Every Canadian Counts-Executive Director | Don’t be a spectator in life - get in the game and make a difference.

Canada
Hubert van Niekerk OCT #NDIP 🇨🇦🇾🇪 retweeted
Nothing honours Terry Fox more than putting his face on currency while depriving disabled folks across Canada of funds. Intentionally underfunding & red taping the federal CDB allegedly supposed to "lift disabled people from poverty", funneling disabled folks to MAID. Eugenics.
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Hubert van Niekerk OCT #NDIP 🇨🇦🇾🇪 retweeted
An illness is terrifying enough without having to ration food and freeze in your own home. The federal government is watching disabled Canadians physically deteriorate from poverty, leaving them completely abandoned to systemic neglect. 😭 We need an adequate #CDB #CostOfLiving
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Hubert van Niekerk OCT #NDIP 🇨🇦🇾🇪 retweeted
For 🇨🇦 to build big, we need the work of the building trades! Fantastic visit to Jasper for the @BuildingTradesAB Convention, speaking with the carpenters, electricians, millwrights, ironworkers, bricklayers and so many more of the 19 local Alberta trade unions represented. We talked about Team Canada Strong: our bold plan to recruit, train and hire up to 100,000 new Canadian Red Seal skilled trades workers. Overall, my message was simple: as we Build Canada Strong, skilled trades workers are at the heart of our plans.
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FIFA showed the same disdain.
The Caps won’t release Ovi. The US government won’t sanction him or deport him. Most of the @nhl are Trump supporters including Bettman. Trump is also buddies with Putin. Like everyone with a moral compass I’m angry. I hate that the sport I love only cares about money. #nhl
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One of the reasons I like my morning walks
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I like the analogy, ‘if you show 10 psychiatrists an apple they will all agree it’s an apple, but show them the same patient and they will all have a different opinion’. That’s why the MAiD for mental illness needs to be tossed. Doctors shouldn’t be killing their patients.
Not to be contrarian, but I only agree w need for additional, independent review, in a form to be carefully designed & not 1 person, probably incl. psychiatris/psychologist/social worker, legal professional... W bioethics problem is you can select ethical approach you like
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Taking a stand against bullies, or will I/we remain a bystander? When leaders of our own provinces punch down on the disabled and homeless, and intentionally keep them there through legislative DEEP poverty, that’s a kick to the face when they’re already down.
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Hubert van Niekerk OCT #NDIP 🇨🇦🇾🇪 retweeted
Electric trucks now make up full 25% of China's new sales. Last year 520,000 electric trucks and buses were sold globally.
Impossible to Inevitable! Electric heavy transport has crossed from technical possibility into commercial scaling. EV heavy trucks reach 27% market share in China in Q1 2026. China's 2030 sales share goal for EV heavy trucks is 40%. It will smash it. oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-G…
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“This has been such a good year for me, unwinding more trauma, a fourth year safe in a house. “ This does the heart good. Your advocacy is appreciated by so many.
My birthday is in 6 days, if you wish to contribute to my advocacy and disability survival, I am very appreciative, I'm turning 44 on 09/09. Etransfer mitchelltremblay@live.ca Wishlist amazon.ca/hz/wishlist/ls… This has been such a good year for me, unwinding more trauma, a fourth year safe in a house. We need stability, we need humanization and we need basic income. #odsp #basicincome #onpoli
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Hubert van Niekerk OCT #NDIP 🇨🇦🇾🇪 retweeted
My birthday is in a week, if you wish to contribute to my advocacy and disability survival, I am very appreciative, I'm turning 44 on 09/09. Etransfer mitchelltremblay@live.ca Wishlist amazon.ca/hz/wishlist/ls/3E2… Thanks to everyone who reads, shares and comments. Special thank you to all my donors over the past year who have kept me going. #odsp #disability #onpoli
I have compiled my interviews based on decades of living with disabilities, repeated homelessness, multiple mental illnesses, invasive addictions, and also new lived experience based advocacy and activism now that I am finally safe after two decades: LINKTREE: linktr.ee/odspoor - contains all of my interviews with TVO, CTV's W5, CBC, Toronto Star, Al Jazeera, The Walrus, Trillium, Ricochet, The Monitor, Times of London, IJF, Famous Youtubers, and in news articles - topics include legislated poverty, MAiD coercion for track 2 and mental illness expansion, and the greatly below poverty line and deadly low disability supports in Canada; like PWD in BC, AISH in Alberta or ODSP/OW in Ontario, plus the federal failures of the Canadian Disability Benefit and UNCRPD - a homemade, nationwide podcast @ThePwdcast which I researched, edited, recorded and published myself which includes amazing guests like a squatting grandmother in BC, a Star Trek actor talking mobility devices and MPP Sarah Jama on accessibility - all of whom share candid and raw stories - graphic designs, protest art, and parody media covers created to bring general awareness and positive change through eye-catching layouts accompanied with stats and facts that should motivate action from any reader - vlogs, town halls and panels that I have participated in from the CUPE seminar in Toronto to the premiere panel at Disposable: Life on ODSP and also my guest appearances on the Jann Arden, Handi-Link, and This Time In History podcasts E-TRANSFER: mitchelltremblay@live.ca GO FUNDME: gofund.me/750b15a9 WISH LIST: amazon.ca/hz/wishlist/ls/3E2… Please consider donating so I can pay bills, stay fed and keep fighting for the millions of Canadians who make up the 27% of voters with disabilities. Thank you!
