Maritime provinces rank highest for disability rates across Canada according to new study

In just five years the number of people reported to have some form of disability in Canada has increased.

The latest Statistic Canada figures are from 2022 and show 27 per cent of Canadians aged 15 and older, or 8 million people, had at least one disability and though this number is high, when you look at just the Maritimes, the situation is even more troubling.

Ability New Brunswick executive director, Haley Flaro, says the increases don’t come as a surprise just based on the number of referrals to services they’ve seen over the last few years.

“I was predicting that we would move to the highest rate of disability in Canada and we almost caught Nova Scotia, so I’m glad I was wrong. I was really glad I was wrong,” she said.

“However, we had the largest increase, eight per cent, of every province in Canada and this does have significant implications for health services, disability services.”

Breaking down the numbers, the national disability average in 2022 is up 4.7 per cent from 2017 to a total of 27 per cent.

Nova Scotia has the highest disability rate in the entire country at 37.9 per cent after seeing a 7.6 per cent increase.

In second place is New Brunswick, which climbed 8.6 per cent to 35.3 per cent, and coming in third is Prince Edward Island with a disability rate of 31.8 per cent after a 5.8 per cent increase.

“This is going to have a ripple effect across the province,” said Flaro.

“We’re already seeing it impact on people overusing our health systems because of lack of up stream preventative care and access to specialists. We’re already seeing people leaving jobs or education because they’re not getting the right health care.”

She says that Ability New Brunswick has done a lot of work to reach populations that may not be currently accessing their services and they’ve seen not only an increase in referrals but also a lot of new diagnosis.

“New Brunswick has the highest rates of multiple sclerosis in the country and we’re seeing an increase in people being diagnosed with MS where it’s impacting their mobility coming to access our services,” she said.

“We also see a lot of rare neurological conditions among young people and children and so we’ve been serving a lot more children and youth through our programs which has big implications for policies,”

On top of that, Flaro says that 40 per cent of New Brunswick seniors have a disability with the most common being mobility and that 30 to 35 per cent of Ability New Brunswick clients are also dealing with mental health difficulties.

“We really need to be ensuring that we’re providing adequate services to seniors, people with disabilities, and that’s health services, that’s social development type services and I don’t find our policy shops are considering what this means for health and social policy,” she said.

Statistic Canada’s categorized disabilities into 11 different categories:

•  mental health-related
•  pain-related
•  seeing
•  learning
•  memory
•  mobility
•  flexibility
•  hearing
•  dexterity
•  developmental
•  unknown

Of those categories, mental health-related, pain-related, and seeing disabilities had the largest increases.

“[For example] here’s someone who’s got a disability, they’re dealing with pain management issues and it’s two-to-three years to see a specialist? Your health deteriorates, your pain increases, you stop working, there’s significant implications for productivity and labour market, and then they’re always in the emerge,” said Flaro as an example.

“Some disabilities are preventable, some aren’t, but pain disability can be managed and with the right access to treatment and care and two-to-three year waits is disgraceful, it really is.”

Pointing to a lack of timely health care options, inflation, food insecurity and other every-day issues, Flaro says she’s been working in community based non-profits in New Brunswick for 26 years and this is the “most troubled” she’s been about the issues facing people with disabilities.