44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 20, 2022 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, as it stands, this bill is a promise. It is just a promise, but promises do not put food on the table.
I raised with the minister the issue of adequacy and the need for certainty that this bill will provide adequate standard of living for people with disabilities.
Is the minister prepared to include adequacy in this bill and move it from a promise to certainty?
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Mr. Speaker, I agree with the member for Thérèse-De Blainville that the bill is empty of details and needs improvement.
I wonder if the member could express what improvements the Bloc would like to see and what improvements would be necessary at committee.
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Mr. Speaker, before the House rose for the summer, all members called to put in place, without delay, a Canada disability benefit, and so I want to start by thanking the minister for respecting the will of the House and bringing Bill C-22 to the floor for second reading today.
I would also like to thank every member for their support of my unanimous consent motion that brought unity to this place on an issue of human rights and dignity. It is clear everyone in the House wants to get to work on improving the lives of persons with disabilities.
I look forward to working with all members to get the best possible bill passed, so we can put money in bank accounts and eradicate poverty among persons living with disabilities.
I also want to express my gratitude to all the organizations, individuals and allies who have done the heavy lifting to get us to this pivotal point. Their work has been difficult and powerful. Every meeting, email, phone call, letter, research paper, round table, media campaign and petition has led us to this point. I thank the disability advocates and allies in my own riding of Port Moody—Coquitlam, including the amazing staff and members of Community Ventures Society, Share, Kinsight, Inclusion BC, Special Olympics British Columbia, Douglas College, Community Volunteer Connections, Lelainia Lloyd, Elaine Willis and Merle Smith. They have shared their skills and stories of the barriers that people with disabilities navigate every single day in this discriminatory and ableist world.
I acknowledge that the disability community has had to do much too much heavy lifting to fight for their basic human rights and equity. They should not have to face such discrimination, and I raise my hands to all of them for the work they do. I know their fight will continue even after the Canada disability benefit becomes law because the discrimination that persons with disabilities experience in this country is a moral, systemic and systematic failure that perpetuates in communities across this country. New Democrats are committed to doing the work for change.
New Democrats want to see Bill C-22 become law as soon as possible. We want people with disabilities to be legislated out of poverty. We want to see the funding for this new benefit in the next budget, and we want this new benefit to get to people right away.
We hope the Liberal government is committed to the same goal, but there is still work to do. This bill, as it currently stands, lacks the details, as many of my colleagues have mentioned. It lacks the details needed to know if it will achieve the goals it sets out to achieve. There is no clear eligibility, no details of how much the benefit will be or even when people can expect to start receiving it. This bill lacks the accountability and measures needed to be successful.
If this were an NDP government bill, it would have looked very different. New Democrats would have outlined how we will eliminate poverty, not just express an aspiration to reduce it. Canadians have waited seven years for this promised benefit, yet there are no details of what it actually means, and people with disabilities are no closer to having money in the bank. This is unacceptable. The Liberal government has a responsibility to tell Canadians how this bill is really going to improve their lives. How will it do what it aspires to do? What are the tangible ways it will help?
With the rising cost of food and the skyrocketing costs of housing and rent, too many persons with disabilities are suffering. COVID-19 has only amplified existing inequalities. People with disabilities have disproportionately been affected by loss of employment, social isolation, lack of access to transit and recreation. For those with immunity risks, just going out for necessities is still a risk.
Throughout the summer, too many tragic situations have happened. This is not new suffering. It is just an amplification of how dire the situation is, and it speaks to why the Canada disability benefit must be fast-tracked so it can help those who are suffering and save lives. The stakes are high when dealing with lives, and that is why Canadians need to have assurance that this benefit will be adequate, will reach the people it needs to reach, and will be fast-tracked.
Poverty is a reality for almost one million people with disabilities. Poverty is not an accident. It is legislated. This is because there is no national framework to protect their basic needs. The longer the government turns away from the promised Canada disability benefit, the more dire the situation becomes.
I want to share just a few of the stories from women who have reached out to me. For anonymity, I am just going to share their stories without names.
