Thank you very much.
Good morning, everyone. My name is Dave Prowten. I'm the president and CEO of JDRF, the leading charitable funder of type 1 diabetes research. Today I'm joined by Mr. Matt Stimpson, who is a person living with type 1 diabetes and also the proud father of a wonderful young woman, Tilly, who's 14 years old and also lives with type 1 diabetes.
First of all, thank you for inviting us back to committee today. We are here again to reiterate our request to propose an amendment to the budget implementation act that would remove or reduce the 14-hour requirement under the “life-sustaining” category of the disability tax credit. This change would make life better for the 300,000 Canadians who live with this disease 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The 14-hour requirement really is arbitrary and antiquated and has not been changed since 1988. Since then, diabetes management has come a long way and lives have drastically improved, but only with the right supports and technologies.
Type 1 diabetes continues to be a very costly disease for everyone—for individuals, families, the health care system and society overall—so we implore the committee to amend the budget implementation act and call for either a removal of the 14-hour requirement entirely or, alternatively, a reduction in the hours to seven so that more Canadians with type 1 diabetes can qualify.
We know there's a willingness to make the change, as evidenced by the budget's inclusion of additional criteria that will help more people qualify, but there's still a level of interpretation around the amount of time per week of these activities. Our proposal to remove or reduce to seven hours is really not arbitrary. It will be very clean and clear. It will really make it easier for the health care practitioners to approve and improve equity for those with type 1.
The purpose of the disability tax credit is to really ensure that Canadians with a disability are eased of financial burdens. This arbitrary and antiquated requirement for 14 hours is really preventing many with type 1 diabetes from accessing this. Therefore, the policy is not living up to its mandate. It needs to be modernized to ensure it's delivering support to some of the most vulnerable Canadians, who can use the support right now.
In our opinion, we have a very rare opportunity. This is an important change. JDRF has been working on improving the disability tax credit since 2017, so that's five years. The time to get it right is now.
I'm going to turn this over to Matt, Mr. Stimpson, who will share with you his personal experience with the disability tax credit.