Bill C-81 (Historical)

Accessible Canada Act

An Act to ensure a barrier-free Canada

This enactment enacts the Accessible Canada Act in order to enhance the full and equal participation of all persons, especially persons with disabilities, in society. This is to be achieved through the realization, within the purview of matters coming within the legislative authority of Parliament, of a Canada without barriers, particularly by the identification, removal and prevention of barriers.
Part 1 of the Act establishes the Minister’s mandate, powers, duties and functions.
Part 2 of the Act establishes the Canadian Accessibility Standards Development Organization and provides for its mandate and structure and its powers, duties and functions.
Part 3 of the Act authorizes the Accessibility Commissioner to provide the Minister with information, advice and written reports in respect of the administration and enforcement of the Act. It also requires the Accessibility Commissioner to submit an annual report on his or her activities under the Act to the Minister for tabling in Parliament.
Part 4 of the Act imposes duties on regulated entities that include the duty to prepare accessibility plans and progress reports in consultation with persons with disabilities, the duty to publish those plans and reports and the duty to establish a feedback process and to publish a description of it.
Part 5 of the Act provides for the Accessibility Commissioner’s inspection and other powers, including the power to make production orders and compliance orders and the power to impose administrative monetary penalties.
Part 6 of the Act provides for a complaints process for, and the awarding of compensation to, individuals that have suffered physical or psychological harm, property damage or economic loss as the result of — or that have otherwise been adversely affected by — the contravention of provisions of the regulations.
Part 7 of the Act provides for the appointment of the Chief Accessibility Officer and sets out that officer’s duties and functions, including the duty to advise the Minister in respect of systemic or emerging accessibility issues.
Part 8 of the Act authorizes the Governor in Council to make regulations, including regulations to establish accessibility standards and to specify the form of accessibility plans and progress reports. It also provides, among other things, for the designation of the week starting on the last Sunday in May as National AccessAbility Week.
Part 9 of the Act provides for the application of certain provisions of the Act to parliamentary entities, without limiting the powers, privileges and immunities of the Senate, the House of Commons and the members of those Houses.
Parts 10 and 11 of the Act make related and consequential amendments to certain Acts.

Accessible Canada Act

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

I would remind members that they may want to stay away from the word “you”, because all of the questions and comments should be addressed to the chair and it would make life so much easier.

The hon. member for Longueuil—Saint-Hubert.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to congratulate my colleague for his speech, but especially for his dedication to this file.

When Quebeckers hear the name Pierre Nadeau, they think of a great journalist who had a following on television and radio, but in Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, Pierre Nadeau, above all else, is known as a prominent, social neighbour who loves to talk. I am not sure exactly what kind of disability he has, but he has some form of aphasia. He gets around using a mobility scooter and he is very active. He is a development officer at AILIA, a Quebec association whose mission is to make housing, including social housing, more accessible for those who need it.

Nearly half a million people in the greater Longueuil area do not have access to the Montreal metro because there is no elevator access to the Longueuil metro platform. Even if, by some miracle, someone manages to get on, there is no elevator at the central hub, Berri-UQAM.

Does my colleague think that this new legislation will fix these unjust situations?

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague for his dedication and interest on this file and for being responsive to the people in his constituency as we try to make lives better for people living with disabilities.

A new agency is being established that is going to develop some of the model standards. I hope that they will reflect global standards, because we are already seeing that we are the beneficiaries of the work that other countries have done. People who travel in Canada and stay in American hotel chains have seen elevator buttons with braille on them. The corporations that do this kind of development said that they are going to have one standard and apply it in every country. Global investors like to see national standards that are reflected globally. It is easy and good for them.

For housing, it is the same thing. The developers in all constituencies are local guys who know their trade. They want to build accessible homes. They ask to be told what to do and plans are found for them. They want to do it, but they need us to provide these proven plans. It is so easy. People are eager, but we have to show them what we expect and they will meet those standards.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

Order. It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Courtenay—Alberni, Indigenous Affairs; the hon. member for Essex, International Trade; and the hon. member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith, Natural Resources.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Sarnia—Lambton.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to Bill C-81, an act to ensure a barrier-free Canada.

