On 2 July 2026 Alberta stopped having one disability income programme and started having two. That date is Alberta's own: its ADAP eligibility page refers to "clients who transition to ADAP on July 2, 2026". If you receive disability income assistance, or you are applying for the first time, this is the change that matters most, and the most common thing we are asked to explain.
Here is the short answer. AISH is now for people whose severe disability permanently prevents employment. ADAP, the Alberta Disability Assistance Program, is for people whose severe disability significantly impedes employment, continuously or episodically, but does not prevent it. You do not choose between them. You submit one application and an adjudicator decides which one you go into.
One application, two destinations
Alberta now uses a single combined Disability Income Assistance Application, form DS2444A, for both programmes. It has three parts: your information, a medical report completed by your health professional (form DS2444B), and your financial documentation.
What happens next is worth understanding properly, because it is not what most people picture.
An adjudicator first checks the basic requirements, age and residency, and then the financial ones. If you pass both, that adjudicator reviews your medical information and decides one of two things: that you qualify for ADAP, or that your file should be referred to a panel of medical professionals to determine whether you qualify for AISH.
That distinction matters more than almost anything else on this page. You do not apply for AISH and get moved down to ADAP. The adjudicator decides whether your file reaches the AISH medical panel at all. If it does not, that referral decision is the thing that can be challenged, not the AISH decision itself.
What each programme requires
The non-medical criteria are the same for both. You must be at least 18 and not eligible for an Old Age Security pension. You must live in Alberta and be a Canadian citizen or permanent resident. You cannot be in a correctional facility or certain mental health facilities. Your non-exempt assets, added together, cannot be worth more than $100,000.
Certain assets do not count toward that limit, including the home you live in, a vehicle, a second vehicle adapted for a disability, clothing, reasonable household items, a registered disability savings plan and a trust.
The medical test is where they diverge, and the government's own wording is not perfectly consistent across its pages. The ADAP eligibility page states the test as a severe disability that "significantly impedes employment continuously or episodically." Elsewhere the same test appears as "substantially impedes" and as "significantly restricts but does not prevent." We use the eligibility page wording because that is the operational page, but if you are close to the line, the variation is worth knowing about rather than being surprised by.
For AISH the test is that the disability "permanently prevents employment." Alberta's pages also note that available treatments, therapies, rehabilitation and training are considered before permanence is accepted.
The money
ADAP's core financial benefit is $1,740 per month, plus health and personal benefits the government values at around $400 per month on average.
ADAP is built to be compatible with working, which is the whole reason it exists. The employment income exemption is $700 per month for a single client and $1,100 for a parent, and the government states that Albertans on ADAP can earn up to $45,240 a year in employment income while continuing to receive financial benefits. Health benefits continue regardless of employment income, so earning above the exemption may reduce the cash but does not take away the health card.
Child benefits, from the August 2026 benefit period, are $300 for a first child, $117 for a second, $88 for a third, $59 for a fourth and $30 for each additional child.
We do not publish the current AISH monthly living allowance figure here. The rate schedule sits in a government document we would rather quote exactly than approximate, and a wrong number about someone's income is worse than no number. Alberta's benefit estimator and the Alberta Supports Contact Centre on 1-877-644-9992 will give you the current figure.
If you were already on AISH
You were not necessarily left where you were. On 2 July 2026, existing AISH clients automatically remained on AISH only if they met at least one of four criteria:
- a severe and profound developmental disability, or being deemed eligible for or receiving Persons with Developmental Disabilities services
- a palliative or terminal medical condition
- living in a continuing care home
- being 60 years of age or older
Clients who met none of those were transitioned to ADAP, unless they chose otherwise. To keep them financially whole, transitioned clients receive a $200 monthly transition benefit, which runs until 31 December 2027.
That end date deserves its own conversation, and we have written one: what happens on 31 December 2027.
Can you move between them?
Yes, but not by asking. A transitioned client who believes AISH is the more appropriate programme needs a new application and a fresh eligibility review, not an internal switch.
There is one piece of genuinely good news attached to this. Alberta will cover the cost of one Disability Medical Report for an AISH client who transitioned to ADAP in July 2026 and later chooses to be assessed for AISH, and there is no time limit on using it. The medical report is usually the expensive part and the part people put off. For this specific group, it is paid for.
The detail that costs people money
Your benefits are backdated to the month the department received all the information needed to approve your application. Not the month you first applied.
That single rule is worth understanding before you start. Because the backdating runs from the month the department had everything, incomplete information can delay a decision, and a file waiting on one outstanding document is waiting on the whole thing. If your health professional charges for completing form DS2444B, that cost is yours unless you are on Income Support, in which case it may be covered through your worker.
Alberta does not publish a processing time standard, and any figure you see quoted online is not from the government.
Where this sits with us
We help people prepare and organise these applications: making sure the file is complete before it goes in, that the medical report says what the assessor needs it to say, and that nothing is missing that would delay the backdating date. We do not decide eligibility, we do not represent anyone in a legal proceeding, and we do not promise an outcome. What we can do is make sure the application that arrives is the strongest and most complete version of your situation.
If you are not sure which programme you are in, or what happens next, an initial consultation is the best place to ask.