Thank you, and thank you for inviting our organization to be here today.
I would like to applaud the members, by the way, who are in wheelchairs today, although I have to tell you it makes it tougher to know which of you are uprights.
Having said that, I have to say that we had a look at some of the questions you had asked us. Independent Living Canada is an organization that is cross-disability. We deal with everybody, no matter what they are. Our boards and our staff are predominantly people with disabilities. It's part of our mandate, if you will. So we see a very experiential piece across the board on this.
I can say that through my own situation after my accident, I can really understand about recovering from trauma. I didn't have the money to pay my power bill. This type of thing crosses all boundaries. They turned my power off while I was upstairs having a shower in my house. My lift didn't work. I had to crawl down the stairs to get to my wheelchair and then try to get the money together to pay my power bill. So I've been there, and I know what that looks like and what it sometimes takes to get out of it.
The first thing we looked at when we were analyzing this situation was your question on the definition of poverty. Of course we've talked about this for years and years now at the federal-provincial-territorial level and have tried to discuss it. We suggested that one of the things that's problematic is looking at it in terms of dollars and cents.
The first recommendation we had about that particular issue was to have a look at some of the work that the Romanow report has brought out and some of the work that the federal-provincial-territorial groups as well as some of your own staff have been doing, because they have worked very long and hard trying to figure a way to measure quality of life. I think that's probably a pretty good place to start, because it's not always about dollars and cents. It is about the quality of life and those issues.
I'll give you a little bit of background. I always like to mention that in the NGO sector, one of the things that we always talk about is that we measure poverty at the door. We see it when it comes through the door, and we see it in everyday life. So again, it's a good place to start.
We also recognize--and Anna had mentioned a little bit earlier, about the numbers--some of the work that has been done. The Saskatchewan government did some work and estimated that at least 80% of the folks who are on social assistance there are likely living with undiagnosed disabilities. We talked to the people in corrections, and they look at the fact that probably most of their folks have some sort of disability, such as addiction. Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder of course is becoming a hugely emerging issue. We recognize as well that most, if not all, of the people who are on the streets have a disability.
So you start to recognize that most of the people who are living below the poverty level probably have disabilities or are connected with them in some way, and they don't go away. That's one of the things that we certainly recognize. Disabilities aren't something you can fix, so even the folks we do help into the workplace or into independent work we will still see over a lifetime. They don't go away, and the issues don't go away.
We recognize that the independent living movement around the world is really about empowering people to take control of their lives and live as much as they can with dignity of risk and whatever they need to do, but that still won't go away without some supports.
I Identified priorities for us. The first and foremost one that has come up in every discussion we've had, whether it has been with the NGO sector or with individuals themselves, is that there is a tremendous need in this country for adequate barrier-free safe and secure housing. It was unanimous. One of the issues that we know came up from that is that it's not a sexy issue for builders. We are just now coming out of a phase where there was a real need for housing. What we saw in Calgary, for example, was that the subsidized housing there was being decimated. The people who owned the buildings would get rid of them because it was way more cost-effective for them to be able to sell them as condos. So we had people being booted out onto the streets at such a rate that actually, at one point in time there--and I think there are still around 1,000--we had about 2,000 working homeless.
We know that if those folks can't find a place to live, then the folks with disabilities are going to be way further down the food chain. Having said that, we also heard very loudly and clearly that the housing that's there needs to be something that's acceptable. If you talk to the folks in the east end of Vancouver right now, they'll tell you that if you put people in a hotel where they have to worry about the cockroaches and the rodents and everything else that is crawling in and out, those folks would rather be on the street.
When we talk about housing, we need to make sure it looks after that piece of it. So our recommendation is that we need increased government resources and leadership and a housing strategy that's within federal jurisdiction. Of course we've had that and backed away from it a little bit. I think it's more a matter of re-engaging and recognizing we need an investment of resources into barrier-free, safe, affordable housing.