I want to say at the outset that I am pleased to see that the minister has brought forward this bill. I have absolutely no doubt about her sincerity in trying to improve the lives of people with disabilities. I too am aligned in that direction. I have listened carefully to the debate we have had so far talking about how to get people with disabilities the same rights and responsibilities as other citizens, how to make sure they are able to live independently and how to make sure they are free from violence. I am aligned in all those things. I think I have heard that all the parties in the House are aligned in how we improve the lives of people with disabilities, and what we can we do with this bill to make sure it is effective.

When it comes to deciding to tackle an issue, with my engineering perspective I will ask what it is we are trying to do. I think it is trying to get people to be able to live independently, to have the same rights and responsibilities as others and to be free from violence. What is the plan to make that happen? What mechanisms will we put in place in order to make sure the money or the incentives flow so the behaviours of people will take root?

In my speech, I am going to talk a bit about what has happened in the past and what the Conservatives did. Then I will talk a little about the Liberal record. Then I will talk about the situation in my own riding, some ideas about possible solutions and some concerns I have with the legislation as it is written today.

I know things were going on to help improve accessibility when the Conservatives were in power. Although I was not here myself, I saw all the announcements and improvements happening in my own riding of Sarnia—Lambton, where multiple millions of dollars were spent to upgrade different buildings to ensure they were accessible for people in wheelchairs and to put different aids in place to help people with disabilities. I note that was going on.

At the same time, we have heard other members in the House talk about the Conservative Party's introduction of the registered disability savings plan in 2008. This plan is quite a rich plan. I looked at the details of it when we were addressing an issue that I will talk about later. However, this is a plan where a disabled person can put in up to $5,000 a year and the government will match it threefold. That program has been going on for almost 10 years. Although it has not come to the point where people are collecting from the program, it is a very well thought out way of ensuring people with disabilities will have the wherewithal to retire in dignity.

I see that and see the efforts of the member for Carleton, who brought forward a very intelligent bill aimed at addressing the problem people with disabilities have when they want to go work and their benefits are clawed back. In some cases, the money they are getting from other disability programs is clawed back. I was really disappointed in the extreme that every Liberal in the place rejected that private member's bill. That bill would have been such a help to people with disabilities. We talked as well about the member for Calgary Shepard bringing forward a private member's bill on rare diseases, which was also rejected. I just heard a member from the NDP talking about her bill being rejected.

This is where one really has to question people's motives. When people say one thing and do another, they are likely to be called hypocrites. When I look at the Liberals, I see there is a lot of talking about helping people with disabilities, but then we look at the record of what has happened since the election in 2015. The first member who had the portfolio to do something here on accessibility, or helping the disabled, was the member for Calgary Centre. It was in the mandate letter, yet nothing was done. That member is also a person who has lived experience as a person with disabilities, but nothing was done. It was not a priority.

It was then passed along to the member for Etobicoke North. However, I do sympathize with her. She is the Minister of Science and has a lot of very important things to do which, of course, I, as a fellow science person, cannot criticize. Again, nothing really came forward.

Then when I looked at the bill to see what was in it, I thought that perhaps there would be a lot of infrastructure money. We know there are a lot of buildings that are not accessible and they need a lot of money in order to repair them so they will be accessible. In some cases, those could be incentives. There is a number of ways that could be done, but nothing in the bill talks about that.

In fact, the bill has sort of an element of what the minister's powers would be. It has an element of a standards organization that can talk about what the right thing to do would be. There are mechanisms in the bill to complain. There are mechanisms in it to inspect. However, there are no action words. There is really no doing of anything. It is going to be consulting and spending a few more years to try to figure out what we should do, when we already know some of the things we should do. Some of the things we should do involves investing the same kind of infrastructure money that was previously done under the Conservatives.

I have heard the government speak about the $180 billion of infrastructure money that it will invest over the next number of years. In fact, the Liberals got elected on a promise to spend very small deficits in order to put infrastructure in place. That was going to create jobs and drive the economy and repair our roads and bridges, etc. None of that ever happened. My point is that there was a lot of infrastructure money that was planned to be spent. Even though the government has had difficulty getting that accomplished, as I think it has only spent about 40% of what it planned, it has still racked up way more deficit but not on the intended things.

There is an opportunity for the government to do something immediately with respect to infrastructure to improve accessibility. Those are things where the building codes exist today. The specifications exist today. The standards exist today. No work needs to be done to consult anybody on that or have new standard organizations to do it. This already exists. All it really needs is political will to put that money in place.

