- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- NDP
- Port Moody—Coquitlam
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 68%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $129,260.13
- Government Page
- Oct/19/23 10:21:10 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the Speaker's ruling encouraging the government to provide more thorough answers on order paper questions. I encourage the government to do the same in relation to providing adequate responses to petitions, as I present one today that is a matter of life and death.
This is about persons with disabilities who are living in poverty, who are suffering more than ever and need financial assistance. Due to an expected 18-month delay to receiving the Canada disability benefit due to regulatory process and a risk to life due to insufficient supports on current disability programs, federally and provincially, Canadians living with disabilities on provincial and federal disability benefits are struggling immensely with benefits significantly below the poverty line.
Over half of those who are unhoused have one or more disabilities. There have been instances of people turning to MAID out of economic desperation and there have been those in the community who have also been lost to suicide. People are desperately awaiting the Canada disability benefit.
The undersigned members of the community of disabled Canadians call upon the House of Commons to, one, consider the implementation of a temporary top-up benefit, a disability emergency response benefit, or DERB, to be immediately provided to help all those currently eligible for any disabled benefit until the Canada disability benefit is being distributed, and, two, consider the disability emergency response benefit to fill the gap and make a difference in the many lives desperately needing support now.
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- Sep/21/23 2:49:09 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the government has turned it backs on persons with disabilities, who have endured a summer of skyrocketing housing prices, declining access to health care and increasing food prices.
Canadians with disabilities are already twice as likely to live below the poverty line, and the Liberals have not provided them adequate support. This has left Canadians with disabilities unable to pay their bills. These are not luxury items; these are basic needs.
Will the government finally create the disability emergency relief fund for which the community has been calling?
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- Apr/19/23 7:52:26 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I certainly do not question the wishes of the minister but what I do question is the understanding and the political will of the government.
I just wanted to point out that more people like the man whose mum came to see me just last week in my office will lose their housing and will go hungry. This is not acceptable. It is not acceptable that we will let people lose their housing and they will not be able to have a meal a day because we will not support the income supports they have been asking for.
Through the full consultation that I know this department has done, the number one pillar that people needed was financial security. Why will the government not look after the people in this country? Why will they not do it?
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Madam Speaker, I am here in the House again to ask for financial support for persons with disabilities. I want to start with a story so that the government can understand how this is actually impacting people in my community.
Last week, a mother in her 70s came in to talk about her adult son who lives on his own and is about to be demovicted from an apartment he has lived in for almost 17 years. He cannot afford the new rent on the income he has at this point in time. This is what is really happening to people in this market-driven housing frenzy that the Liberal government has fed.
Once again, I rise in the House to shine a light on the urgency for persons with disabilities to have immediate income support as they continue to wait for a Canada disability benefit. While provincial and territorial income support programs have been virtually stagnant for years, the community is facing an ever-shrinking income while struggling to cope with the rising cost of food and the skyrocketing price of housing.
Through the course of the HUMA committee study on Bill C-22, the Canada disability benefit act, we heard that about one million Canadians living with a disability are in poverty. We heard from the minister and her ESDC officials that the average gap between provincial and territorial support and the poverty line for persons with disabilities is $9,000, and there is no way to fill that gap. Overwhelmingly, we heard that these one million people are not eating enough meals daily and that their housing can be unacceptable and often inaccessible.
It is essential that the federal government step up immediately with an emergency benefit. Therefore, I ask again for the Minister of Disability Inclusion to provide this emergency response benefit for persons with disabilities while Canadians wait for the currently unfunded Canada disability benefit.
Canadians with disabilities face exclusion from society on a daily basis. The recent Auditor General's report on accessible transportation found that, in 2019 and 2020, nearly two-thirds of the 2.2 million persons with disabilities who travelled on planes, trains and other federally regulated modes of transportation faced barriers. Even worse, the risk of damage to their essential assistive devices is beyond unacceptable. Transportation is essential to people's daily lives, including for people with disabilities. The government should understand that. Persons with disabilities are more likely to rely on public transportation as they navigate this incredibly ableist world.
Education is another place where people with disabilities are facing barriers and exclusion every day, whether in the aging infrastructure that years of out-of-date schools have put in front of people; insufficient funding for school boards to fully include children with disabilities; or challenges related to accessing and applying for student loans, grants, tax credits and other programs that are supposed to give access to better education. It is just not working. Even in seeking employment, people with disabilities are excluded, with inaccessible workplaces, biases of employers and the stresses of coping with too many other challenges on top of employment.
