44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 1, 2023 02:00PM
Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise on behalf of Canadians living with disabilities in the Ontario Winter Games-hosting riding of Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke.
Bill C-22, the false hope bill, meets the Liberals' net-zero goal. There is net-zero benefit to Canadians living with disabilities. After eight years of incompetence and corruption, the Liberal approach is to deny, delay and deflect. If dragging their feet were an Olympic sport, the Liberals would sweep the podium.
In 2015, with unanimous support, the House passed my private member's bill to protect Canadians living with disabilities from predatory vulture companies. These vultures offered to help Canadians living with disabilities complete the disability tax credit form. After completing a one-page form, these companies charged up to 30% of the tax credit intended for Canadians facing additional living costs due to disabilities. Thousands of Canadians lost millions of dollars to these vultures.
Sadly, for Canadians living with disabilities, my bill was passed shortly before the Liberals took power. Whether out of partisan spite or just Liberal indifference to Canadians living with disabilities, this gang took seven years to pass one page of regulations required to make the law actually work, seven years of predatory vulture companies taking a 30% cut of the disability tax credit. It took them seven years to pass regulations that can be printed on a single sheet of paper. It took them seven years to help Canadians living with disabilities. Now they are at it again.
Bill C-22 was originally Bill C-35. It had to be reintroduced after the Prime Minister called his superspreader pandemic election campaign. Canadians living with disabilities need to remember that the political interests of the Liberal Party always come first.
It has been three years since this bill was introduced, but even if I could snap my fingers and pass the bill right now, Canadians living with disabilities would still not see any help from the government. That is because the bill is TBD, “to be determined”. How much will the benefit be? That is TBD. Will the benefits be clawed back? That is TBD. Who is even eligible to receive it? That is, again, T bleeping D.
At committee, the minister said that it would be at least a year before Canadians living with disabilities would have the answers to those basic questions. My private member's bill to protect Canadians living with disabilities from vulture companies required just one regulation, and the regulation was to set a maximum amount these vultures could charge. It took seven years to set the maximum at $100.
Canadians living with disabilities waited seven years for one regulation from the Liberals, and now the Liberals are claiming they will pass the dozens of required regulations in one year. It would actually be a great relief to Canadians living with disabilities if the government admitted the delay in regulating vulture companies was out of partisan spite. If that was not the reason for the delay, it means the government is incompetent. It means Canadians living with disabilities could be waiting years for financial assistance, and that is unacceptable.
It is why Conservatives pushed for and successfully secured an amendment requiring the minister to report back in six months of this bill passing on the progress to pass the required regulations. The challenge is that this type of accountability measure only works in governments with the capacity to feel shame. Unfortunately, shamelessness is a defining feature of the Prime Minister and his government. I am not the first one to say the Prime Minister cares more about style over substance. Former finance minister Morneau literally wrote a book about it.
This disability benefit act might just be the purest form of the Liberals' style-over-substance problem. There are no dollars budgeted for this bill, yet to hear the government members speak, Canadians might think this bill has already passed and completely solved poverty. However, a press release is not policy, and the devil is always in the details. In the case of this proposed disability benefit, the devil is the clawback, and the details are the provinces.
My colleagues on the committee proposed an amendment to prevent the benefit from being clawed back. The Liberals voted against it. The minister claims a clawback is a red line when negotiating the creation of a benefit with the provinces, yet the Liberals voted against putting that into legislation. How can the minister claim a red line exists for the government when the Liberals voted against it?
If Canadians living with disabilities are worried about the government's track record on passing regulations, that should be doubly true with any required negotiations with the provinces. I know some Liberals will point to the speed at which they “negotiated” with the provinces on $10-a-day day care. That was some negotiating: “Here is some money. Go spend it on day care.” Negotiating the disability benefit will be much harder. In this case, the provinces have some actual leverage. How many Liberals will appreciate this leverage will depend more on the electoral fortunes of the Liberal Party in that particular province.