Here is the first one: “I’m trying to find remote work part time but if I make over $200 a month, Doug Ford will take it back provincially. We desperately need help and no three-year study is needed. It's been done. So many studies. Why the Liberals are stalling as more people are applying for MAID. My daughter is 21, epileptic with a blood disorder, also on disability, and she said, 'Mom, maybe we should consider MAID.'”
This is the second one: “This Canada disability benefit needs to get approved by all federal parties and 'fast-tracked!' This has nothing to do with working or not, as many cannot work! MAID is not a substitute for government aid to help pay for rent, groceries and medicine.”
Here is the last one I will share today: “I sacrificed many comforts to make life almost affordable. I share an apartment with two others above a store. The room I sleep in is not legally allowed to be called a bedroom because it has no window. It probably used to, but now the space between my building and my neighbour has a roof. I chose it because it made it easier to find roommates, and it's quieter. But it gets so hot in the summer that I can't sleep. My roommates keep their doors closed most of the time, so I get no natural light or fresh air at home. But it's better than the alternatives.”
I hear in these voices and the voices of many a call for urgent action. The rising cost of living is not slowing down, yet persons with disabilities are forced to wait for the government to see them, to prioritize them and to fulfill a promise it made years ago.
Since 2015, the Liberals have spoken about the importance of lifting people with disabilities out of poverty and the need for dignity, autonomy and human rights, yet their actions and their timelines have not matched their words. The Liberal government does not seem to understand the importance of this bill and how the lack of urgency is hurting people. It is beyond time that the Liberals do better.
Where past governments have failed, this House cannot. We can, through a united voice, hold the government to its promise of a Canada disability benefit that would actually lift people out of poverty and improve the lives of some of the most vulnerable Canadians who are falling further and further behind. This is a historic opportunity to end legislated poverty for persons with disabilities. The government can end it by delivering some of the most significant national income security advancements for Canadians with disabilities in over 50 years. Economists predict that poverty in Canada would be reduced by as much as 40% by eliminating disability poverty. I will repeat that number: 40%. I ask members to imagine that in Canada.
Done right, Bill C-22 has the potential to uphold the human rights and dignity of persons with disabilities and truly ensure they do not live in poverty. The key to the success, which many other members in the House today have also expressed, is that the amount of the benefit must be adequate. It must be enough to meet the basic needs of persons with disabilities.
In Canada, we have an official poverty line that spells out the amount needed to cover the basic needs of everyday life. It is a marker of the minimum income that people need to survive, yet that measure has failings, as it does not take into consideration the additional costs of a disability. That is why the government must work closely, as has been said in the House today, with other levels of government to ensure that Canada's disability benefit is truly a poverty reduction benefit with no clawbacks of any current federal, provincial or territorial disability programs.
Inclusion Canada says it this way: “provide a guaranteed adequate income floor for working age persons with disabilities.” This is what the committee has clearly expressed over and over again. A national benefit must be adequate.
Over one million people with at least one disability in this country live in poverty. Done right, this bill would legislate a million people out of poverty. Let us get it right, and let us do that quickly.
I reiterate that adequacy cannot come with clawbacks. The number one worry about this new benefit in the disability community is that any new income support program would result in clawbacks somewhere else. The Liberal government has already shown a pattern of introducing income support programs only to claw them back. This cannot happen. In the past, New Democrats have successfully fought for Liberal government clawbacks to be reversed. We do not want to have to do that again. There needs to be protection in this bill for no clawbacks.
I want to take a moment here to talk about choice. There can be no legitimate conversation on human rights, dignity, autonomy, or individual choice when people's most basic needs, such as housing, food, clothing and medication, are not met due to poverty. Governments say that everyone has equal and inherent rights, but we only need to look at the government's failure to deliver pandemic supports to persons with disabilities during this pandemic to remind ourselves that people living with disabilities are continually left behind.
The continuing exclusion of persons with disabilities in government decision-making and in budgetary commitments, and the insurmountable barriers to full and equal participation in civic life, have led some of the most vulnerable in our society to consider ending their lives, not because they choose to die, but because they see no way to live.