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Hubert van Niekerk OCT #NDIP 🇨🇦🇾🇪 retweeted
UPDATE: After Ontario teachers flagged higher prices on the new Staples portal, the Ford government has released a list of more than 200 products it says are the cheapest available. The list includes a wide range of products from pens and pencils to construction paper and sensory fidget tools. Staples has also set up a hotline teachers can call if they find cheaper prices elsewhere. You can find the full list & hotline in this story: thetrillium.ca/news/educatio…
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Every word cuts deep-as it should.
Nightmares, hunger, fear of homelssness again, lack of safety, threat of addictions.... All while we watch you have more than you need, waste more than we eat, tell us we are frauds and moochers while you give oil and gas $36 billion in corporate welfare, while you build a war machine to fight a trumped up threat, wasting billions on AI and EV batteries while my community gets scurvy, dies frozen on the curb or take their own lives after waiting too long for help. Canada should be ashamed of how rich it is and how poor it makes the most vulnerable. Shame on all of you spreading lies like Doug Ford about odsp and ow fraud, Danielle Smith about AISH and the forced defunding to ADAP, premiers purposefully continuing legislated poverty across this nation, also shame on all of you who think WSIB is doing its job, and shame on every single Canadian living well beyond their means and are saying or doing nothing to help, especially our celebrities. Quit standing on guard for yourselves and start demanding basic income, a Canadian Disability benefit that works without barriers, a national disability insurance plan, homelssness and addictions gameplans put together by all three tiers of government. Poverty accrues interest and you are costing yourselves to keep torturing us... When citizens are dying, civics lessons don't mean shit, EVERY TIER of government is responsible. #cdnpoli #polican #canpoli
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Hubert van Niekerk OCT #NDIP 🇨🇦🇾🇪 retweeted
Replying to @nejsnave
That’s mine.
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One of my favourite quotes of all time is: “I’m a pretty good bullshitter myself, but sometimes it’s nice to just sit back and watch a real pro”. This applies much more often than it used to. Hoping more people will borrow that quote and place it where appropriate.
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Hubert van Niekerk OCT #NDIP 🇨🇦🇾🇪 retweeted
"The words embedded in every one of these treaties are not legal boilerplate. They are a promise to God, made in the presence of God because he was a party to it: “As long as the sun shines, the grass grows, and the rivers flow.” Those words appear in Treaties 6, 7, and 8. They describe an eternal relationship. Not a transaction. Not a lease."
My latest is out via Indigenous Insider, link below: This land was never surrendered. It was shared. Before God. With God watching. Smith, the separatists, and their leaders can appeal every court ruling. They can fast-track every referendum. They can invoke the Alberta Sovereignty Act and the Critical Infrastructure Defence Act and threaten to arrest every Chief who stands on treaty ground in defense of their people. But there is an authority they have not yet answered to. On the river flats at Blackfoot Crossing, in 1877, the Creator witnessed a covenant. At Fort Pitt, in 1876, the Creator heard the promises made — including the ones the Crown’s scribes quietly left out of the written document. At Lesser Slave Lake, in 1899, the Creator heard the word share, even as the English text wrote cede. A breakdown of what really happened- read/share now. open.substack.com/pub/indige…
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Hubert van Niekerk OCT #NDIP 🇨🇦🇾🇪 retweeted
"Tremblay faces a new stressor: an eviction threat this summer from the Guelph apartment that’s let him feel “relatively safe.” “I’m terrified. I won’t survive it this time. I’m too old,” Tremblay said, describing how his trauma “comes speeding back so quickly” and can leave him overwhelmed.That terror leaves him upset to think how MAID is now potentially off the table. “I get angry and I get scared, and I see that in a lot of the people that I’m talking to every day on social media,” he said. “There isn’t any kind of a solution for it, other than more support.” At the same time, Tremblay wants to share a message of hope. He feels the national conversation may be shifting toward giving vulnerable people more of that support, citing April comments from new federal NDP Leader Avi Lewis around a broken system, with some choosing MAID “out of desperation.” “We need hope as a community,” Tremblay said." ctvnews.ca/health/article/ta… @avilewis @NDP #maid #odsp #cdnpoli
"Seventy-five per cent of me thinks this is a win, that we’re going to be saving lives. That people, you know, would choose #MAID to escape from their mental illnesses, since there isn’t support,” he told CTV News from his Guelph apartment, where he considers himself lucky to live with low rent.  “There’s a lot of hesitancy in me as well, though. … This is taking my escape off the table. It’s what’s made me feel safe, it’s what’s made me #advocate.”Tremblay wants “every single tier” of government to work on better supports for people with disabilities, people living in poverty, and the overlap of those in both camps. He pushes for basic income and better disability plans. After rent, his own #Ontario disability payments leave him with about $10 a day for food and personal effects.“When things are tough, and when you have no hope, when you feel like you are absolutely worthless, you feel like you want to die,” he said. “And the big problem with MAID is that someone will do it for you.”" ctvnews.ca/health/article/ta…
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Hubert van Niekerk OCT #NDIP 🇨🇦🇾🇪 retweeted
Department of Justice 2025
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These are damning words by @ODSPoor reflecting years of lived experience that should be listened to, to effect policy change at all levels. Every Canadian. Every disability. Lifetime support. #NDIP.
It feels like we can never sleep anymore, the most vulnerable, the worries of social murder coming our way, Danielle Smith and Doug Ford slaughtering us, Federal government failing us for decades, mayors and municipalities vilifying us at our worst moments, all so GREED can flow freely into the pockets of power. Every tier of government in #Canada is commiting democide to afford luxury.
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