Sometime around 2009—and I’ll admit I’m working partly from memory here—someone mentioned to me, almost in passing, that there was a thing called a Registered Disability Savings Plan. Casually, the way people mention things they assume you already know about. I had a disability. I paid taxes. I went to my bank to open one.
It was not simple. What should have been a routine appointment turned into something closer to a decoding exercise. Forms that assumed knowledge I didn’t have. Language that felt like it was written for someone else. At one point, I genuinely wasn’t sure whether I had done it correctly. But I stayed with it, asked questions, and eventually got it sorted.
Nearly two decades later, I’m glad I did. The RDSP has become a meaningful part of my retirement portfolio. In the years when I was competing in wheelchair tennis and income wasn’t always steady, those government contributions kept building quietly in the background. That kind of long-term foundation is hard to replicate any other way, and I’d be in a very different position today without it.
Here’s what I know now that I wish I’d known then: the RDSP is one of the most consequential financial tools available to Canadians with disabilities. And not enough people know about it.
The government launched the plan in 2008. If you qualify for the Disability Tax Credit, you’re eligible. Ottawa will add up to $3,500 per year in matching grants, plus up to $1,000 annually in bonds for lower-income Canadians—contributions the government makes simply because the account exists. Over decades, that compounds into something substantial. This isn’t a footnote in the tax code. It’s one of the most generous savings incentives in the country.
And yet, as of 2020, only about one in three eligible Canadians had ever opened one. Roughly half of those who hadn’t opened one had never heard of it. Sit with that for a second!
Half the people who qualify for this plan don’t know it exists. That’s a gap—one that government, financial institutions, and our own community all have a role in closing. Awareness has to start somewhere, and frankly, it should start earlier and more consistently.
This is part of why the disability tax credit reforms in the 2026 Spring Economic Update matter. The application process is getting meaningfully easier: occupational therapists, physiotherapists, and speech-language pathologists can now certify the medical forms, and doctors will only need to confirm a diagnosis rather than exhaustively document its daily effects. For the many Canadians who found the previous process too daunting to attempt, that’s real progress.
But a simpler DTC application is only valuable if people know what it unlocks. The DTC isn’t just a tax credit. It’s the entry point to the RDSP—to the grants and bonds that most people with disabilities never collect.
The reforms clear the path. What happens next depends on whether people are pointed toward it.
When I think back to that first appointment, I think about the people who might have walked away before working through the complexity. People with fewer resources, less time, less margin for error. People for whom the paperwork alone is a reason not to try again. The system has gotten somewhat better, but the awareness gap remains real.
Financial wellness for Canadians with disabilities is not an abstract goal. It’s a concrete, practical question: can you afford your mobility equipment? Can you build toward a future when the present already asks so much? The RDSP doesn’t answer every question, but properly used, it builds a floor that very little else can match— and I’m living proof of that.
So here’s what I’m asking, from someone in this community to another: if you have a Disability Tax Credit, or if you’re about to apply under the new rules, don’t stop there. Find out about the RDSP. Have a conversation with a financial advisor or your bank. The grants have been sitting there since 2008. You are entitled to them.
Seventeen years is long enough to wait.
Joel Dembe is a Paralympian, public speaker and Senior Manager, Distribution Strategy and Communications at RBC Direct Investing. He serves as Vice-Chair of Praxis Spinal Cord Institute and Chair of the Patron’s Council for the Canadian Abilities Foundation.
Image: Shutterstock
