Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise to participate in the debate. I want to start by sharing why the debate is so important. Across the country, 1.5 million folks with disabilities are living in poverty. That is about 40% of the people living in poverty across the country.
This summer, I was at St. John's Kitchen, operated by The Working Centre right in downtown Kitchener. It is a gathering place for diverse folks across our community, a lot of whom are living in poverty, might be living unsheltered or are at risk of homelessness. Time and again I would be chatting with folks and I felt like I had the same conversation over and over. I would learn that someone is living on the Ontario disability support program, and they would share with me how difficult life is living in poverty.
I would start to share with them a bit about the new Canada disability benefit. However, as I did so, they would learn that it is a maximum of only $200 a month, that it is not starting until July of next year and that to access it, they had to apply for the disability tax credit if they did not have it already.
What is involved in applying for the disability tax credit? There is an 18-page form. How do they get that form? They need to find a way to print it and then find a doctor who is willing to complete 16 pages of the 18-page form. They try to find a doctor who might have done it before, because it often the case that if the doctor has not done it before, they are either unwilling or would not know how to complete it. Time and again, I just felt exhausted realizing that these are people who have been provided with a process designed for them to fail.
How did we get here? It was a commitment from the Liberals in their platform in 2021. Their platform stated, “this new benefit will reduce poverty among persons with disabilities in the same manner as the Guaranteed Income Supplement and the Canada Child Benefit.” The minister at the time would later say that this was going to be a generational benefit, the sleeper legacy piece if they were to do it right.
Community pressure from the disability community, and letters both in the House and in the Senate, led to Bill C-22's getting introduced. It was then improved at committee. I am glad to have worked with colleagues to secure five improvements that came from the disability community. This included requiring that the benefit be indexed to inflation and that the disability community be meaningfully engaged in the regulations process, which almost every important decision was left to, including one that would require that the benefit application process be barrier-free.
Sadly, we also attempted to extend the benefit for those over the age of 65, but that was ruled out of order. It continues to be a significant point of contention that a person's disability does not end at 65 and neither should the Canada disability benefit.
As I mentioned earlier, almost every important decision was left to the regulations. That is what we learned just a few months ago when we learned, in the budget, that the governing party was proposing only a maximum of $200 a month for the disability tax credit, and not until July of next year. At the time, I shared in this place that it just felt so unserious. It felt to me like the government was playing politics with the lives of people who have been marginalized for a very long time.
With the rest of my time, I would like to provide solutions with respect to what we could still do with the remaining time in this Parliament to fix the Canada disability benefit. It is included in the regulation I submitted a few weeks ago. There are seven specific items that could be addressed in the Canada disability benefit, all of which come directly from the disability community.
The first is to just remove the barriers to the application process by automatically enrolling folks who are already on provincial, territorial and federal programs, including CPPD, and get rid of the barrier that is the disability tax credit.
Catherine, a person with a disability, shared this with me this summer that “requiring those who may be eligible for the CDB to apply or reapply for the benefit will put significant strain on the already overworked health care professionals who have patient loads so large that paperwork issues are frequently placed as a last priority item by these professionals and will cause significant delays in the delivery of the benefit to those who [need it the most].”
Catherine is right. Here are the stats. The CRA reports that in 2022 alone, it received over 133,000 phone calls from folks having issues accessing the disability tax credit, and only 600 of those calls got redirected to navigators who could help the person.
If the DTC is to be used at all, it should only be used as another method of getting access, an optional item in addition to provincial programs, such as the ODSP, and federal programs, such as the CPPD.
Second is to remove the second barrier, which is another new application process, so that a person who has the DTC does not have to apply a second time. In fact, the regulations state that this is going to be an additional application for those who have the DTC, which would need to be repeated if the person were ever needing to reapply for the DTC. We should just get rid of that application altogether and have it as an opt-out so folks with disabilities who have already been assessed through other programs, whether federal or provincial, would directly have access to the Canada disability benefit.
Third, and really important, is that we should supporting the independence and dignity of an individual person with a disability by means-testing to the individual's income and not family income, as the regulations currently propose. Extend-A-Family Waterloo Region, an organization serving folks with disabilities in my community, referred to this measure as “dehumanizing” in its June letter to the minister.
Michael, from my community, who lives with a disability, shared with me, “one of the many issues for disabled people is that they often get trapped in abusive relationships due to income levels. One cannot escape and set up an independent life free of abuse when they have no, or extremely limited, income of their own. Expecting a person's spouse/partner to completely support them not only adds stress to the relationship, but gives an abusive partner a way to trap and control them.” The federal government should acknowledge that folks with disabilities should have the independence of means testing to their individual income alone.
Fourth, and probably one of the most important, is to increase the maximum amount to actually lift people above the poverty line. Here are the numbers we have already: StatsCan reports the low-income measure for the after-tax threshold is just over $28,000 for an individual and over $40,000 for a couple. In Waterloo region, my community, the market basket measure is over $26,000 for an individual and $37,000 for a couple. ODSP in Ontario, for example, is just over $1,300 a month, or less than $16,000 a year. There is not a single provincial or territorial program for folks with disabilities that, when we add $200 from the CDB, even if a person qualifies for the maximum amount, would lift that person above the poverty line.
These words were shared with me by Chad this summer: “$200 a month...isn't going to do much for disabled Canadians”. It is clear that the maximum benefit amount is insufficient and should be the true supplement originally proposed, which, with provincial and territorial programs, would lift someone above the poverty line.
Fifth is to raise the income threshold. As it stands right now, when a person makes more than $23,000 a year, which is below the poverty line, the CDB is going to get rolled back. That amount should obviously be above the poverty line, ideally taking into account the additional costs that a person with a disability incurs.
Sixth, we need to fast-track the benefit. Many folks in the disability community called out that the government moved quickly on CERB, and it could do it again here. The disability community has called it the “disability emergency response benefit,” and the government needs to move quicker with a benefit of some kind. The government could move quicker with the Canada disability benefit and put it into force more quickly as well.
To close, I would like to say to colleagues from all parties that we have a moment here when this could still be addressed. The governing party members could use this as a moment to demonstrate to Canadians that this is a signature priority of theirs, in either the fall economic statement or the budget. My colleagues in other parties could demand this of the governing party for their support in this minority Parliament. As Greens, we are going to continue to prioritize it because the fact is that the disability community has been unwavering in telling the government what it must do. Now is our chance to listen.
