moved for leave to introduce Bill C-422, An Act to amend the Canada Disability Benefit Act.
Mr. Speaker, today, I am introducing a bill to protect the Canada disability benefit, and the persons who will receive it, from clawbacks. I thank the member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith for seconding it and for the work that she does in her community for persons with disabilities.
People with disabilities living in poverty experience the cruelty of clawbacks first-hand. Whenever they get the slightest increase in income, their critical government benefits are reduced. The skimming of benefits that they are entitled to pushes them farther behind. The era of perpetuating poverty through the Liberals' cruel and callous clawbacks, and those of the Conservatives before them, has to end. The negative impacts go farther than just bad economic policy. It is bad social policy too. People with disabilities are prevented from having a live-in relationship, marrying, leaving an abusive relationship or even taking on roommates; if they do, they risk losing their critical benefits.
With my bill, in relation to the Canada disability benefit, which is already woefully inadequate, the government can amend and modernize the policy to bring in a new era of disability benefits that empowers people instead of punishing them.
In closing, I raise my hands to the disability community and countless advocates who have continued to raise the issue. Again, I call on the government to do what is right. It should adopt the bill, fix this historical wrong and make sure that people with disabilities can live the life they choose.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)