Good afternoon.
While we've had great discussions all day long with a variety of people around the convention, and we know of the ongoing work of your committee, we want to remind you of some of our key issue areas that relate to your study on poverty. Very briefly, I'm sure these are not unknown to you. We also commend the report of the Senate committee “In from the Margins”. That report endorsed virtually all of the recommendations we brought forward around poverty, labour market attachment, etc.
One of our next steps in addressing the disproportionate poverty of people with disabilities in Canada is to make the disability tax credit refundable for those who have non-taxable incomes. You have to realize that on current welfare rolls in most provinces, between 45% and 60% of the people have disabilities. They are living on incomes of less than $10,000 a year. So presently, even if they're eligible for the credit, they don't get any benefit from the disability tax credit because they don't have taxable incomes. So if we're going to do a poverty measure, let's make it refundable so those people with low incomes actually have some benefit of a tax measure that has been longstanding.
We are appreciative of the initiative around Minister Flaherty's registered disability savings plan. It has been very helpful and we're very supportive of it. But it is a long-term initiative to address poverty; it doesn't do much today. It is a long-term savings plan.
We would also urge the government in its negotiations with the provinces around labour market agreements to attach specific targets for the training of persons with disabilities in those agreements. Again I would remind you that if people are not attached to the labour force presently, they are not eligible for most of the programs funded through that because they are not on EI. So if eligibility for training at a provincial level is based solely on EI provisions, our community is not well served. We need to have measures that will address the unemployment of people who have not been in the labour market.
There have been no changes in the EI sick benefits since 1973, I believe. They're around 15 weeks, yet we have an increasing number of people with episodic disabilities--mental health concerns, chronic fatigue syndrome, etc.--and there should be reforms to EI sick benefits so they go beyond the 15 weeks.
Those are some of the specific initiatives we have put forward in the past, and we're reminding you of them.
There are many other initiatives within the federal realm that particularly relate to access: access standards to new communication technologies and federally regulated modes of transportation; standards to ensure that our banking services are fully accessible to persons with disabilities; and access standards that ensure that our polling stations--amazingly we still have this problem--are fully accessible. If you want to know more about that, go to the recent Human Rights Tribunal decision on Hughes. Mr. Hughes, two federal elections in a row, was unable to get into the polling station in downtown Toronto unaided. That's not acceptable in 2010. We have to do better than that. There are other election access issues that we could talk to you about.
I'll turn it to Michael to tell you a little more about the work we have been doing today. We will come back to the study you want to do.
Thank you.