Opinion Is Not Fact: How Society Is Failing the Vulnerable and Fracturing Our Values

First all, I will add a disclaimer to the start of this post: I am going to be blunt, provide my own “viewpoint” that some of you may not agree with” but, that is fine. We live in a world where we are all different and all have our own view points. This is a rant, and I am pissed. I am upset and I need t get this off my chest. But this should in no way change my friendships, relationships or anything with people for me being “who I am” because I am still quirky ole opinionated (who is a bit silent) and daft…me.

So, let me spell this out with no filter: if you’re uncomfortable with harsh unfiltered, “truth” from where I see things, then leave. This isn’t for the sugarcoated crowd. I’m autistic. I’m disabled. And I’m so tired and exhausted from trying to be nice while this government shoves people like me face-first into the dirt. My tone isn’t “unpolished”—it’s raw, because I’m DONE, fed up and pissed off watching arrogant, smug politicians strip away our last shred of humanity and get applause for it.

Let’s zero in on the epicenter of this absolute brain rot: Alberta. Specifically, the Alberta government, which is not just neglecting people with disabilities—it is systematically, “willfully”, and maliciously undermining them. This isn’t bureaucratic drift. This isn’t incompetence. It’s premeditated cruelty dressed up in the bland language of “fiscal responsibility.”

The current AISH rate is $1,901/month [source: Alberta.ca, 2025]. Try surviving on that when rent in most Alberta cities averages over $1,300/month for a one-bedroom [source: Rentals.ca, July 2025], and food inflation has pushed monthly grocery bills well past $400. Do the math. That leaves next to nothing for transportation, medication, clothing, or even the basic dignity of participating in society. And we haven’t even talked about utilities, aids, and additional supports. And let me be clear: these are people who are medically assessed and confirmed to be severely disabled (permanent mental, psychological and physical disabilities and disorders)—people with conditions that aren’t going away, and who, in many cases, can’t work or barely work without putting their lives or health at severe risk. This isn’t about “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.” Most of us don’t even get bloody boots.

What did this UCP government do?

• • They de-indexed AISH from inflation in 2020, knowing full well that meant recipients would fall further behind every year. That’s not budget management—that’s social euthanasia by spreadsheet.
  • They cut application-processing staff, leading to backlogs and forcing people already on the brink to wait months for help. Not to mention they cut “case workers” for switchboard from line staff, making supports even harder and in addition cutting contact supports even worse.

They are now shifting people into a new program called ADAP (Alberta Disability Assistance Program), which is set to replace AISH completely by 2026 [source: Alberta.ca, 2025]. But don’t let the name fool you. This isn’t “modernization.” This is an ambush. This is a rigged system dressed up in sanitized government PR speak. ADAP is a loaded gun aimed at the most vulnerable Albertans—and the government’s finger is already on the trigger.

Here’s what they’re doing:

• Reducing the working income exemption from $1,072/month to just $350/month. That means if you’re disabled and try to earn a bit of income, the government will now claw back your support faster and harder than ever before. So much for encouraging independence.
• Forcing 77,000 people currently on AISH into reassessments under new ADAP criteria. This is not a routine check-in. This is a calculated purge. The new eligibility guidelines are stricter, narrower, and intentionally vague. The goal? Get people off disability—not because they got better, but because the government wants to save money.
• Under ADAP, even those who are severely disabled are being told they’re “work-capable” if they can move a finger or sit up in a chair. The only path to “financial stability,” they claim, is working full-time—despite the fact that most people with significant disabilities can barely handle 10 to 15 hours a week, and often only in sheltered, low-stress environments.

And let’s not pretend this work exists. Over 90% of employers in Alberta don’t hire people with disabilities [source: Canadian Survey on Disability, 2024]. So what does that mean in practice? It means more disabled people forced into poverty. It means more disabled people becoming homeless. It means systematic economic extermination by design.

And if that weren’t enough? Alberta’s disabled were recently hit with another bureaucratic slap in the face.

