Canada's Disability Savings Plan Comes With Up to $70,000 in Grants. The First Hurdle Is Hearing About It
The Registered Disability Savings Plan is a tax-free savings vehicle that includes grants of up to $70,000 and bonds of up to $20,000 from Ottawa.
Jill Teeple, an investment adviser and financial planner who has spent close to two decades working with people with disabilities and their families, has identified two consistent barriers to the program. The biggest, she says, is simply that people do not know it exists — though the federal government has started sending leaflets to those already approved for the Disability Tax Credit, the gateway to eligibility.
That leaflet is aimed at people who have already cleared the eligibility gate, which is a fine way to reach the converted and a poor way to reach anyone still upstream of it. A savings vehicle carrying five figures of federal contribution ought to be better known among the families it was built for than an account whose main discovery route is a mailing that arrives after the decision point.
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Awareness is only half the shape of it. Teeple also points at supply: she says only the Big Five banks and a handful of local credit unions or wealth management firms offer the RDSP, so a family that does hear about it may find no obvious place to open one.
Supply is a real obstacle, but it is downstream. Nobody comparison-shops for an account they have never heard of; a leaflet to people already approved for the Disability Tax Credit is late, yet at least it lands in the right mailbox.