Budget 2026 has officially been tabled in the House of Commons, sending policy nerds, public servants, and non-profit staff alike into an analytical feeding frenzy.
Over the next week, your social media feed may feel overwhelmed by discussions of infrastructure investment, the cost of living, border security, AI – even Eurovision.
But as Budget discussions and debates kick off, disability is expected to be left off of the agenda – or at best, play an incredibly negligible role.
This blog series aims to fill the gap in disability-specific Budget 2026 coverage, make bureaucratic Budget jargon feel actually approachable, and help you better understand how Budget 2026 impacts yourself and/or loved ones with disabilities in your life.
I’ll do my best to identify the most notable budget commitments, explore areas to strengthen disability inclusion, flag areas to monitor, and raise causes for concern.
I’ve also put together this document (hyperlinked here) with all of the disability-specific measures in the Budget, impact assessment, and annexes if you feel so inclined to check the content out yourself!
The Budget
I don’t know about you, but Parliamentary Procedure was not remotely part of my K-12 education. There is a jarring lack of accessible and digestible information out there – so if this is your first time learning about how the Budget works, that’s completely okay!
Here’s a quick overview of what the Budget does and how it works:
Every year, the Federal Government (this year, the Carney Liberals), must table a budget in the House of Commons in order to receive authorization to spend taxpayer money on programs and services.
Which, in all fairness, may sound exceptionally boring.
But underneath all the technical accounting considerations of revenue, expenses, and debt service, the Budget provides an incredibly helpful indication of government priorities, commitments to programs and services, and amendments to existing tax codes and legislation.
In other words, the Budget is the road map for the year ahead.
(You can read Budget 2026: Masters of Our Own Destiny here!)
Every Budget will contain an economic overview, budget commitments; some annexes around projections, proposed legislation, and tax measures; and an impact report detailing how specific demographic groups may benefit from certain measures.
Every Budget must also be debated in the House of Commons. In previous minority governments, Budget week saw all the different political parties jostle to try and negotiate changes to the proposed budget. While debate will still occur under this majority government, it is expected that the proposed Budget will pass as originally presented.
Regardless, Budget Week is an excellent opportunity for everyone to have their say on the government’s proposed direction. Discussions on the Budget don’t just happen on the House of Commons floor – they’re happening within organizations, through media outlets, across different social media platforms.
Budget Week can help us gain a better understanding of ‘mainstream’ narratives around investment and programming, identify areas where we can most effectively advocate for accessibility and disability inclusion, and find new allies to support a barrier-free Canada by 2040.
Budget Week is also a great time to get in touch with your Member of Parliament to voice your own perspectives on the Budget! (You can find out who your MP is here!) With over 1 in 4 Canadians having a disability, making your voice heard is essential to reminding those in power that we are a sizeable minority that is only growing in size and influence.
8 Budget Commitments You Should Know About
1) Amendments to the Medical Expense Tax Credit
The Medical Expense Tax Credit is a non-refundable tax credit that covers prescribed, out-of-pocket medical expenses that make up over 3% of your income.
Budget 2026 proposes to remove the medical documentation/prescription requirement for some medical equipment, and to replace individual equipment prescriptions with medical documentation of a condition instead (p. 388).
Under this change, you would no longer need to submit any paperwork to claim expenses on insulin, infusion pumps, blood coagulation monitors, and devices to manage severe chronic respiratory ailments.
For equipment like pacemakers, screen readers, wheelchair lifts, braille printers, and visual fire alarms, you would just need a doctor to confirm an applicable medical condition – instead of writing prescriptions for different equipment all related to the same diagnosis.
While this change may seem small, it will significantly reduce the paperwork burden on both disabled people and medical practitioners! It’s also interesting to see the federal government begin to acknowledge the undue paperwork burden placed on disabled people and practitioners, and begin to shift away from requiring medical documentation for every little thing. A long way still to go, certainly, but it’s a start.
