We're very aware of and grateful to Mr. Kmiec for putting forward his bill. It attempts to take on a couple of the recommendations that we have been making and that we're continuing to make, specifically around CARP calculation and not losing that status. I think it's interesting that, as one of our colleagues from Diabetes Canada mentioned in a previous hearing, this is the only area in the tax code where people can't self-report. You've set up this arcane process that requires a medical practitioner to report, and they find the forms confusing.
I was just reading a redacted letter the other day, and it was about a mental health issue. The doctor was trying to explain to the CRA that his patient is basically restricted in the activities of daily living about four or five days a week, but it's variable because how her disease affects her from week to week changes. He finds a simple yes or no answer in a check box on the form difficult to tick off, so he wrote a letter to provide some extra clarity.
It's really confusing for doctors dealing with type 1 diabetes to assess a person's daily regimen when they don't actually have full sight of what that person is doing throughout the day or throughout the week. They see them every couple of months. If it's an endocrinologist, they might see them every six months. We should be moving to a better system, perhaps where there is self-reporting, or where we're at least going to take the medical practitioner's word on whether a person qualifies.