The NDP knows that people with disabilities need assistance today. This includes better access to income supports, publicly funded pharmacare and dental care as part of improving the lives of persons with disabilities.
With the Canada disability benefit at least a year away, I implore the Liberal government to help persons with disabilities now with an emergency relief benefit. The disability community deserves it.
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- Feb/3/23 11:46:29 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I raise my hands to the member for Nunavut.
Living with a disability should not mean living in poverty, but for one million Canadians this is exactly what it means. The Canada disability benefit is at least a year away, and as Canadians wait for it, the cost of living continues to rise. The situation is dire as people skip meals and contemplate MAID. They need financial support now.
Will the Liberals provide a disability emergency relief benefit immediately to close that income gap?
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- Dec/1/22 10:09:29 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as we head into December 3, the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, I find myself again in the House advocating for the reduction of poverty among persons who live with disabilities.
Today I am tabling a petition on behalf of the constituents of Port Moody—Coquitlam, Anmore and Belcarra, to ask the government to finally lift people with disabilities out of poverty. Over a million people in Canada with disabilities live in poverty, and that needs to end. The petitioners are asking the government to end the current practice of legislated poverty of Canadians living with disabilities and establish a federal disability benefit that upholds human rights, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and sustainable development goal number one: no poverty under the Canada disability benefit act. I close by saying that this is possible immediately.
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- Nov/18/22 12:13:19 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a petition from the people of Port Moody—Coquitlam, Anmore and Belcarra. They are concerned about the current and rising levels of poverty among persons with disabilities and they want it to change.
Today, I present this petition on their behalf. These concerned Canadian citizens call upon the Government of Canada to end the current practice of legislated poverty of Canadians living with disabilities, and establish a federal disability benefit that upholds human rights, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and sustainable development goal number one of no poverty by putting in place the Canada disability benefit act.
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- Oct/21/22 2:08:29 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the law is clear that adequate housing is a human right, but many of the 22% of Canadians with disabilities are being left behind.
The National Housing Strategy Act embeds Canada’s international human rights obligations to implement the right to adequate housing, but as this motion points out, the national housing strategy is missing recognition of the additional barriers to housing faced by persons with disabilities.
The motion has the opportunity to correct that. Article 19 of the International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities notes the equal rights of all persons with disabilities to live independently and to inclusion in the community. That is not happening under the government. The Government of Canada is failing to live up to its obligation to ensure adequate, accessible and affordable housing.
We see the housing crisis manifesting in communities across this country. There are people in Canada suffering, and the government has a responsibility to fix it, to build homes, to have affordable homes, to stop the homeless crisis in Canada and to recognize that persons with disabilities have even more barriers to housing.
Canadians with a disability are greatly overrepresented in the homeless population. Forty-five per cent of Canada’s homeless have a physical or mental disability, and core housing need is at least 16% higher for persons with disabilities. In British Columbia alone, nearly 4,000 people living with disabilities are on a wait-list to find an accessible home. Housing demand far exceeds availability. Only 5% of units in B.C. are targeted for accessibility despite the fact that 15% to 20% of Canadians live with one.
It has been said that the only true disability is the inability to accept and respect people’s differences. Living up to the legal obligation to protect human rights means understanding equity and addressing long-standing inequities. How can those inequities be fixed if the decision-making tables are missing those perspectives?
This motion seeks to begin to correct that. That lack of representation at decision-making tables is also contributing to poverty. There are links between poverty, homelessness and living with disabilities. According to one IRIS report, people living with disabilities are twice as likely to live below the poverty line. In fact, living in poverty is likely to increase instances of disability.
While there are no concrete numbers on how many people experiencing homelessness in Canada live with disabilities, we know that there are many. The Center for Justice and Social Compassion estimates that 45% of all people experiencing homelessness are disabled or diagnosed with a mental illness. Given that the Canadian survey on disability showed that 13% of Canadians self-identified as having a disability, this shows just how overrepresented people living with disabilities are in the homeless population.
Street Health Toronto found that 55% of people experiencing homelessness had a serious health condition, and of those, 63% had more than one. In a report by the Daily Bread, it was reported that almost 50% of people frequenting Toronto food banks have a disability, and that includes persons with invisible disabilities.
