Woman seeking Canada Disability Benefit frustrated after being sent to costly AI-integrated service

FILE: A protest in Calgary, Alta., over issues related to the Canada Disability Benefit.

When Vancouver Island resident Iris Parker began applying for the Canada Disability Benefit, she didn’t expect to face steep up-front costs—particularly to have AI-integrated software fill out one of her documents.

Living on just $1,483 per month, Parker was dismayed after realizing she needed to pay up to $348—nearly a quarter of what she receives in government support—to complete the requisite Disability Tax Credit Certificate that would allow her to apply for the federal benefit.

A family doctor could have prepared the document for her, but Parker, like many Canadians, does not have a family doctor.

“There is no free path for someone like me to get the Canada Disability Benefit, even though I’m probably perfectly entitled to it,” Parker said. “It’s just really infuriating.”

For disability advocate Gabrielle Peters, the situation was just another example of the frustration those seeking the benefit have faced during the government’s troubled rollout, which has faced previous criticism for its strict eligibility criteria and late payments.

Given those issues and the actual amount offered—a maximum of $200 per month, and often much less—Peters said she has trouble seeing the federal benefit as an honest attempt to improve the lives of people like her and Parker.

“We’re in dire poverty and you are promising to lift us up,” Peters said. “But it all feels very much like it’s insincere.”

Confusing costs, misinformation from ‘navigator’

The federal government—which eliminated the position of minister for diversity, inclusion and persons with disabilities earlier this year—commissioned a number of non-profits to provide “navigation services,” meant to help people access the Canada Disability Benefit and other financial supports.

Parker reached out to one of the organizations, Inclusion Canada, to figure out how to obtain a Disability Tax Credit Certificate without a family doctor.

Emails shared with CTV News show a “navigator” from the non-profit directing Parker to a private third-party service called AbilityDocs, and suggesting the maximum she would be asked to pay would be $200.

“I don’t think it will be much more if any,” the email reads.

While using the AbilityDocs site, Parker was sent to a linked service called Benefits2. The websites share common fonts and graphics, but have different price ranges—one going from $149 to $199, the other from $99 to $149—which Parker found confusing.

She ultimately paid $149 to Benefits2, mistakenly expecting a complete package, only to realize that only covered the cost of filling out the Disability Tax Credit Certificate. She would still need to pay AbilityDocs to have a physician review her medical records and sign off on the document.

“It wasn’t up front about the (overall) costs at all,” Parker said.

She was also suspicious that Benefits2 prepared her document using AI, including Part B, the “medical practitioner’s section.”

Benefits2 CEO Christine Brunsden told CTV News the service uses proprietary software to fill out Disability Tax Credit Certificates, and that it has “one small internal component” utilizing AI, but stressed that it is “securely hosted and operated entirely in Canada.”

“It doesn’t feed any client information to any part of OpenAI,” Brunsden said. “It’s our own separate tool. We don’t use ChatGPT, if you will.”

The company also has a strict “zero data retention” policy, and Brunsden assured that no user information is stored, logged or used for model training purposes.

On concerns about software filling out Part B, the CEO said the doctor who ultimately reviews a customer’s form must take full responsibility for its contents.

“If they don’t agree with it, they can certainly revise it to their heart’s content and then sign off on it,” Brunsden said.

Benefits2 is filling a gap in services in Canada, Brunsden said, at a much more affordable rate than some tax promoters that charge contingency fees of up to 35 per cent of a recipient’s refund, which can run in the thousands of dollars.

Benefits2 would “love to offer this at no cost” eventually, with government support, she added.

“We are really heart-centered people who are trying to do the right thing,” said Brunsden, adding that six of her own family members receive the Disability Tax Credit.

As for AI’s role in the process, the CEO said it’s “mainly meant to check for spelling and grammar.”

Contacted by CTV News, the College of Family Physicians of Canada declined to comment on the appropriateness of software being used to fill out the “medical practitioner” section of such an application.

“What we can emphasize is that the DTC form poses a significant administrative burden for family physicians and alleviating that burden ultimately requires broader systemic changes by the federal government,” the CFPC said, in a statement.

Government-promised help not available yet

The federal government did earmark funding to offset any costs associated with applying for the Disability Tax Credit Certificate in its 2025 budget—but that tops out at $150 per person, and there is currently no mechanism in place for accessing the reimbursement.

In a statement, the Ministry of Employment and Social Development Canada, which administers the benefit through Service Canada, said the money is “expected to be paid to CDB recipients before the end of 2026-27, following the successful completion of a regulatory process.”

Parker told CTV News she doesn’t understand why the Disability Tax Credit is a prerequisite in the first place, particularly for people like her who, as recipients of other assistance, are already both provincially and federally recognized as disabled.

“It’s just bureaucratic red tape intended to keep people from getting this benefit,” she said.

Both Parker and Peters found the government’s overall approach to the Canada Disability Benefit confounding, questioning why millions of dollars are being given to non-profits to help applicants navigate a complicated system rather than setting up a straightforward process that can be accessed by anyone for free.

“Why wouldn’t you deal with it like anything else and have a government ministry, with staff?” said Peters. “I don’t go to a charity to get a driver’s licence or a passport.”

Inclusion Canada, which is receiving up to $917,470 over the course of about two years to provide navigational services, told CTV News it took immediate action after hearing Parker’s complaint.

“We dealt with it directly, offered to provide them with any fees they had paid, and tightened our internal processes to ensure we do not at any time in the future provide any option to an individual of an external provider that would have a fee for service,” said Jeff Ferguson, Inclusion Canada’s executive director of knowledge mobilization and strategy, in a statement.

“We also advised other navigator partners of this particular fee-for-service provider.”

An email to Parker indicated Inclusion Canada had not “vetted” the service before recommending it.

Ferguson agreed with Parker and Peters that the Disability Tax Credit Certificate requirement creates an unnecessary “system barrier” for people with disabilities, noting that even family doctors will often charge a fee for filling out the document.

Effort to be ‘consistent and equal’

The Ministry of Employment and Social Development Canada defended the requirement as a means of ensuring the benefit is “delivered in a consistent and equal way” across the country.

“Basing disability eligibility criteria on provincial or territorial benefits could create disparities where an individual qualifies for the CDB in one province or territory but not in another,” the ministry said in its statement.

That system hasn’t protected recipients in Alberta, however, where the provincial government has been accused of “clawing back” some funding residents receive by the dollar amount they get from the Canada Disability Benefit.

Peters told CTV News she hasn’t been surprised by the rollout issues, saying that years of advocacy and struggle have left her cynical about government help.

She noted the new benefit was first announced amid mounting criticism that poverty could drive people with disabilities to seek out medical assistance in dying.

To Peters, the fact that the maximum offer of $200 means many will continue living off less than $2,000 per month—which was the baseline set up for Canada Emergency Response Benefit recipients during the COVID-19 pandemic, even before the country experienced years of high inflation—makes the program seem like another hollow gesture.

“It was an effective PR tool when there was a lot of media coverage about poverty and MAiD,” Peters said.

“In that sense, I think it served its purpose.”