Changes to the Special Diet Supplement

Changes to the Special Diet Supplement

Special Diet Supplement Slashed by the Liberal Gov't!

OCAP - Ontario Coalition Against Poverty

September 15, 2005

What happened?

For almost a year, OCAP has been getting people onto the previously little-known special diet supplement, getting up to $250 more per person a month. Since that time, OCAP held 25 community clinics with sympathetic medical practitioners who signed about 5000 people up for the special diet supplement, massively increasing peoples’ monthly incomes. In Toronto alone, over 10 000 more people on welfare started getting the special diet, before that only 2000 people were getting this money. On November 4, the Liberal Government quietly cut the special diet in response to having so many poor people access these desperately needed funds.

How has the Special Diet been changed?

Before the changes, people could get up to $250 per person a month if a medical practitioner said that they needed special diets for medical conditions. This allowed medical practitioners to prescribe special diets on the basis that people are not getting enough money to eat properly. Now the government has changed the law so that it is impossible to prescribe special diets on this basis.

Everyone who is getting the special diet right now will be CUT OFF within the next few months. Even if your medical practitioner prescribed PERMANENT special diets. You will be given a new special diet form that makes it VERY DIFFICULT to get special diet money.

What’s wrong with the new special diet forms?

They force you to disclose your medical conditions, including HIV/AIDS, before they could not legally force you to provide this information
They have replaced the list of special diets with specific medical conditions that are each worth a particular amount of money. If you don’t have any of these conditions (diabetes, cancer etc) you can not get special diet money
The money you can qualify for is a sick joke: for example, if you have liver disease you get $10/month, cardiovascular disease, $10/month, even people with cancer or HIV/AIDS only qualify for $75 - $240 month depending on how much weight they’ve lost

What should I do when I get the new Special Diet Forms?

If you are getting the special diet right now, within the next few months you will be given the new Special Diet forms. You are supposed to be given 90 days to fill them out. If you can’t get them filled out (ie. you don’t have a particular disease, or allergy listed), you will be cut off the special diet after 90 days.

NB: Wait until near the end of the 90 day period to get the new forms filled out because you will almost certainly either get less money or no money at all once you submit them.

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