AISH recipients had to apply separately for the federal Canada Disability Benefit (CDB). That benefit was meant to supplement provincial support. But Alberta’s government—greedy and heartless as ever—announced they’d claw back up to $200 of that federal benefit from AISH recipients unless they applied properly through a convoluted process. And even when people did apply, that money didn’t go to them—it went to offset provincial payouts. In other words: Alberta took money meant for disabled people and kept the difference. Other provinces allowed disabled residents to keep the additional CDB funds on top of their existing benefits. Alberta? They grabbed it like vultures.

ADAP isn’t help. It’s not support. It’s a bureaucratic meat grinder. It surveils you. It punishes you for trying to earn. It strips your autonomy. And worst of all—it gaslights you into believing you’re the problem when the system itself is rigged to push you out. Let’s call it what it is: a slow, paper-pushing purge of the disabled. And if you think that’s extreme, then you haven’t read the fine print—or talked to the people already losing everything under these new rules.

This is what happens when a government sees disabled people as budget liabilities, not citizens. It’s not reform. It’s economic eugenics. This shift isn’t just a red flag—it’s a declaration that the UCP doesn’t give a single damn about the people it’s sworn to protect. These are not random cuts. This is an ideological drive to erase the disabled from political relevance, and it’s not just happening here in Alberta. The United States is following a strikingly similar trajectory. In states across the U.S., benefits programs like Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) are being relentlessly scrutinized, restricted, and gutted under the banner of “fraud prevention” and “program integrity”—even as fraud rates remain under 1% [source: Social Security Administration, 2024].

Recent moves by Republican-led state legislatures have introduced work requirements, asset tests, and annual disability redeterminations that push disabled individuals off life-sustaining programs [source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 2025]. It’s a deliberate squeeze tactic: force the vulnerable into impossible choices and then blame them when they collapse.

So no, this isn’t just Alberta. This is a Western world trend, fueled by capitalist austerity and right-wing cruelty. They won’t say it out loud, but they don’t have to. Their policies scream it:

“You don’t matter. You’re a cost. And we want you out of sight.”

This is a war on the disabled, waged globally by governments too cowardly to admit what they’re doing and too soulless to care.

This isn’t just a policy failure. It’s a moral failure. And for those of us on AISH, it’s a daily trauma. It’s waking up every morning knowing your government considers you disposable. I’m not exaggerating. I’m documenting reality. And if you think this is dramatic, ask yourself why the fucking truth sounds so dramatic to you now—it’s because we’ve normalized this abuse for so long that anything resembling honesty feels radical. This is a fight. Not just for funding. For dignity. For humanity. For our right to exist without being framed as leeches. For our right to not be silently erased by smug cowards in suits pretending they’re making “tough calls.”

The Alberta Government can take its fake compassion and shove it into the oil sands. This is war. And we didn’t start it. But we sure as hell won’t go down quietly.

Opinion Is Not Truth—But It’s Being Treated Like It Is

We are living in a time of spiritual rot. Not the religious kind—I’m talking about the soul of a society being torn apart by ego, arrogance, and wilful ignorance. We’ve lost our grip on shared reality. Everyone’s screaming their opinion into the void like it’s gospel, like the mere act of conviction makes something true. It doesn’t. It never did. But try telling that to the far-right mob foaming at the mouth with bumper-sticker slogans and conspiracy-laced righteousness. These aren’t just loudmouths on social media anymore. They’re holding power. They’re making policy. And their policies are killing people.

Let’s talk about facts. Let’s get brutally raw. ADAP is not about help—it’s about control. It’s about forcing disabled Albertans to constantly prove they’re still disabled, as if some miracle healing is going to sprout out of nowhere. It’s about inserting more surveillance, more paperwork, more hoops—until people give up or get cut off.

It includes mandatory reassessments every year. It expects the severely disabled to look for “suitable work”—even if their doctors have said they shouldn’t. It threatens to claw back income, trap people in financial precarity, and surveil how we spend what little we’re given. It’s designed to break you. It’s designed to test how much bureaucratic humiliation you can endure before you vanish into homelessness.

This is policy as punishment. This is the Alberta Government weaponizing paperwork as a noose.

Don’t believe me? Go read the policy drafts. Go ask disability advocates. Go talk to people already being transitioned into ADAP’s “pilot phases” who’ve been told their health conditions need to be re-evaluated by someone sitting behind a desk—not their own medical professionals.