Additionally, Budget 2026 introduces an optional flat rate alternative to cover medical expenses, instead of having to keep track of every single dollar spent on medical equipment over an entire year.
These flat rates include $1,000 to cover gluten-free food expenses, $500 to cover incontinence products like diapers and catheters, and $2,000 for service dog-related expenses.
By removing the need to itemize every day, recurring expenses (think gluten free bread on your weekly grocery shop, or a bag of dog food once a month), I’m optimistic a lot more people will apply for and receive this Medical Expense Tax Credit.
However, I would have loved to see this become a refundable tax credit. It’s no secret that disabled people generally have lower incomes relative to non-disabled society.
And, as we’re actively in a national legislated disability poverty crisis, non-refundable tax credits really only directly support the financial security of those who earn enough in the first place to need to pay taxes.
As a community, we have to ensure that governments and budgets respond to all disabled peoples’ needs – not just a privileged minority.
2) Continued Federal Funding for Home and Community Care, and Mental Health and Addictions Services
Budget 2026 proposes $1.2 billion over the next year to extend federal funding agreements with the provinces and territories to continue funding for home and community care and mental health and addictions services (p. 210).
As health is largely a provincial and territorial issue, it’s totally normal to be confused on why this is in a federal budget. Basically, the federal government collects revenue from all of the provinces and territories’ residents, then re-allocates most of that revenue back to the provinces (this is known as equalization, give or take.)
But this money isn’t unconditional – the federal government, through transfer and funding agreements, can negotiate certain conditions the provinces and territories have to follow in order to receive the money.
Here, the federal government is allocating some of the overall tax revenue pot directly towards home and community care in the provinces and territories, with those governments actually providing the services.
As mental health is one of the fastest growing causes of disability (Statistics Canada, 2022), investments in mental health services are incredibly timely and can impact those in urgent need of support.
Home care is also an essential service, especially for those with complex medical conditions! By providing medical services to someone in their own home, individuals don’t have to spend time in medical facilities – and this can be especially important when accessible transportation is a barrier! For daily care, this also allows the individual to live in their home in the community, as opposed to residential medical facilities.
I’ve increasingly seen home care spending as a proxy for how governments prioritize the health and wellbeing of disabled people, as well as how governments perceive our quality of life. Seeing an investment in home and community care is always welcome, particularly as it aligns with a disability rights agenda emphasizing the right to live in the community! With that said, I would have to conduct a lot more research into provincial home care expenditure forecasts to gauge if this is a helpful infusion or just a drop in the bucket.
3) Amendments to the Canada Caregiver Credit
Budget 2026 commits to making the existing Canada Caregiver Credit a refundable tax credit – which can provide direct, end-of-year, financial support to primarily unpaid and female caregivers (p. 191).
This is a quick change to an existing system, but one that can address the significant unpaid economy of care! As the care economy and care work becomes more of a mainstream agenda item, I’ll be looking to see how safeguards for disabled recipients and acknowledgement of caregivers who are disabled themselves are approached.
I find it quite interesting that the Budget itself notes how “many caregivers have incomes too low to pay tax and therefore do not fully benefit from the existing Canada Caregiver Credit” (191), yet doesn’t extend the same consideration to the previously discussed Medical Expense Tax Credit for primarily disabled Canadians…
4) Making More Disabled Workers Eligible for the Canada Workers Benefit
Continuing on with the refundable tax credit theme, another exciting proposal from Budget 2026 would change the current minimum earnings threshold of the Canada Workers Benefit from $1150 to $200 for those receiving the disability supplement (p. 191).
Disabled people are disproportionately likely to be represented in initiatives for low-income workers, particularly as the disability pay gap persists.
So, I’m incredibly curious to know how this decision came to be – did it consider how provincial disability assistance programs begin to clawback support at incredibly low amounts, making the $200 amount more feasible for those on assistance? Was it an implicit acknowledgement of the disability pay gap, or labour market inaccessibility? Or is it a push to encourage more people to join our workforce under stagnating productivity?
