Thank you.
You know, as Canadians, we pride ourselves on our social infrastructure in this country. It's not as strong as we might think on some occasions.
In terms of people with disabilities, in fact, it's an area where we could even learn from our American cousins. Usually their infrastructure is not as strong, but they do have the Americans with Disabilities Act. They do have a stipulation or requirement that I think 1% of federal contracts have to benefit people with disabilities, which I think is a very strong idea.
You've spoken about sickness benefits under EI, and we've heard from a number of people that a lot of our social infrastructure does not suit people with disabilities. We heard from Michael Kirby, in terms of mental health issues, that episodic illness, which you've already spoken about, just doesn't suit the infrastructure we have.
We had a private member's bill a couple of years ago from Mark Eyking to increase sickness benefits from 15 to 50 weeks. The other part of that is to make it more flexible. Whether it's people with mental health issues or people with MS, whatever it is, they can't take them all at once.
Do you have a comment on that? Not only do we probably need to enrich our social infrastructure, but we need to adjust it to the specific needs of people with disabilities.