Thank you for being here today.
It's nice to see Bruce again. I worked with him in the early 1990s when I was parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Education in the Bob Rae government. He'll remember that I chaired a minister's committee on deaf and hard-of-hearing education issues and that we, as a government, brought in an act called the Employment Equity Act that actually saw a significant number of disabled people get work, particularly in the public sector. When that act was done away with by the subsequent government, all those people, because they were the last ones to be hired, were the first ones out when cuts began in the public service. It created some extra level of challenge for those folks.
This committee is studying poverty and how it affects people living with disabilities. I've heard today a call for national leadership. I've heard a call for more resources so that we can do the kinds of things you suggest, such as having accessible housing, better incomes, and access to jobs and the supports that go along with that.
The experience I had myself today with the chair, the little set of inconveniences I experienced, I can't imagine having while dealing with the question of income and poverty on top of it on a daily basis. I can get out of this chair this afternoon and get on with my life. I have a good job and a decent income. There are thousands of people out there who I really feel for who can't do that.
Yesterday the Ontario legislature passed an act on poverty that was supported by all the parties, with unanimous agreement, and hailed by advocates. Quebec has an act on poverty.
I'm going to put a couple of questions to you, and then I'll let you answer, because I don't often get back to a second round.
What do you think of a poverty act that forces government to act on that issue? Have you looked at it? Is it going to be helpful? Would something like that at the federal level be helpful?
I know that you've also commissioned, as a disability community, the Caledon Institute to explore parameters for a possible basic income program in Canada that would apply to persons with disabilities. Do any of you have any comments on that? What would the parameters be for a basic income program for people with disabilities? Who would be eligible? How would it be delivered? How with a basic income program do you maintain incentives for employment? Do you have any sense of the cost to government and the savings to provinces in their welfare budgets?
Those are the questions I want you to answer. There's the poverty act, which was passed in Ontario yesterday and that Quebec has in place and whether that would be good at the federal level. And there's the basic income question.
I just want to finish by saying that you'll hear from governments that we can't afford all these programs. But we know, in this place, because we hear it every day in question period, that the present government is rolling out $250 billion in tax relief to people who have jobs, mostly the well off and big corporations. The previous government will come back at them and say that they cut taxes by $100 billion. That's $350 billion the government has said no to. That is money that was coming in to the government that could be used, even a small percentage of it, to deal with some of these debilitating issues that confront people with disabilities all across Canada.
Maybe I could have some comment on that from you as well. Whoever wants to can answer.