While we’re on the topic of refundable tax credits: they can often be an excellent lever of direct financial assistance, and are more flexible in terms of the government’s debt burden – making new commitments more feasible under current government economic priorities.
However, I’m wary that as refundable tax credits become more popular, there will be a push to move monthly payments to annual payments via tax credits.
For example, I had previously heard of a proposal to make the Canada Disability Benefit a refundable tax credit, and had to actively advocate against it for these reasons. When you are living paycheck-to-paycheck, you just can’t wait for that monthly top-up.
5) Removing GST & HST from Massage Therapy and Alternating Electric Field Therapy Devices
Carrying forward momentum from the 2024 commitment to remove GST/HST from psychotherapy and counselling (learn more here), Budget 2026 proposes removing GST/HST from both massage therapy and alternating electric field therapy devices (p.414).
I think this is an excellent proposal that acknowledges the incredible variety of treatments, therapies, and services disabled people can benefit from! Non-disabled people often assume our conditions are stable and don’t require treatment, when in reality many of us require a whole ecosystem of wraparound services to achieve an adequate standard of health and wellbeing.
I was going to say I’d love to see this extended to Occupational and Physiotherapy… but fact-checked myself and realized they’ve been GST/HST free across the provinces! Budget week can be hectic, so this was a nice surprise!
6) $1.8 Billion for the Integrated Supports Fund
As part of a wider commitment to ending homelessness, Budget 2026 proposes $1.8 billion over 4 years (and $3.2 billion in future years) to establish an Integrated Supports Fund through Build Canada Homes, which would support projects focusing on health, mental health, addictions, social supports, and the adaption of existing buildings (p. 197).
Homelessness is a disability rights issue. So much so, it deserves its own blog for a proper discussion.
But for now here’s some key things you should know: disabled people on social assistance often struggle to pay rent (CBC, 2026), and disabled people are approximately 4 times more likely to experience homelessness (CHRC, n.d.). Homeless shelters, as underfunded and overcrowded as they are, are often inaccessible to those in wheelchairs – with a recent Women’s Shelters Canada study identifying that only 48% of shelters are generally accessible (WSC, 2026).
Back to Budget 2026: while I believe supportive and accessible housing should be much more strongly embedded throughout the entirety of Build Canada Homes and federal housing priorities, having dedicated funding for supportive housing is huge. It cements supportive housing as a necessity in addressing homelessness, which supports the growing body of evidence proving supportive housing is essential to the wider housing crisis.
With that said, this is certainly an area to watch. Accessibility and supportive housing services can be treated as two distinct entities, ignoring the overrepresentation of disabled people experiencing homelessness. One of the reasons why the Budget can be so important is that it allows us to flag areas for improvement or monitoring before they’re approved, ensuring public scrutiny and feedback throughout the entire process.
7) Additional Funding for Ready, Willing, and Able
Budget 2026 proposes $6.9 million to extend Inclusion Canada’s Ready, Willing and Able initiative (learn more about them here!) for another year, which supports persons primarily with intellectual disabilities in gaining work experience (p. 206).
This proposal touches on a really interesting dynamic I was hoping to have a bit more time to develop more articulate thoughts on. RWA makes a direct impact in the lives of its recipients, and does excellent work educating workplaces on becoming more inclusive and accessible. Let me be perfectly clear: I am a big fan of Inclusion Canada and Ready, Willing, and Able – I consider them colleagues, friends. Their work is important and essential and impactful and urgent.
But we often fail to ask, why does this work have to be done in the first place?
In short, because we allow the labour market to discriminate. We allow workplaces to be inaccessible. While we may have legislation in place (such as the federal Employment Equity Act and Accessible Canada Act, or provincial human rights codes), these systems rely on disabled people pursuing litigation after a harm has occurred.
