---
title: "Ottawa Built a Savings Plan for Disabled Canadians. Two in Three Never Found the Door"
description: "Nearly two decades after the 2007 budget, the RDSP reaches about a third of those eligible, held back by paperwork, doctors and silence"
author: "Jan Sokol"
published: 2026-10-24T08:00:00Z
modified: 2026-10-24T12:58:22Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/ottawa-built-a-savings-plan-for-disabled-canadians-two-in-th-a9a853
language: en
tags: ["disability", "tax", "canada", "policy", "us"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# Ottawa Built a Savings Plan for Disabled Canadians. Two in Three Never Found the Door

*Nearly two decades after the 2007 budget, the RDSP reaches about a third of those eligible, held back by paperwork, doctors and silence*

By Jan Sokol · October 24, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/ottawa-built-a-savings-plan-for-disabled-canadians-two-in-th-a9a853

## In brief

- The RDSP, created in the 2007 federal budget, offers government grants of up to $70,000 and bonds of up to $20,000
- About 34% of eligible people have opened an RDSP, compared with roughly 68% use of TFSAs and RRSPs
- Inclusion Canada’s Jill Teeple says the main barrier is that people don’t know the plan exists
- Disability Tax Credit approval requires a clinician to complete a 16-page form, often renewed every four to six years
- Montreal fintech Terry says more than 90% of its clients are first-time investors

Some laws are born from statistics. This one came out of two families. In 2007, Jim Flaherty was Canada’s finance minister and the father of triplets, one of whom had an intellectual disability. Mike Lake, then a new Conservative MP, had a 10-year-old son, Jaden, who had been diagnosed with autism. The two men were in the same party at the same moment, thinking along the same lines, and that year’s budget contained something new: the Registered Disability Savings Plan.

“So, in the 2007 budget, the RDSP showed up in that — and in subsequent budgets,” Lake [told CBC Radio’s Luke Williams](https://cbc.ca/radio/rdsp-eligible-future-9.7379198). The plan is a tax-free savings vehicle, and Ottawa adds to it with grants of up to $70,000 and bonds of up to $20,000. It was intended to give people with disabilities, and the families who look after them, something to stand on for the rest of their lives.

Jaden is an adult now. He is not in paid work at the moment, though his father says he likes to work. “The potential of those things — in combination with the RDSP, really does create an environment where Jaden will be able to thrive and live the life he wants,” Lake said.

That is what the plan promises. What has actually happened is something else.

## A third

About 34 per cent of the people who qualify have opened an account, according to the figure CBC attributes to a 2024 Statistics Canada investigation. The program’s own [2024 annual report](https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/programs/disability-savings/reports/2024-annual.html) from Employment and Social Development Canada gives the same 34 per cent for beneficiaries aged 0 to 49 as of December 2024, with more than 311,000 active plans. The rate depends heavily on where you live: 41 per cent in British Columbia, 25 per cent in Atlantic Canada, 24 per cent in the territories. An earlier [Statistics Canada survey](https://www.statcan.gc.ca/o1/en/plus/684-survey-savings-persons-disabilities-2020), which the department commissioned to find out why so many eligible people stay away, put the figure for 2020 below one-third.

Compare that with the Tax-Free Savings Account and the RRSP, which roughly 68 per cent of eligible Canadians use. The healthy save at about twice the rate of the disabled. The plan built for the disabled also gives away more free money than either of those accounts.

The trouble begins at the gateway. Anyone approved for the Disability Tax Credit is eligible for the RDSP. But in April, The Canadian Tax Observatory reported that take-up across the programs open to that group was below 50 per cent, and falling.

## Nobody tells you

Jill Teeple has spent close to twenty years as an investment adviser and financial planner for people with disabilities and their families, and she is vice-president of the non-profit Inclusion Canada. She sees two obstacles. The larger one is that people do not know the plan exists.

> “Your financial institutions and, you know, maybe your provincial and territorial income support program for people with disabilities, they’re not telling you. So we have this knowledge gap.”

The federal government has now started mailing leaflets to people already approved for the tax credit. That has taken almost two decades.

For most of that time the account was also hard to get. Until recently it was offered only by the Big Five banks and a few credit unions and wealth management firms. The plan comes with a lot of checks. The institution has to keep track of whether the account holder still qualifies for the tax credit, which an ordinary savings account never requires. For a small firm, Teeple suggested, the business case may not have added up. Responsibility for the paperwork moved down the line, and many of the institutions simply chose not to take it on.

## Sixteen pages

The second obstacle is getting the tax credit in the first place. An applicant needs a clinician willing to work through a 16-page questionnaire covering ten categories of physical and cognitive disability. “Lots of families or people with disabilities don’t qualify right away, so you have to try again,” Teeple said.

Eligibility does not always last. People whose significant disability is not expected to improve get it for life. Everyone else, on average, gets four to six years before applying again, so the disability has to be proven once more to the same office.

The tax credit dates from 1988. Its procedures assumed that a Canadian had a family doctor. “We had an entirely different relationship to our family doctor,” Teeple said. Since then the country has run short of doctors, and the form has not changed to reflect that. One reflection seems fair here: a state can keep a benefit on the books and still keep it out of reach, simply by requiring a signature that fewer and fewer people can get.

## The startups

For years, applicants had to rely on disability rights groups, financial planners and their doctors for help. Now there are companies. Two fintech firms do nothing but RDSP support, and one of them is Terry, in Montreal. Its co-founder, Michel-Alexandre Riendeau, said the idea came during the pandemic, when help moved online. “It’s physically impossible to be able to go door-to-door and help all the people with disabilities around the province, around Canada,” he said.

The rules are complicated, particularly for people who have never invested. Matching grants go to beneficiaries up to the age of 49. Contributions can continue until the end of the year the holder turns 59, or until they reach $200,000, whichever comes first. According to the [Canada Revenue Agency’s guide](https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/forms-publications/publications/rc4460/registered-disability-savings-plan.html), the account holder must also be a resident of Canada and have a Social Insurance Number.

Riendeau says more than 90 per cent of his clients are making their first investment. “When they get a letter that’s really complicated to understand, you’re not going to convince them right away.” He tells eligible people to open an account even if they cannot put anything in. Lower-income people who have held the tax credit for a while without an account can receive substantial government contributions over a 10-year period. Those who need the most help, he said, “can get $10,000 just by opening up the account and not even contributing.”

The plan has an age limit, and many people learn about it only after they have passed it. Riendeau said that every day he meets people who are now too old to open an RDSP and who wish they had done it earlier.