They’ve turned disability into a debate. They’ve turned human need into a spreadsheet column. And I, for one, am beyond done playing nice about it. So here’s my autistic, direct, fed-up voice telling you the damn truth:

They are not just failing us—they are systematically erasing us. They’ve declared war on the disabled. They’re just doing it quietly, behind layers of bureaucracy and PR jargon. They don’t want us dead, exactly—they just want us gone. Out of the news. Off their budget. Forgotten.

I’m disabled. I’m autistic. I’m not a damn statistic. I’m not a number on your quarterly review. And I will not shut up so some oil-pandering, prosperity-gospel-preaching, spreadsheet-swinging politician can sleep better at night.

So if I sound angry, it’s because I am. If I sound harsh, good. That means you’re finally listening. I’m poor. I’m disabled. I’m autistic. I’m neither far right or far left, but left-of-center, a centrist with a conscience. I support the NDP because they’re not trying to erase me. I’m also a Christian—not your “weaponized” version (Like in the U.S.), but the kind that believes in helping people and what Jesus and God stood for. I support human rights—but I also want space to breathe without being pushed into identity politics every second. I support DEI/AB, not because it’s trendy, but because diversity is survival. [read more from a church’s view “here“:]

And I am done being trampled under the boot of a government that doesn’t know the first fucking thing about justice, humanity, or decency.

Alberta’s Cruelty Is a Feature, Not a Bug

The Alberta government—let’s be honest here—isn’t just some bland, soulless neoliberal machine. It’s moved far past that. What we’re seeing is a creeping, cowardly form of neo-authoritarianism, something that smells a hell of a lot more like the new U.S.-style neo-fascism than anything resembling actual conservatism. This government isn’t about free markets or limited government as it should be, it’s moved from it’s former ideologies that it used to stood for. It’s now about control, about silencing opposition, about dehumanizing anyone who doesn’t fit “their” mold of the ideal, able-bodied, oil-praising, bootstraps-Republical based authoritarian Separatist obsessed Albertan.

They target the “vulnerable” with surgical cruelty and then wrap it in populist doublespeak. AISH recipients? We’re not just ignored. We’re being punished—deliberately and relentlessly—for daring to exist in bodies or minds that don’t match the government’s spreadsheet vision of productivity and “contribution.” This isn’t accidental. This is ideological. This is systemic. And it is evil, plain and simple.

• De-indexing AISH from inflation was not an accident. It was an intentional erosion of dignity.
• Cutting staff who process AISH applications isn’t “streamlining.” It’s bureaucratic gatekeeping meant to delay and deter.
• Floating the idea of rolling AISH into ADAP was not a casual proposal—it was a clear declaration: “We don’t see you as people worth investing in anymore.”

And let’s be brutally honest: this government treats people on AISH like dirt. Subhuman. Like we’re just lazy, non-contributing, dead weight dragging down their oil-soaked vision of Alberta. Jason Kenney’s government started the fire, and Danielle Smith’s administration is gleefully dancing in the ashes.

This is not governance. This is abandonment.

As an Autistic Voice, Let Me Say This Clearly

I’m autistic. That means my voice might sound blunt. Unpolished. Direct. Good. That’s how it needs to be. There is no diplomatic way to say this:

The Alberta Government can go fucking rot in the pit they’ve dug for the vulnerable—every policy, every smug press release, every empty speech is a shovel deeper into the grave they’re trying to bury us in. May their cruelty be remembered, their hypocrisy exposed, and their moral bankruptcy carved into history with a blade of truth sharpened by every soul they tried to erase. so FUCK YOU DANIELLE SMITH, JASON NIXON and all you PIG HEADED ASSHOLES!!!

They’ve stripped us of our agency. They’ve buried us under bureaucracy. They’ve dehumanized us with policy. And they’ve dared to do it while pretending they’re upholding “Alberta values.”

But let me ask you—whose values are those? Because I know plenty of Albertans who believe in compassion, who help their neighbours, who give a damn when people fall through the cracks. I believe in those Albertans. Not the ones in power who use the Bible as a prop and capitalism as a sword.

