Thank you very much.
Thank you for the opportunity to present on behalf of Neurological Health Charities Canada. NHCC is a coalition of organizations that represents millions of Canadians living with brain disease, disorders and injuries. I am sharing this time with Debbie Lovagi, who has an acquired brain injury.
I will make some overall comments and recommendations, and Debbie will speak about how a brain injury has affected her life and her ability to work.
Brain conditions are the largest cause of disability worldwide. One in three Canadians will be affected by a brain or nervous system illness, disorder or injury, including mental health conditions, within their lifetimes. Disabilities that develop as the result of a brain condition can occur at any point along the life course, and a number of them are episodic in nature. This means, as you've heard from all of the witnesses, that there are periods of worsening that can vary in severity and duration. Remissions can happen, but the periods of worsening and remission persist for the lifetime of the individual. Examples of brain conditions that are episodic are dystonia, epilepsy, migraine, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease and conditions such as depression and other mental health disorders.
As you have heard from the other witnesses, current programs such as the Canada pension plan disability and the disability tax credit are not flexible enough to assist most individuals who have episodic conditions that worsen. In most cases, the language of “severe and prolonged” disqualifies those whose conditions may not be considered prolonged enough.
Some other jurisdictions have recognized that disability can be episodic. British Columbia’s disability eligibility definition states that “the person’s ability to perform daily living activities” can be restricted either continuously or “periodically for extended periods”. Ontario’s definition states that a disability is “a substantial mental or physical impairment that is continuous or recurrent, and is expected to last one year or more”. Sadly, Ontario appears to be moving away from this definition toward the more restrictive Government of Canada definition.
NHCC is encouraged that Bill C-81, the accessible Canada act, recognizes that a limitation can be permanent, temporary or episodic in nature. We applaud this language and hope that this will help ensure equity in government policy and programs that support Canadians living with all types of disabilities. I hope the committee's study today can help push that along.
More immediately, NHCC urges the committee to consider the following recommendations, some of which you have heard from the other witnesses. First, modify the eligibility definition for the Canada pension plan disability benefit to include disabilities that are episodic or recurrent in nature; modify the eligibility definition for the disability tax credit to make it clear that persons living with episodic disabilities can be eligible for the credit; increase EI sickness benefits from 15 weeks to 26 weeks, with expanded flexibility for partial work and partial benefits for individuals who can work episodically.
On a longer term, use the recommendations you heard from the witnesses so far—Michael Prince, John Stapleton and Lembi Buchanan—as well as an excellent report by the Institute for Research on Public Policy, “Leaving Some Behind: What Happens When Workers Get Sick”, to work with other governments, employers and insurance carriers to revisit definitions of eligibility and establish a comprehensive approach to address the needs of Canadians living with episodic disabilities.
I will now turn the remaining time over to Debbie.