Few results from B.C's great effort to weed out disability benefits.

VICTORIA -- The B.C. government came under fire from the province's Auditor General for the way in which it re-assessed eligibility requirements for persons with disabilities, saying the Ministry of Human Resources did not achieve the significant cost savings it thought it would, since over 99% of those re-assessed continued to qualify for benefits.

Auditor General, Wayne Strelioff, said the government's review of eligibility criteria for B.C. disabled persons, which although it followed the stipulations of the new Employment and Assistance for Persons with Disabilities Act of September 2002, "also increased anxiety among its disabled clients."

In his report, Strelioff said the Ministry of Human Resources did not check its assumptions properly when it decided to fast track its review of all former disability benefits recipients to determine who did and did not meet the new eligibility criteria for benefits. But rather, based its decision to fast track on the assumption that "a large number of recipients would fail to qualify, therefore losing their disability status."

The result would be a significant cost-savings to government and taxpayers."

He noted a well-designed statistical sample of the 18,705 disability benefit recipients, who did not have adequate information in their files to confirm eligibility "would have shown the risk of payments to ineligible clients was low, and that ministry could have taken a more gradual approach to reviewing recipients outside the sample."

"With this simple step, the whole review process could have been less costly and probably less onerous for both the ministry and the recipients," Strelioff said.

Initially. the government estimated that the likely number of ineligible clients would be high, 6,200 or more. Instead they found that only 400 or 0.6 per cent of the reviewed cases were ineligible and of those:

* 40 reapplied and were granted disability status.

* 16 who started were transferred to other public assistance.

* 46 had their files closed and no longer receive any form of social assistance.

Strelioff also found that although the Ministry adequately managed the review once it had decided on its course of action, and used reasonable and impartial methods to assess individual recipient eligibility, it did not effectively consult with advocacy's groups, but consulted with key stakeholders and with affected ministries.

Further, he also found the H.R. Ministry did not establish a "complete evaluation framework at the start of the review," which means "it is unable to fully evaluate the costs and benefits or the work and the extent to which the objectives were achieved." The Ministry did, however, bring about changes to meet the requirements of the new Act, and gained a higher level of assurance that only eligible clients received assistance.

The A.G. decided to undertake an audit of the Ministry eligibility review after receiving requests from the general public, an advocacy group and the Leader of the Opposition, saying such a review was not only a big undertaking for the H.R. Ministry but also adversely affected so many people.