Instead, the government has basically a different political will, if we look at where the billions of dollars that the government is spending is going: $4.2 billion on foreign aid; $2.65 billion on climate change support for foreign countries like China and India; $5 billion for the Syrian refugees; $1 billion for the asylum seekers; and multiple billions of other things that are spread around the world but not for Canadians and not for the disabled. When we look at where time, energy and money is put, that determines what our values are or what our priorities are.

It has been three years before seeing any kind of legislation and the legislation does not have any strong actions in it. It is more of “we'll put structures in place to consult”. I really question whether there is enough political will to achieve good outcomes here.

As I mentioned, I have some good examples from my riding that I can share. I know that the previous member of Parliament, Pat Davidson, was very active. She really cared about improving accessibility. Elevators were put in multiple buildings. We had accessibility all over the county of Lambton. As well, we have upgraded many of the schools to be accessible.

The Sarnia Arena is going under remediation. I was there for an event this past weekend and all of the entrances and front sidewalks, etc. have been improved for accessibility and all of the standards have been met.

Not everything is wonderful in my riding. We have a situation in Port Lambton where the post office, which is a Crown corporation and is under the legislation being proposed, is not accessible. It has been there for a long period of time and was grandfathered, but it is not accessible. We are having a municipal election and people are going to have to go to Canada Post to vote. In Port Lambton that is pretty much all there is. However, it is not accessible. People have known about it for a long time. My office has called and nagged and has been told that they will get to it. However, no one has got to it.

Here is an example where the solution is known. It just needs to get done and it needs to get done in a hurry. Again, where is the will to force these solutions to happen?

I have a tremendously great example of a fellow named Dan Edwards in my riding. Unfortunately, he had an accident which rendered him unable to walk and left him in a wheelchair. He has been super inspirational in the riding. He does fundraising for mental health efforts and different things.

This is one of the things he did. We have a fundraiser in Sarnia—Lambton called the Dream Home. It is a fundraiser for the hospital. He decided to get together with the architect who was going to build the latest Dream Home for a lottery to raise money for the hospital and decided to make it a visitable home. A visitable home is a home where any person in a wheelchair would be fully able to access everything, from cooking to the entrances. Everything is ground floor. It is very well done.

I had the opportunity to tour the home and see what he and architect had designed together. He shared with me a lot of information about the very many plans like this. It is quite possible. We have these solutions that we could put in place to allow people to live independently. That would be great. Again, money and political will is some of what is required here.

The other piece of advice I would give with respect to solutions and rolling out the infrastructure money is to ensure that it is well-distributed. Of the $180 billion that was announced over 10 years, only $2 billion of that was earmarked for rural communities. When we look at improving accessibility, I think we will find that there is even more need in the rural communities. In many cases, they have grandfathered their buildings. There are more older buildings, and they have not been made accessible. As well, there is less of a population base to bring in the revenue to do these things of their own volition. That needs to be considered.

With respect to some concerns about the legislation, $290 million has been proposed. I heard discussion earlier about 5,000 new public servants. I was not clear if that was 5,000 public servants with disabilities who would be hired while attrition happened, so over time, or whether that was 5,000 additional public service employees. Of course, I would be opposed to increasing the size of government.

Another concern I have with the bill has to do with leaving things for the regulations. As a parliamentarian, and a detailed-oriented one, I do not like to leave things to chance. I have seen before, under some of the legislation that the Liberals have brought forward, where it is all left to regulation.

With Bill S-5, for example, the Liberals decided, from the plain packaging and the vaping, they were going to leave a lot of it to the regulations. We were approving a bill, and as the point was made, that we really did not know what the final outcomes would be. We were going to leave it to the regulation.

In the example of Bill S-5, the Liberals want to go to a plain package. The dimensions of the plain package are produced by machines that are obsolete, that are no longer owned by anybody who is legitimately in the business. The Liberals have given businesses six months to convert.

They would have to redesign the old, obsolete machines and get them built somewhere, and that is certainly an 18-month deal, or they would have to be shut down altogether in order to achieve this plain packaging goal, or let them use the existing size. That is an example of where when things are left to regulations, they do not always get done the way that we might want. That is why parliamentary oversight is important.

