CHARLOTTETOWN – An appeal court has restored a human rights panel’s finding that the P.E.I. government discriminates against the mentally ill by denying them disability benefits.
The court found that a judicial review of the case of an Island woman with debilitating paranoid schizophrenia did not assess it properly and applied the wrong standards.
The judicial review had overturned a 2016 human rights panel ruling that found the province discriminated against the mentally ill.
Chief Justice David Jenkins said the reviewing judge failed to give enough attention to the rights panel’s findings of fact, in particular that the government did not “provide a reasonable explanation for excluding persons with mental illness from the program.”
“Instead of limiting judicial review to whether various findings were reasonable … the reviewing judge evaluated the evidence, sometimes considered credibility, rejected the panel findings, and substituted her own assessment of the evidence and her own findings of fact,” Jenkins wrote in a 27-page Prince Edward Island Court of Appeal decision.
Millie King of Queens County filed the initial complaint on behalf of her daughter, Laura, who has schizophrenia, after being told her condition is not covered by the province’s Disability Supports Program.
The program gives financial assistance to around 1,300 Islanders with disabilities, but people with mental illnesses have not been eligible since the program began about 15 years ago.
Jenkins awarded the Kings $12,000 for court costs.
In its original finding in April 2016, the rights panel wrote that, “The only reason for the distinction is the nature of Laura King’s disability. This differential treatment offends her and amounts to discrimination. The denial of an integrity is affected. Her fundamental human dignity is denied.”
Mike Dull, a lawyer for the King family at the time, said it was difficult for them to file the complaint because of the stigma associated with mental illness.
During a three-day hearing, the government said its program is tailor-made for the needs of people with physical and intellectual disabilities, and that mental illness is explicitly excluded because its services are “not a fit” for this type of disability.
Dull said that was not an excuse for the policy, but further evidence of its discrimination.
Similar support programs in Nova Scotia and Ontario include disabilities resulting from mental illness.
The rights panel awarded King $31,000 in damages and legal fees, and ordered the Disability Supports Program to change its practices to avoid further discrimination.
Laura King suffers from delusions and social difficulties that make it hard for her to work. She lives with her mother, which Dull said can be difficult on both of them.
The Disability Supports Program said it is considering how to respond to the ruling.
