This woman with disabilities gets only $1,169 a month. She hopes the Ontario election changes that

Alexis Wilson has exactly $125 left each month for food and anything extra once she's paid her rent and phone bill.

With several health conditions leaving her unable to work, Wilson gets just $1,169 each month from the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP), meaning she often skips meals and never gets the chance to fulfil other simple longings.

"I would love to be able to just go to a restaurant, a sit-in restaurant and just eat a nice meal. Not even an expensive one, just like a nice meal," said Wilson, 42, who spoke to CBC News Wednesday at her home in Ajax, Ont., east of Toronto.

Wilson is just one of the more than a half a million people who subsist on ODSP, according to Ontario's auditor general. She and others with disabilities hope the winner of the provincial election on June 2 will increase the monthly payment. Disability advocates will gather at Queen's Park Thursday to try to get the issue firmly on the campaign agenda. They'll call for a monthly rate that pushes recipients like Wilson above the poverty line.

Anthony Frisina, a spokesperson for the Ontario Disability Coalition, also relies on ODSP payments. He says the groups involved in the rally want to see a rate of at least $2,000 per month, given the federal government deemed that amount a "livable wage" when it set up the Canada Emergency Response Benefit at the start of the pandemic.

This increase would mean many with disabilities could live in accommodations that are safe, desirable and suitable to their accessibility needs, something currently not the case for many, he says. 

As it stands, people on ODSP have just $497 to pay for a roof over their heads and that "doesn't really cover anything nowadays in terms of shelter," Frisina said.

The current annual ODSP rates give recipients just over $14,000 a year, says Shawn Pegg, the director of social policy and strategic initiatives for Community Living, an organization that advocates for policy changes to better support people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

"You're 40 per cent below the poverty line," said Pegg.

The current rates also mean many have to live with aging parents and people don't know what they will do when their parents are no longer around to offer them support, he says. Others are forced to cope with living arrangements they would not have chosen otherwise, he says.

Wilson knows what Pegg is talking about.

"I have this terror. What happens when my mom dies?" said Wilson, who receives some food and other support from her mother, a senior with a limited income.

Wilson, who has bipolar disorder, PTSD, arthritis and several other physical disabilities that limit her mobility, says she is considering medically assistance in dying if rates don't improve. 

"I don't know if I want to live another 60 years like this, It's a long time to live with very little money," she said.