The Disruptors

To give people false hope is a sin

2025-06-16

Dustin Kerrington was fed up. Fed up with living in abject poverty: with not having enough money for food, for heat, for a decent winter jacket or for anything else, for that matter.

Dustin Kerrington tells his common-law partner Lauren he's going to do something about it: He's going to write a letter.

Halfway across the country, a legal heavy hitter opens Dustin Kerrington's letter and stops in her tracks. She knows immediately this Dustin Kerrington person is a diamond-in-the-rough. She formulates a plan to bring him into ongoing efforts among her peers.

What she doesn't know is that Dustin Kerrington will co-lead an effort that will successfully release Canadians with disabilities from the grip of poverty forever.

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Excerpts

"That's it," he screamed as he slammed his phone down on the coffee table. "I can't take it any more. I really can't. And this time I mean it."

Lauren looked over at him from her place in the chair next to the sofa. Her look said, "Yeah, right!"

He knew she didn't believe him.

"I'm going to sue the government," he declared. "The federal government. Sue it to oblivion for putting all of us through hell and back with this goddamn Canadians with Disabilities Benefit that doesn't exist."

His partner continued looking at him. Something held her stare, he knew. It should have gone back to her Facebook page by now.

"To give people false hope is a sin," he continued. "The godforsaken benefit is nothing more than a lie. A cruel lie.

"A whole lot of advocates – from the Alberta Association for the Blind to the Maritime Spinal Cord Injury Support Society to Disabled Housing Help Canada – made the trip to Ottawa to present testimony while the bill was in committee stage in both the House of Commons and the Senate," he rambled, now beginning to rant.

"They made that trip in good faith – and at their own expense – thinking this bill, this benefit, would lift disabled Canadians out of poverty," he said, talking faster and beginning to breathe hard.

"A line item was inserted at committee stage saying the bill must come into force no later than one year after receiving royal assent," he spurted, now staring into space eerily.

"The bill received royal assent on June 23, 2023!" he screamed, causing Lauren to sit up straight in her chair.

"It's May 4, 2025! Where is the money?" he screamed some more, now fixing his gaze on her. "WHERE IS IT?

"The law doesn't mean much in this country, anymore. The federal government is a citizen of Canada. The law applies to it just as it does to the rest of us.

"Except now it doesn't. Well, we'll see about that."

Jacqueline looked carefully at the document on the screen in front of her. Is that a double space? she asked herself. Did I hit the space bar twice?

Hitting the space bar was a matter of words only. The expression didn't apply to Jacqueline because she didn’t actually, "hit" the space bar. She caused it to be enabled through a complicated arrangement of technology surrounding her which allowed her to use her desktop computer with her eyes, tongue and other body parts.

But not her fingers, hands or arms. Those body parts had been paralyzed ever since Jacqueline's cervical spine – her neck – had been hit by an armed robber's stray bullet when she was 17-years-old and employed in a diner not far from her parents' home.

Everyone had done their best for her – the first responders, the hospital emergency department staff, the surgical team and the many physiotherapists and occupational therapists who had come later – but Jacqueline was destined to be paralyzed from the neck down for the rest of her life. A quadriplegic.

Jacqueline had gone into a lengthy fit of depression following it all, of course. What 17-year-old with ambitions of law school wouldn't?

Her parents had tried to help – she knew this in her heart of hearts – but it was her Uncle Zach who had come to her rescue.

Zach had a combined background in electronics and mechanics and he worked at the local airport. He took on his niece's situation as a personal challenge.

"There's some good technology that you can leverage to overcome a lot of these supposed limitations, Jackie," he told her. "I know this stuff. I can help you. Let me help you."

The young woman with strawberry blonde shoulder length hair had looked at her uncle through tears of desperation and defeat. But, she listened to what he told her. And somewhere, deep down inside her – in her inner self – she had found the strength to trust her uncle, to believe he knew what he was talking about.

It didn't take long. Jacqueline got into, and graduated from, law school after all – using a combination of online and classroom learning.

And some gentle persuasion, Jacqueline giggled as she thought of the fighting she had done – OK, advocacy – she clarified to herself euphemistically. The determined young prize fighter had had to overcome the university's initial resistance to accommodate her wishes. But once Jacqueline had gotten past those law school program gatekeepers – those power hungry procedure artists, as she had come to call them – the real powers-that-be had agreed eagerly to work with her.

And with Uncle Zach, Jacqueline smiled. Zach was a good man.

Today, Jacqueline knew all about breaking down barriers for persons with a disability in Canada's Maritime provinces. In all of Canada, actually. For Jacqueline was legal counsel for the Maritime Spinal Cord Injury Support Society and she had forged working relationships with her peers all across Canada.

Smash those barriers! Jacqueline giggled some more. Indeed, the young woman – now 27-years-old but still a natural strawberry blonde – had a DON'T F*** WITH ME reputation in both disabled and legal circles nation-wide. A reputation which was well earned and of which Jacqueline was proud.

That IS a double space! Jacqueline muttered under her breath as she removed it.

What Jacqueline didn't know yet – what she couldn't have known – was that her breath would actually be taken away upon reading what would land in her work-from-home remote office e-mail inbox shortly.

The letter from the man from Cornwall, Ontario – a nobody in Jacqueline's circles – would inspire her just as much as her Uncle Zach had.

It was the epicentre. Where the people who determined what would happen to all the other people gathered to work and play. Where the high priests of power wielded their influence without regret and without apology.

It was located at 80 Wellington Street in Ottawa, Canada, almost directly across from the Centre Block of Parliament Hill. It was called the Prime Minister's Office or the PMO.

Early on the afternoon of Monday, May 12, 2025, Canadian Prime Minister Quentin Barwick met with his senior advisors. The new Minister of Finance, Scarlett Jaubert, had been chosen but not yet announced. Barwick was scheduled to announce his new cabinet the next day.

Instead of meeting in the PMO, however, the power brokers were holding their deliberations on board the Bombardier CC-144 Challenger aircraft – the prime minister's (shared) official aircraft – following an unofficial gathering with select Atlantic Canada caucus members.

At the top of the priority list was the federal government's 2025-26 budget. Delayed a bit by the April 28, 2025 election, the budget – which normally was brought down sometime in late February or March – was omni-important because it would influence Canada's economy, jobs, its citizens' standards of living, and, of course, the government's own books, or financial situation.

The fact that the federal government's financial situation was actually the people of Canada's financial situation – as was the building housing the PMO, all of Parliament Hill, and the Bombardier Challenger – was not top of mind with the power brokers who huddled that afternoon. After all, the first priority of any government in a democracy is to get re-elected.

The prime minister and his most senior advisor were engaged in a bull session about the Canadians with Disabilities Act, passed by the previous government. That government had promised to begin paying the Canadians with Disabilities Benefit – which flowed from the Act – in July 2025. The promised amount of the benefit was small. The prime minister wanted it in. His senior advisor wanted it out.

The bull session intensified. Instead of just leaving the Canadians with Disabilities Benefit out, the two were now debating leaving the entire budget out.

They stared at each other across the small dimly lit cabin. One wanted the newly elected government to begin governing without a budget at all. The other didn't. The hum of the Challenger's engines was all that stood between them.