Invisible disabilities, such as anxiety, depression, chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia, are not always seen out in the community, but it does not make them any less limiting in this ableist world. Long COVID, for which there is no single test and with symptoms varying from person to person, joins the list of invisible disabilities with very real impacts. This reality needs to be addressed and investments in supports and benefits are required from the government.
Accessing those supports and benefits must be easier. Accessing benefits has always been a barrier. Complicated processes and confusing paperwork are all too often more challenging for persons with disabilities. In The Globe and Mail, Michael Prince wrote about how people with severe and prolonged disabilities face many challenges when trying to get their benefits and appealing decisions when their applications are rejected. Prince claims that the system is “structurally flawed” and asks:
Who suffers? The clients and their families, who confront new obstacles to access [programs] vital to their well being and financial security.
When the very systems put in place to support persons with disabilities are themselves exclusionary and unaccommodating, it is no wonder that these people are living in poverty and falling through the cracks, and when that system is keeping them from housing, their basic human right is being violated. The government needs to stop this violation and build the accessible, affordable homes required.
When I was first elected, I asked an Order Paper question about accessible housing. I asked about what accessible housing we are losing each year in this country. CMHC came back and said, “CMHC does not collect data on accessible units that have been lost or decommissioned.”
I also requested some stats from CMHC about federal funds used to build accessible units and to convert existing units to accessible housing. Its response only included the national housing strategy program, even though I asked it for data since 2010. This meant that no data was collected on accessible housing until 2017, and for the first three years, from 2017 to 2020, there was nearly no data. Only in the last two years, 2020 and 2021, was there any data of any measurable consequence.
Liberal and Conservative governments have failed to deliver on housing for all Canadians. How could they not, if they were not even collecting the data?
The need to act cannot wait. We cannot have one more person with a disability forced into a tent on the street like the ones we see every day on our way to the House of Commons here in Ottawa. As the motion says, we must “prioritize the creation and repair of accessible units through [the national housing strategy] programs”. The government cannot move fast enough on that.
Let us not forget how Canadians got into a situation where housing is unaffordable and inaccessible. Conservative and Liberal governments have overseen the financialization of housing. Instead of protecting our social and accessible housing stock, they encouraged upzoning and gentrification in the name of density, forcing persons with disabilities living in poverty out of their homes. Density dreams are for developers and investors. The financialization of housing is only working for the super-wealthy and is leaving the rest of Canadians behind.
The National Housing Act has legislated that the Government of Canada’s housing policy is required to recognize that the human right to adequate housing is a fundamental human right affirmed in international law and that housing is essential in the inherent dignity and well-being of the person. The government must do better.
The housing minister must live up to his words, and has committed:
that...every single project that seeks to get money from the federal government to build housing, whether it's private sector, government, another order of government or the non-profit sector, we have minimum accessibility requirements. Unless they fulfill accessibility requirements from our government, they don't get a single dime from us.
He also said, “barrier-free housing for Canadians with disabilities is a priority of the national housing strategy and always will be”. Even if M-59 does not pass, the NDP will hold the government to those words.
I must point out, though, that I am not sure the government has an achievable goal here, as we are still waiting to hear what the government means by the word “accessible”. In the HUMA committee, I asked specifically for information around the government's definition of “accessible” because I have experienced that it is very hard to get the market to build accessible housing.
When the response came back from CMHC, the word “accessible” was only written once, and the accessibility definition was not included. The government needs to do better to identify what definition it is using in its commitment to accessible housing.
In closing, I appreciate the member for London West's highlighting the gaps at the decision-making tables around housing and in the national housing strategy and the need for a more inclusive understanding of housing needs in Canada. With the failings of the government in providing accessible and adequate housing for indigenous people, people with disabilities and more, I encourage the government to do better and to start realizing that one size does not fit all, and adding to that the aging population.
We need a better approach to accessible, affordable housing in this country, and the debate today is an important step for all of us to think about how to solve the problem of a home for everyone in Canada in a more inclusive way.
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- Jun/1/22 3:15:00 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is so nice to see you back in the chair.
Last week, the Liberals said they would move ahead with a disability benefit bill. People with disabilities deserve meaningful support from the government, and they have made it clear that the last bill was not good enough. Any new legislation must spell out comprehensive support. It cannot leave people behind. People living with disabilities have been waiting over a year for better.
Will the Prime Minister promise that any new legislation will actually lift Canadians with disabilities out of poverty?
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- May/31/22 10:04:06 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the second report of the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in relation to the motion adopted Thursday, April 28, 2022, regarding disability support benefits.
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