Further, we do not have a federal, systemic approach to ensuring disabled people have the right to work. The United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities recently criticized Canada for failing to have a federally cohesive approach to measuring, identifying, and removing systemic barriers to employment for persons with disabilities (Article 53 & 54, 2025).
Instead, we as a society often rely on non-profit, service provider organizations to provide patchwork solutions to address the most acute issues. These organizations are full of well-intentioned professionals who make real change in peoples’ everyday lives – but it’s a complete David and Goliath. A few million here and there, the goodwill of employers, and the dedication of non-profit staff are not enough to address how the labour market is structured to keep disabled people out.
Now, I’m not saying this investment is bad. It’s excellent, and warmly welcomed! But we need this investment, and structural reform. And while structural labour market reform might sound impossible, many countries actually have an enforced disability hiring quota system – where private medium and large businesses are expected to hire a certain percentage of disabled employees, or face fines. It’s already being done in Brazil, Germany, Spain, Turkey, you name it (Legal 500, n.d.)!
8) Home Accessibility Tax Credit
What do you know, we’re back on tax credits! Quite similar to the Medical Expense Tax Credit, Budget 2026 proposes an optional flat rate of $1000 in a non-refundable tax credit, as opposed to itemized expenses (p. 384). There’s a whole list of conditions tied to the one-time flat-rate payment, such as eligibility in future years requiring itemized lists, how individuals living together can file different claims for different modifications, and how the flat rate here would still require documentation.
The Budget 2026 Impacts Annex identifies that the Credit has historically benefitted those with middle- or higher-incomes, while those with lower incomes are more likely to incur expenses that would be covered by this credit (p. 61).
I will note, however, that I appreciate the Budget’s clarity in assuring that individuals residing in the same dwelling can submit claims for different expenses. When disabled people still don’t have full marriage equality due to social assistance clawbacks (CHRC, n.d.), seeing a federal policy acknowledge that disabled people may live together with different accessibility needs is depressingly refreshing.
That said, I find this Budget commitment is symptomatic of a wider issue: accessibility considerations in the housing crisis, and the housing crisis debate itself, is often geared towards homeowners. Disabled people are far more likely to rent than the non-disabled population (CHRC, n.d.), and likely wouldn’t be able to pursue accessibility renovations on their own. And this creates a significant policy gap: landlords have no obligation to provide accessible rentals, disabled tenants can’t inherently pursue accessibility modifications, and housing accessibility initiatives are geared to homeowners.
Closing-ish Thoughts
It’s difficult to assemble some closing thoughts on these commitments alone, knowing I’ll be spending the next few hours still hunched over my laptop looking at areas for strengthening disability inclusion and areas of concern.
You really can’t ignore the emphasis on tax credits here. There are clear benefits – it’s a streamlined administrative process that doesn’t require any new offices or staff, it bypasses federalism concerns, and it doesn’t necessarily always translate to government out-of-pocket expenses in the way that benefits or programs do.
But there are also drawbacks: again, disabled people in poverty can’t wait until the end of the fiscal year. At that, automatic tax filing is nowhere near in place yet. The disabled people who need financial relief most are not the ones independently filing taxes. They aren’t the ones who are able to afford home accessibility renovations.
I also have to say: there is way more related to disability than I expected. Grain of salt, I expected very little. Disability inclusion and accessibility has seemingly fallen off of the government agenda, which is not surprising with zero openly disabled representation in the House of Commons.
I don’t know if some disabled or allied staffers are behind-the-scenes, or if disabled persons organizations have managed to break through to policymakers, or if accessibility is finally being integrated into basic economic considerations.
Maybe the CRPD Concluding Observations rattled the more attuned public servants, or maybe all of the federal departmental Accessible Canada Act reporting is hammering in some lessons somewhere.
But whatever is happening seems to be working. Even as disability falls off the priority list, it is still present. It has become an unignorable force in politics and policymaking.
Does that mean the proposed measures are enough? Certainly not! But it’s certainly something to work with, and somewhere to start.