Bill C-45, the cannabis legislation, is another example where the Liberals decided to leave a lot of the details to the regulation. The problem is that the regulations did not come out quickly enough to address all the unanswered questions that were still out there. Now we are left with a situation where we will legalize on October 17, and there is still a huge number of things that are not addressed in the regulations. Again, there is no parliamentary oversight to talk about them.

This point came up again on Bill S-228 with the regulation that we most recently talked about, which is the one that prohibits the marketing of unhealthy foods to children. Instead of defining what the healthy foods are, the comment was that it would be left to the regulations.

As parliamentarians, we have a right to know what that list will be and have some opportunity to object or give input if we do not agree. By leaving it to the regulations, we would be passing a blank bill that says we would be doing something. We have no idea what the something is and we have no input on the something, but we are expected to vote in favour of it. I have an issue with that.

When it comes to accessibility, we have been much too slow in moving forward and addressing these things. For example, there are a lot of the grandfathered buildings. My mother is 84 and walks with a rollator. There are a lot of places she cannot go because of staircases or it is too narrow to get through. Something needs to be done there and I look forward to seeing what solutions will be brought forward are.

I will talk a little about some of the things the government could do that would make people have more faith in its wanting to help disabled people.

Members may remember when I was here on a Friday, asking a question about the disability tax credit. Through that whole event, we found out that where 80% of people with type 2 diabetes were previously approved, all of a sudden 80% were disapproved. We raised the concern, and the Liberal government insisted that nothing had changed. Of course, as the scandal went on, it came out that indeed things had changed. There were instructions given to interpret the criteria differently, and it went very broad. It affected not just people with diabetes but people with other disabilities, such as autism and mental disorders like bipolar. It took months and months to get justice for those people. This is what undermines people's faith that the government is sincere in its efforts to improve things for people with disabilities.

I will give members another example. For people with multiple sclerosis, it can be very difficult, because people are not always be at the same degree of wellness. It is sort of intermittent where there may be periods where they cannot work and other times they may be fine.

However, the current EI rules are not flexible enough to allow a person who has MS to be on EI and work intermittently, the same total benefits as someone who takes it consecutively would get. I raised this issue with the Minister of Labour. There is an easy fix there. If 670 hours of eligibility are required and there is a certain amount of hours that people get in benefits, then allow the intermittency. Those are the kinds of things we can do for people who have disabilities to be able to live independently, to work and to engage. We need to do that.

I did take the point that was made earlier that no disability lens was used for the legislation. When we do legislation, we do it with a gender-based lens. Therefore, it is very appropriate here to take that recommendation from the member and put a disability lens in place.

I also do not like the powers to exempt in the bill. I find that when we allow exemptions and have cabinet decide, we get into trouble. We saw this with the carbon tax. The government had the power to exempt and it decided to exempt the largest emitters up to 90% of their emissions. There is an example where having the power to exempt is really not what we want.

In summary, I absolutely want to see persons with disabilities have the independence they need and have the help they need. However, it has to happen faster. I call on the government today to start putting money into infrastructure for accessibility and do the solutions that we already know about, while we craft improvements to the bill.

[Carla Qualtrough, Minister of Public Services and Procurement and Accessibility, Lib.]

Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for her interest and keen attention to detail on the bill.

If members will indulge me, I would like to pay tribute to the late Hon. Jim Flaherty and acknowledge the work he did on the RDSP. That was a game changer. As someone with a disability, I admire the work he did, and it changed lives. I would like to put that on the record.

I have a question for the member around the use of regulations and standards and some of the thinking behind that, being not putting specific technical details in law. The idea is that the standards organization might create a standard around the specific height of a counter or the specific Braille requirements on an ATM. Is it your suggestion that perhaps we should put that in law as opposed to establishing that through a more nimble, flexible organization? Where is the kind of sweet spot around certainty and flexibility and not being over technical in the bill?

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

I will not tell the minister whether or not I am going to go that way. However, I would ask the minister to address the questions and comments to the Chair.

