She added:
“These are gig jobs. You have to scrape them together. You have to find an employer who can support the disability you have.”
And she reminded listeners who is actually on AISH:
“About one third of people on AISH have serious mental illness. Another 70% have cognitive or physical disabilities.”
Then came the bottom line:
“You’d have to work about 33 hours a week at minimum wage to be better off under ADAP than under AISH.”
From where I stand, pretending that tens of thousands of people with severe, permanent disabilities are suddenly going to find near-full-time work is not good policy. It’s fantasy.
Employment Reality vs. Political Assumptions
This is where theory runs headfirst into reality.
Someone I know personally, Kevin, one of my volunteers, has been on Income Support, which is managed by the same government department that oversees AISH. His medical condition does NOT qualify for AISH.
Kevin has tried to find employment. He has applied for jobs. And he has been told directly by employers:
“Why would we hire you when we can hire someone healthier who is more reliable?”
Reducing benefits doesn’t change discrimination in the job market, whether it’s illegal, or someone is in a position to do something about it or not. Reclassifying people on paper doesn’t make employers more accommodating or more willing to take on perceived risk.
Applying pressure to those with serious disabilities, whose health and capacity are already unpredictable, doesn’t create stability. It creates stress, insecurity, and a higher likelihood of failure and further risk of poverty.
A $200 Cut Is Not an Incentive
Trish spelled out the impact of ADAP plainly:
“The new program lowers your core benefit… it lowers it by about $200.”
Ryan Jespersen put that into human terms:
“That $200 is the difference between getting uncovered prescriptions paid for or having groceries for the month. The difference between almost living and barely existing.”
Trish added:
“People are already living on the edge. This will push them over.”
That’s why I’ve said there is lipstick on this pig. Slash and burn by first cutting back on disability services, such as advocacy. Now they’re cutting back benefits for very vulnerable persons already deemed SEVERELY DISABLED, and clawing back their supports.
It’s Hard to Read This as Good-Faith Policy
I’ve tried to approach these changes in good faith. I’ve listened to the explanations, read the framing, and paid attention to how the government says this is about opportunity and encouragement. But the more I look at the details, the harder it becomes to believe that good faith is what’s driving this.
In my opinion, this government has a pattern built on not approaching issues in good faith. Again and again, complex social issues are approached through an ideological lens first, with evidence, lived experience, and consultation treated as secondary.
When that’s the starting point, outcomes like reduced benefits, tighter definitions of who qualifies, and increased precarity aren’t accidental. They’re intentional.
That’s why it’s so difficult to view the changes to AISH as a neutral attempt at improvement.
If the real motivation were to support people with disabilities, there were simpler, less harmful options available. Improving earning exemptions, expanding supported employment, and strengthening services people already rely on. None of that required tearing up the existing framework or cutting back support.
As Avery said:
“All the government had to do if they wanted to encourage employment was simply change the clawbacks, loosen them up some more. They could have encouraged employment just by doing that. They didn’t have to do any of the rest of this.”
On improving existing supports rather than replacing the system, Trish Bowman said:
“There were improvements that could have been made to AISH. Absolutely. That could have been done very easily.”
She then listed specific alternatives:
“They could have increased the earning exemptions, they could have increased the employment supports available to people with disabilities.”
And she concluded:
“All of those things could have been done without introducing an entirely new program.”
The people absorbing that harm are those with the least capacity to deal with it. That’s why I don’t see this as a misunderstanding or a communications problem. I see it as a deliberate choice.
This Was Never About Fraud
The idea that these changes were needed to address abuse doesn’t hold up.
Trish addressed that directly:
“The research shows that when they actually investigate, the rate is very low.”
And she added:
“$1,900 a month isn’t very much money. I don’t know how many people are working really hard to still live in poverty.”
From where I stand, this isn’t about accountability. It’s about priorities.
When People Understand What’s Happening, They Care
Near the end of the discussion, Trish made it clear that one of the biggest challenges isn’t opposition, it’s awareness.
She explained:
“We represent children and adults that have intellectual disabilities. It’s actually a very small percentage of the population. So it is not something the majority of people really understand, nor do they understand what’s possible for those folks with the right supports.”
That lack of understanding is why she stressed the need for allies:
“We do very much need allies. We need people who don’t have a family member with an intellectual disability to care about this.”
And she grounded it in something that applies to all of us:
“It doesn’t impact you until it does, but when it does, you want those supports to be there.”
From my perspective, that gets to the heart of this. When people actually understand what these changes mean, for dignity, stability, and quality of life, they don’t shrug. They care.
The Bottom Line
Listening to this discussion only reinforced what I already believed, and what I see in my daily work with vulnerable people.
This was never about whether people with disabilities want to work. Many already do. Many already try.
This is about whether the Alberta government is choosing a careful, evidence-based approach, and in my opinion, that is not what is happening.
From where I stand, the answer is clear.
These changes weren’t required to achieve the goals the government says it cares about. They weren’t meaningfully consulted with the people most affected, or with the organizations that work alongside them every day.
The consequences land hardest on people who already live with health and income challenges, and stability can be disrupted by policy shifts like this. At the very least, these changes deserve far more scrutiny than they have received.
A Quick Clarification on Clawbacks and What Changed From Old AISH
After publishing this, I received some helpful feedback about how employment income clawbacks are expected to work under the new versions of AISH and ADAP. It’s a bit technical, but it’s important.
Under the old AISH, people could earn up to $1,072 a month from work before any clawbacks kicked in. It recognised that many people with disabilities can sometimes work, perhaps a few hours here and there or during periods when their health allows, without being able to rely on steady or full-time employment.
Under the changes coming with Bill 12, that buffer largely disappears. Both new AISH and ADAP start clawbacks at just $350 a month in employment income. That’s a dramatic drop from what AISH allowed before, and it applies regardless of which program someone ends up on.
Where things get a bit more nuanced is in comparing the new AISH to ADAP. New AISH applies a 100% clawback after that $350 threshold. Every extra dollar earned means a dollar less in benefits. ADAP, on the other hand, is expected to apply a clawback of less than 100%, which could mean people keep more of what they earn.
The problem is that the government hasn’t released the actual ADAP clawback formula yet, so no one really knows how that will play out in practice.
What is clear is the bigger picture. Compared to the old AISH, both new AISH and ADAP are far more restrictive.
Even if ADAP turns out to be slightly less punitive than the new AISH, both programs sharply reduce income exemptions and shift more financial risk onto people with disabilities. The room people once had to try working without immediately losing support is mostly gone.
So yes, there are technical differences between the new AISH and ADAP. But compared to what existed before, this means less flexibility, more pressure, and greater instability for vulnerable people, all based on assumptions about work and capacity that don’t reflect reality for many.
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