Thank you very much for this important opportunity to speak with you today to provide input into the 2024 federal budget.
I'm pleased to join you today from the traditional territory of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples.
I'm here to speak to a matter of utmost importance: the funding of the Canada disability benefit. The organization I represent, Inclusion Canada, was founded over 60 years ago. We are a national federation of 13 provincial and territorial member organizations, over 300 local associations and more than 40,000 members across the country, which supports people with intellectual disabilities and their families.
We argue that no person with a disability in our country should have to live in poverty. Inclusion Canada submitted to the committee its pre-budget recommendations in a brief that specifically focused on the Canada disability benefit.
For decades, provincial and territorial disability income assistance programs have kept people with disabilities in legislated poverty. More than 40% of people who live in poverty in Canada have a disability. Even worse, 75% of adults between the ages of 18 and 64 with an intellectual disability who live outside the family home live in poverty. In every jurisdiction throughout the country, people with disabilities who rely on social disability assistance programs are struggling to live in conditions of deep poverty.
With unanimous all-party support, we finally have the first-ever national disability benefit in Canada. The benefit is about bringing people with disabilities out of poverty. We must now work together to ensure that the Canada disability benefit is able to do what it is intended to do.
It can only serve to do this if the benefit is budgeted and adequately funded. To seriously reduce poverty among people with disabilities requires an ongoing and substantial commitment of federal expenditures. Time today does not permit me to go into details about each of our recommendations; however, our primary recommendation is that the finance minister and the Government of Canada make a budgetary provision that would ensure the immediate and adequate funding of the Canada disability benefit beginning in the 2024-25 fiscal year.
Lifting people out of poverty requires a substantial financial commitment. The government has made substantial investments to reduce poverty before. We have seen the old age security and the guaranteed income supplement programs for seniors, and the Canada child benefit, CCB, for families with children.
To be truly effective in supporting the financial security of adults with disabilities, the CDB, like the OAS, the GIS and the CCB, must be significant income supplementation. We recommend that the federal government provide a top-up to what individuals receive on provincial and territorial disability monthly assistance. This total combined amount would ensure that eligible persons with disabilities would receive a minimum amount of $2,400 monthly.
Based on the number of people on provincial and territorial social disability assistance, along with the proposed top-up amount, we estimate the total ask for the 2024 budget to be between $24 billion and $26 billion. The Canada disability benefit would require a significant investment from the federal government.
Inclusion Canada also recommends that a firm commitment must be made to ensure the benefit is delivered in 2024. We are recommending a three-year fiscal plan that would allocate a specific amount of funding, starting in fiscal 2024-25 and projected through to fiscal 2026-27, and that would be indexed to inflation. The timeline would provide a clear target for the implementation of the Canada disability benefit. It illustrates the government's and all parliamentarians' commitment to this initiative.
There is currently considerable anxiety in the disability community with the slow pace of implementing the design and regulations of the Canada disability benefit legislation. Since the bill's passing in June, there has been very little progress made, and the frustration is mounting.
As you prepare your pre-budget consultation report, I urge you to include a strong and unequivocal statement on the necessity of adequately funding the Canada disability benefit. The inclusion of such a statement would send a powerful message to all Canadians about the government's commitment to creating a more equitable and inclusive society. It also sends much-needed reassurance to the disability community, which eagerly awaits the realization of this important benefit.
Let's together seize this historic opportunity.
Thank you.