The hon. member for Sarnia—Lambton.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Madam Speaker, I would say that one of the things that we need to get right is not to have different standards federally, provincially and municipally. A lot of times when it comes to accessibility standards, we will find there is a mismatch. Therefore, while I would not want to see 700 pages of technical detail go into a bill, because that would not be good, I think what should be clear is the pecking order in these things and how we are going to align them and what the constraints are. Is it accessibility or being able to get into a building and operate freely within the building? There needs to be language that describes exactly what the regulators are going to do and the scope of their work so that they do not wander too far from the intent of the bill.

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Madam Chair, I thank my hon. colleague for her speech and interest in how we advance accessibility for the lives of all Canadians.

I agree that we need to have clear standards so that everyone can follow them. I am a big proponent of that. I have heard from people who are genuinely interested in doing their part. However, they need guidance. They do not want to just come up with something on their own, and the Liberals are expecting us to do that. It sounds like the member is somewhat enthusiastic for that also.

In terms of the shortcomings, through you, Madam Speaker, I am interested in hearing the member's thoughts about a timeline and how we would best embark on that, because I think we all agree that we need to have something in place if we are actually going to get the dominoes rolling.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Madam Speaker, I think what we should do is put in place two things, timelines and the specific scope. We do not need, for example, to consult more on what to do to make buildings accessible. Believe me, this has been exhausted to death. That is not what we need. If we are going to consult, let us be specific about what we are consulting to achieve. Are we consulting in order to allow people with disabilities to work independently, to live independently? Which parts of this are we going to do? Are we looking for solutions, like the member mentioned, for people who are looking for sign languages to be included in legislation? What is the scope of what the Liberals are going to do? Otherwise, the government will consult and consult, and it will be endless in scope and endless in topics. We need to be crisp on it, or allow free rein but allow only a limited amount of time, consulting for a year, for example, on the myriad of things it might want to bring as solutions, and then implement a plan.

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Madam Speaker, the member for Sarnia—Lambton and I have had talks on health care and many other issues over the last three years. She is aware that I have a hearing impairment. She is very aware of that aspect. These are aspects that I look at in this bill specifically.

She mentioned infrastructure and if we are looking at ramps or looking at rails, and things like that. However, my question really is about standards. I would like to hear a bit more of her thoughts. She touched on standards a bit. There is a difference between standards and regulations. Could she comment on that?

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Madam Speaker, I would say that when it comes to standards, a standard would say, for example, that if we are making an accessible curve the curvature has to be a certain angle, it has to be a certain width, and all of those kinds of things. That is a standard. A regulation is something that everyone has to do by such and such a date, or whatever. That is the difference I see: the standard is more of the technical “what is the right thing to do”, and the regulation is how we are going to enforce and police it.

[Kate Young, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Science and Sport and to the Minister of Public Services and Procurement and Accessibility (Accessibility), Lib.]

Madam Speaker, we do have some obvious agreement on this and we are looking forward to moving this legislation forward.

The hon. member did say that she does not like exemptions and I want to explain why some exemptions may be necessary.

The provisions are included in recognition of the fact that some organizations may have alternative methods of meeting the objectives of certain requirements, and some organizations may already have completed the requirements and are living up to existing accessibility standards in some of the provinces. Ontario, Manitoba, Nova Scotia and British Columbia have standards and are moving forward on that.

Does the member not see why some exemptions may be necessary in a bill of this size?

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Madam Speaker, I do see that exemptions may be needed for the reasons the member has cited, but when it is left wide open and there is no oversight, cabinet can determine what those exemptions will be and it does not have to tell anyone why.

It is better to write them in and to tell people that they have to comply with this, or that they must have a minister approve the exemption. The protocol should be clear and transparent so that we know it is not just people letting their friends do what they want, and also not people weaseling out of their responsibilities.

Businesses have known for an extremely long time that they would have to become accessible and they have really dragged their feet. If we gave an exemption of any kind, a lot of people would drag their feet even longer, and that is not what we want.

Let us have clarity and transparency.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is nice to hear that everyone in the House really wants to do make things better for people with disabilities. I guess the debate is about how that will happen.

We have $290 million here and it seems to be to create a regulatory body and more consultation. It could be the most expensive consultation in history given the Liberal government's record of dithering and its failure since its inception, including over the summer.

The minister mentioned the RDSP, which was a game-changer. It was implemented for three months.

Would this legislation really make a difference for people on the ground? I have done a bit of math. There is $290 million for home elevators. That money would do 70 to 150 elevators to make a difference today. Is this really the best way of going about it?