Christian, Not Cruel

Yes, I’m a Christian. No, I’m not your stereotype. I don’t use my faith to punch down. I use it to lift people up. The Jesus I believe in healed the sick and fed the poor—he didn’t run a budget surplus on their backs. He didn’t criminalize poverty or call disabled people a burden. So don’t bring that twisted prosperity gospel garbage into this space. I reject it completely.

The government’s cruelty isn’t Christian. It’s cowardice dressed up as conservatism.

The Bigger Picture: Society Is Failing Because We’ve Abandoned Empathy

This isn’t just about Alberta. This is about the total collapse of human decency under a regime obsessed with optics, control, and obedience. The Alberta government hasn’t just lost its way—it’s sprinted headlong into authoritarian rot. They’re not governing anymore. They’re managing decline and calling it strength.

Just ask Alberta’s teachers, who are now on the brink of a historic strike [source: CBC/TEBA negotiations, 2025], fighting for fair wages and basic respect in classrooms where resources have been gutted. Educational Assistants? Stretched so thin they’re burning out or quitting altogether. Nurses? Overworked, underpaid, and treated like replaceable cogs. These people are the backbone of our province. And Danielle Smith’s government is treating them like obstacles instead of assets.

And while public servants bleed, while disabled people are forced into poverty and paperwork purgatory, this government is cozying up to American corporate interests and backroom-dealing Alberta’s sovereignty straight into the dirt.

Make no mistake: Danielle Smith is selling Alberta out! Quietly. Piece by piece. Her rhetoric about freedom and Alberta-first is a smokescreen for what looks disturbingly like a soft integration into the U.S. economic and political orbit.

Backroom trade deals. Deregulated health pilot programs. Privatized infrastructure contracts tied to U.S. firms. It’s all there if you bother to dig past the headlines. If the Alberta Sovereignty Act was supposed to protect us from Ottawa, why does it feel like we’re being shuffled toward becoming America’s 51st state instead?

So no—this isn’t just a few bad policies. It’s a hostile ideological takeover. It’s a rejection of empathy. A war on compassion. And a betrayal of everything that once made Alberta proud.

The more people shout “facts don’t care about your feelings,” the more they justify policies that dehumanize. But here’s the truth they don’t want to admit: feelings are what make facts matter. Empathy is what turns policy into justice. Compassion is what separates leadership from tyranny.

We are not spreadsheets. We are not quotas. We are not pawns in some oil-fueled power fantasy. We are people. And we are being crushed under the boot of a government that sees compassion as weakness and cruelty as strategy.

We haven’t just lost the plot. We’ve let the villains rewrite the script.

I Am Angry Because I Care

Some people will call this a rant. Good. I’m ranting because I’m tired. I’m angry. And I refuse to go numb. I’ve lived long enough to know that silence protects no one but the abuser. So I’m going to use my voice—my autistic, neurodivergent, Christian, moderate-liberal, don’t-fuck-with-me voice—to say this:

• If you stand by while the government grinds the disabled into the dirt, you are complicit.
• If you vote for leaders who cut AISH, who demonize the poor, who treat the marginalized as statistics instead of humans—you are part of the problem.

And if you call that “just your opinion,” then understand this: opinions that harm people are not neutral. They’re a choice.

We Can Do Better. But Only If We Choose To.

Don’t also get me wrong, I also don’t “completely support the Alberta NDP and not because they’re perfect, but because they at least recognize that government exists to serve people, not punish them. I do believe that nobody regardless of who they are, what and who they believe in, where they come from or what disabilities, mental or physical they have, do not deserve to live in fear for being who they are—but I also believe in balance, in coexistence, not coercion. I support DEI/AB because diversity isn’t a threat—it’s strength. Also DEI/AB has been “bastardized” by the “far right” and misunderstood and “politicized” to the point that it’s being made bad, when it fact it’s always been a part of life even before all this was a thing anyways.

And I believe in calling out hypocrisy, no matter where it lives. Even when it’s uncomfortable.

So if you’re still reading this,THANK YOU!. Let’s not pretend everything’s fine. Let’s not call this “just politics.” This is about survival, about dignity, about what kind of society we want to be.

We’re at a crossroads. And if we keep letting ideologues drive the bus, we’re going to go off a cliff—with the most vulnerable pushed out the door first.

We can do better. But we have to choose better.

And we have to start NOW!.