Having said that, if you provide that type of housing and you don't provide the necessary supports that go with it, it's falling. It won't work. If there's one thing we've seen, it's that folks who have good stability within that sector do very well. So when we talk about the adequate supports that are needed, we talk about financial supports. And I won't get into it very much because I think it's really been covered well by some of my colleagues here. We need to have a look at that and find out what it is.
We do have an agreement that was reached a few years back, called “In Unison”, that lays out a lot of the guidelines for this. It was signed on to by all the provinces and territories and it was agreed that it was a good document even with first nations and with all the disability community. So we do have the groundwork laid. This isn't something that has to be invented, and we do have the buy-in from the province and territories on it. We very strongly recommend that financial supports be looked at.
With respect to disability supports,“In Unison” really went into this. We know right now there's a lack of access to supports when they are available. There are limited opportunities—as the Active Living Alliance has talked about—for community involvement and social interaction and that's key to the health and well-being of Canadians with disabilities.
And we can get into specific things like transportation, to which we also have a serious problem getting access. There are insufficient supports for daily living as well. I actually had one of our consumers say to me, completely out of the blue, “Do you know that it costs me $150 a month because I have to phone long distance to Vancouver to get a crisis line?” This is a man with severe mental health issues. He said, “I have to do that because I don't have access to a crisis line.” So again, “In Unison” laid out some of those recommendations.
One of the things that have come up here that we recognized as being critical, as well, is a collaborative and coordinated disability support group across the country. We had the capacity a while back where all the national organizations could come together, strategize, and work on some of these issues and try to create, if not standards, at least a coordinated approach to it that really set some good common goals for us. Collective national goals would help. We need to get back to that again and facilitate the development of a strong national network. That will really help on the ground with being able to approach these issues.
And finally—and this is the one I think is a challenge for anybody in this area—how do you break that cycle of dependency on subsistence living? Where that shows its face—and you've heard it from around the table—is that a great, great number of our folks are reliant on social programs to get them through the day. And I can tell you I was talking to a fellow, an ex-bureaucrat who is now on long-term disability because he was injured on the job, who is afraid to come forward and talk about these things because he feels his income supports will be threatened if he does. That is a reality in our community, which we have to deal with.
Somebody once asked us why we didn't make more progress in what we do. One of the comments was that it was because we have a bunch of folks right now whose entire thought is to keep their head down, their mouth shut, stay in the corner, and keep quiet so people won't take away what little they have now. We have to address that. One of the ways of breaking this cycle of dependency is to have a look at some of those things, at systems that unintentionally create this cycle.
We have policies right now and systems that are created to catch people who are going to try to abuse them. That's the way it's done. And I know because I've been in government where we've gone through this. And I've said, “You know, Future Shop knows that no matter what security they put in, somebody is going to steal from them”. So they don't strip search everybody who comes through the door; they simply recognize there are going to be people who will steal from them. So they say, “Let's give the best service we can and write into our margin that we will accept that's going to happen. We'll still do the best we can.” We need to start looking at that with some of the policies we have in government. Stop being so restrictive in trying to stop people from abusing it and start really creating the systems to try to help the people who need it.
I'm getting a little carried away, but it's true. Move away from the black and white and recognize the grey areas. And also, look at these things through a disability lens and make sure we don't inadvertently create problems that shouldn't be there.
To wrap up, after all this is said and done, we've heard again that we need to establish a system to monitor and measure the progress. But I always qualify that we need to do it in the areas where it's affected. So what we do is we measure what we value, and whatever decisions are made around this table need to be about what we value. If we don't measure what we value, we can very quickly end up valuing what we measure.
I love to use money as an example, because money was something that was created as a medium so that we could increase our quality of life, so that we could trade with other people, and get things that we couldn't get. We couldn't measure quality of life easily, but money is really easy to measure. So we've forgotten now that what we really wanted to do was increase our quality of life, and we focus on money. That's what happens.
I really emphasize that we need to make sure we're going to measure what we value. If we don't, we'll end up valuing what we measure. We did it with money. Let's not do it with this piece.
Thank you.