Successive Liberal and Conservative governments have failed to offer people with disabilities equal protection under the law, including the income supports they need to survive. This is long-standing discrimination that needs to be corrected. Low-income persons with disabilities require, at minimum, a bill that commits to adequacy without clawbacks. It is a matter of life and death.
New Democrats share the disappointment of the advocates and allies who spelled out their needs and concerns, shared their stories and took part in years of consultation with the government, only to have eligibility details missing from the bill. No one knows who would receive this benefit.
People with disabilities are relying on the government to fast-track this benefit to deliver support without delay. The government has had a full year, seven years actually, to add that to this bill, and it makes no sense to New Democrats that the government has not been able to clearly articulate who will be eligible.
As New Democrats, we are concerned that, without the details, the government will leave people behind. We saw this during the pandemic. Even though persons with disabilities were already more likely to live in poverty, persons with disabilities were the last group to get emergency supports from the government. While corporations benefited from quick and decisive government action on emergency supports, persons with disabilities were an afterthought, and when those supports did come, only a third of people who needed it actually received it because access to those supports was underpinned by a deeply flawed disability tax credit system.
The disability tax credit does not work for those living in poverty. New Democrats support the calls from disability organizations and individuals for eligibility criteria to include persons with disabilities already eligible for provincial, territorial and federal disability programs. The government cannot rely solely on the disability tax credit, and the government must overcome its internal data problems because getting help to people must not be limited by the logistics of an antiquated system.
Eligibility must also be accessible, consistent and dignified. For too long, governments have added the burden of excessive reporting requirements to persons with disabilities, including checking in and having to empty out their pockets in front of a government employee. This is a barrier that takes away a person's autonomy and dignity. It is essential that eligibility for this new benefit is modernized and does not strip people of their dignity.
In closing, Canada aspires to be a world leader in the eradication of poverty, and here is our chance to make that a reality for persons with disabilities. This bill needs to ensure adequacy, support and eligibility. Promises are not enough. The persons living with disabilities in this country deserve the adequacy that they are entitled to. I look forward to working with all of the House at committee on this bill.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the minister for her collaboration up to this point with all members of the House.
We talk about the provinces, and I have had conversations with a number of ministers across my province. They are waiting for some leadership from the federal government. They are open to having these conversations. I would say that given the seven years the disability community has been waiting for this, those conversations should be much further down the road.
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Mr. Speaker, fortunately, persons with disabilities across the country have provincial supports. They do not have enough, but they do have provincial support. In B.C., we have an NDP government and this is top of mind for it. This is definitely work that it wants to do around what those disability benefits need to look like. There are a number of them.
I want to share with the minister that one of the most popular disability supports in B.C. is a bus pass, a transit pass. It is unbelievable how many people in the consultations I did were afraid to lose their bus pass and their ability to move to their job, to get their groceries and to move around in society and civic life.
I just wanted to share that. The government in B.C. is working hard to ensure that persons with disabilities have free and active participation in civic life.
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Mr. Speaker, that conversation should not have to be part of this bill, but over the summer we saw more and more of that conversation happen. It is our obligation in the House to make sure that every Canadian does not live in poverty.
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Mr. Speaker, I think we need to get the bill to committee. We need to get the bill to committee so we can discuss it and get some details into the bill. Whether it happens in committee or we lose control of it by moving it out of committee before we get those details in place is a matter of importance in this space.
We need to make sure that we get this bill right and we get it right fast. I am concerned that if this bill passes without comprehensive conversations in committee, where we do nothing and do not get information, it could take another seven years to get this benefit into people's hands.
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Mr. Speaker, as I said in my speech, I am very optimistic and very hopeful that all members of the House will be able to sit together and pass this bill quickly.
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Mr. Speaker, in my speech, I mentioned the tools for accountability and measurement. One of the areas that the NDP feels very strongly about is to have some measurement tools written into the bill. I know there will be some freedom about how this would be implemented, but we need to at least have security and certainty in the bill regarding what the amount will be.
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