Start here: how the benefits system fits together

The system is a set of doors

Most people think of benefits as a long list, and they try to work down it one item at a time. That is exhausting, and it is why people give up.

It helps more to think of it as a few doors. Behind each door is a group of benefits that all use the same approval. Open one door and several things become available at once, often automatically.

There are really only three doors that matter, and one of them is not a benefit at all:

• A filed tax return. Not a benefit — a switch. Most income-tested money in Canada is calculated from your return. No return, no money, even if you qualify.
• The Disability Tax Credit (DTC). Federal. It is worth something on its own, but its real value is what it unlocks.
• The PWD designation. Provincial, BC only. It is what turns income assistance into disability assistance, and it opens its own set of extras.

The order to do things in

If you do these in order, each one makes the next easier. Out of order, you will be turned away and told to come back with something you did not know you needed.

1. File your tax returns, including past years if you have missed some. Free clinics in Victoria will do it. How to get free tax help.
2. Apply for the Disability Tax Credit. A doctor or nurse practitioner fills in part of the form. This one takes months, so start it early and get on with other things while you wait. The Disability Tax Credit guide.
3. If you are on assistance in BC, apply for the PWD designation. It is a separate process from the DTC and neither one gives you the other. The PWD guide.
4. Once the DTC is approved, open an RDSP. If your income is low this is the single biggest pile of money on this page, and it needs no savings of your own. The RDSP guide.
5. Check the Canada Disability Benefit. Also needs the DTC. The Canada Disability Benefit guide.
6. Then work through the everyday costs — rent, medicine, dentist, internet, getting around. Those are further down this page.

The map: which door opens which

This is the part nobody tells you.

Notice that the DTC column and the PWD column barely overlap. That is the single most useful thing on this page: they are two different doors, and most people should open both.

Federal, provincial, local — who runs what

When you are told "that's not us, call the other one", this is usually why.

• Federal (Canada). The DTC, the RDSP, the Canada Disability Benefit, CPP disability, Old Age Security and the Guaranteed Income Supplement, the dental plan. Anything tied to your tax return is usually federal.
• Provincial (BC). PWD and income assistance, PharmaCare, MSP, SAFER and rental assistance, home adaptation rebates, the bus pass, home and community care.
• Local (Victoria and the region). BC Transit fares and HandyDART, the public library, community centres, and the neighbourhood organisations that do the practical helping.

Nobody at any of these three levels is responsible for telling you about the other two. That gap is exactly where people lose money, and it is the reason this website exists.

Two things people mix up constantly

The DTC is not the PWD

They sound alike, both involve a disability, and both need a medical form. They are unrelated programs run by different governments.

Having one does not give you the other, and being refused one does not mean you would be refused the other. Apply for both.

"I have no income, so none of this applies"

It is the reverse. Almost every program on this page is aimed at people with low or no income, and most of them are calculated from a tax return. Having no income makes you more likely to qualify, not less — but only if you file.

What to do when the answer is no

A first "no" is often wrong. Sometimes it is a form filled in too briefly, sometimes it is a staff member who has never handled your situation.

1. Ask for the reason in writing. You are entitled to know which criterion you were judged against.
2. Ask about reconsideration or appeal, and note the deadline. Deadlines are short and they are real. Write the date down the day you get the letter.
3. Get an advocate before you appeal. Free advocates do this daily and know what the decision-maker needs to see, and they cost you nothing. Appeals do get overturned — roughly one in five BC assistance appeals heard in 2023/24 went the applicant's way — so a refusal is worth challenging, but go in with help rather than alone.
4. If a medical form was the problem, ask the clinician to add detail about your worst days, not your average day. Forms are routinely filled in too optimistically, and that alone sinks applications.

Who helps you for free

You do not have to do any of this alone, and you should not pay anyone to do it for you.

• Victoria Disability Resource Centre, 817A Fort Street — 250-595-0044. Information and referral for disability benefits.
• Disability Alliance BC — help with DTC and PWD applications, and with appeals.
• Free tax clinics — will file past years for you. See the guide.
• The Reachable Line — phone us and we will read any of this out to you, slowly, as many times as you need.

All our guides

• The Disability Tax Credit — the door that opens the most.
• The RDSP — up to $1,000 a year with no savings of your own.
• The Canada Disability Benefit — monthly federal payment.
• The PWD designation in BC — and what to do if you are denied.
• Free help filing your taxes — the switch that turns the rest on.
• Dentists, prescriptions and glasses — including the coverage you have to register for.
• Rent help and home changes — SAFER, and grants for ramps and grab bars.
• Cheap home internet — low-cost plans and how to actually get one.
• Getting around Victoria — bus pass, HandyDART, parking permit.
• Shared e-scooters and e-bikes — discounts, and reporting ones that block the pavement.
• Help this week — no money, no food, power about to be cut, nowhere to sleep.
• Work and school with a disability — you can earn more than you think without losing assistance.
• Wheelchairs, hearing aids and glasses — what you can borrow free, and who pays for the rest.
• Days out — how to stop paying two admissions for one outing.
• Travelling with a disability — the attendant seat you should not be charged for.
• If you look after someone — for the carer, not the person cared for.
• First Nations, Inuit and Métis health benefits — NIHB and, in BC, the FNHA.
• Who to call in Victoria — the organisations that actually help, sorted by what you need.
• The full guide library

Where this comes from

This page is a map, not a rulebook: it carries almost no figures on purpose, because amounts change and a summary is the easiest place for them to go stale. The dollar amounts, income limits and deadlines live in the individual guides linked above, and each of those ends with its own list of the government pages it was written from and the date they were read.

• The appeal figures above are from the Employment and Assistance Appeal Tribunal's 2023/24 annual report, by way of our PWD guide, which cites it in full.
• Which benefit requires which other one is drawn from our benefits knowledge base, the same source behind the benefits finder. Every program in it lists its own sources.

Reachable is not the government, a bank, or a law firm. These guides explain public programs in plain language so you can go and claim them. They are not advice about your own particular situation — for that, phone one of the free advocates above, or phone us and we will help you find one.