Inevitably, this will leave Canadians living with disabilities facing a patchwork of policies, depending on the province. Sorry, Madam Speaker, I misspoke. “Inevitable” means it is certain to happen, but when it comes to the government, nothing is certain except the pursuit of its own political interests. Canadians living with disabilities do not deserve to experience more uncertainty. They need our support to live full lives and participate fully in society, including in the workforce.
This was an urgent bill when it was first introduced three years ago. As Liberal spending fuelled the cost-of-living crisis, that urgency has only increased, yet for the Prime Minister, the most urgent matter was not passing the original legislation; it was calling his superspreader election.
After eight years of this corrupt Liberal government, Canadians living with disabilities are even worse off. Just as inflation has made it more expensive to live, the government is making it easier to die. We have heard testimony at committee of Canadians living with disabilities considering assisted suicide because the government spending is driving up inflation. It is only more chilling when the director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba said, “I was rather proud that Canada has done so well in terms of organ donation by MAID patients.”
Then we have the Minister of Justice claiming, “Remember that suicide generally is available to people. This is a group within the population who, for physical reasons and possibly mental reasons, can’t make that choice themselves to do it themselves.”
When Canadians hear those quotes, they are right to think Canada is broken. We have a so-called ethicist celebrating organ harvesting, and a justice minister claiming a right to be killed through the help of the state. We have a Liberal government that will take seven years to pass one regulation to protect Canadians living with disabilities.
The urgency to pass legislation that delivers tangible benefits is real. Every minute the Liberals delay getting this money back into bank accounts puts lives at risk. The members across the aisle might roll their eyes, but 35% of Canadians who died by assisted suicide in 2021 felt they were a burden to their family, friends or caregivers.
The government was warned repeatedly of the danger that expanding assisted suicide posed, and the loudest warnings came from those living with disabilities. It is not because we live in a structurally ableist society. It is because the rhetoric from the government about helping Canadians living with disabilities never matches the money actually spent. What money we do provide will be clawed back the very minute they try to improve their financial situations, and that is why it is truly immiserating for Canadians living with disabilities. Structural impoverishment by government policy is a kind of hopelessness that drives people to commit suicide. It is a kind of despair that can only be fuelled by promises of benefits that never actually arrive.
We need to put ourselves in the shoes of someone who had reached that breaking point in late 2020. They are encouraged to hold on. They are told a benefit that will make a material improvement in their lives is on the way. They watch for any sign that relief is near. Their hope grows when they hear legislation is being introduced with all-party support. However, then there is the Prime Minister's urgent superspreader election.
1453 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, that bill passed with all-party support and then the election happened, and people living with disabilities waited and heard that the government considers subsidies for television producers more important for Parliament to consider. Then the Liberals introduced their news media subsidy legislation, and we see that the Prime Minister considers money for bribing reporters more important than the disability benefit legislation. Finally, just so Canadians living with disabilities really understand where they rank among Liberal priorities, the government said harassing lawful firearms owners was more important than providing a disability benefit to those living with disabilities.
99 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, just before Christmas, I started receiving phone calls on Bill C-22, with people asking me to please vote for Bill C-22. I thought I better look and make sure I know what I am calling them about. When I looked at the bill and started scrolling through it, I thought my iPad was frozen because there was nothing there. I looked at it and it said “coming into force”, but what was coming into force?
I can already hear the grumbling across the aisle. Those members will claim they care about Canadians living with disabilities, but how many of them were in the House eight years ago when we passed the Disability Tax Credit Promoters Restrictions Act unanimously? I know the member for Papineau was there. He, too, supported the legislation to help Canadians living with disabilities, but then when he became Prime Minister, it took seven years to pass one regulation. I pray that is not the case with the Canada disability benefit. Given the greasy slope this country seems to be on, we do not have another seven years to wait.
189 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, the first question was about what we as Conservatives did when we were in power. I remember that our dearly beloved Jim Flaherty, who had two sons living with disabilities, brought in a number of disability savings accounts because he knew there would be a time when he and his wife would not be there to care for them. He not only put together a bill but implemented a savings plan so that people, when grown, would be able to have a disability benefit. However, not all families are fortunate enough to have money to put away.
99 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- menumenu
- notificationsnotifications
- home
- mailmail
- searchsearch
