It's not that more people are being diagnosed with the conditions or are identifying as having an episodic disability; it's that the social media, the press and initiatives such as this one are bringing it to the forefront. People are stopping and saying, “Hey, that's me.” Between the 2012 and 2017 surveys that used slightly different questions—we could get into that if necessary—we saw that the number of people with disabilities in Canada increased from 3.7 million to 6.2 million. It isn't that all of a sudden everybody became disabled; it's that more people are saying, “Yes, that is me. I do have a disability. I need support, and I'm experiencing barriers.”
On December 6th, 2018. See this statement in context.