Human Resources Committee on Oct. 26th, 2022

[Alexis Conrad]

The intent of the federal benefit is to be almost a supplement to a provincial benefit. It's to sit with it, not replace it—in the same way, for example, the guaranteed income supplement works with the old age security system. We see this as a supplement. It will complement it and be harmonized with the provincial benefit.

[Tony Van Bynen, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

How would you ensure that the benefit amount is consistent from coast to coast to coast?

[Alexis Conrad]

That's a question the minister has to consider based on feedback. Provincial programs differ. Most federal programs are the same across the country, but that is part of the conversation we need to have, including how the benefit will best meet the needs of the various people.

[Tony Van Bynen, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Have the provinces and territories given any indication of their willingness to be partners in this scenario, and, if so, to what extent?

[Alexis Conrad]

They have expressed enthusiastic willingness to be engaged in this. In fact, they have been enthusiastic both on the intent of the benefit and on the approach we've taken, including the framework legislation. This is exactly what they think needs to be done and exactly the process they feel needs to be conducted to get it right.

[Tony Van Bynen, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

As we're getting into the framework, a couple of items have been raised with me as recently as in a meeting today. There are some disabilities that are episodic—for example, mental illness, multiple sclerosis and psoriatic arthritis. Is there any consideration given to providing disability support for these episodic disabilities?

[Krista Wilcox, Director General, Office for Disability Issues, Department of Employment and Social Development]

Perhaps I can answer that one.

Unlike other groups of people for whom we have benefits based on age or other status, with disability it's quite unique in the sense that we have a very diverse population. Disabilities are different, so we have to think in terms of the eligibility criteria and how there are different approaches in terms of duration of disability. We see across the country how different benefits range from three months to permanent, so we have to take that into consideration.

We have to look at eligibility criteria related to how we define a disability, so we do look at fluctuating disabilities. We have different programs for those, and we will have to consider all of those when we look at how we would define this and how we'd bring those together in the eligibility criteria.

It's certainly something we've heard about from our consultations with the disability community on this benefit. We want to try to reach the people who are living in poverty who have disabilities, and those range across all types of disability and all lengths of duration of disability. Those are the things we're trying to look at.

[Tony Van Bynen, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Will there be income testing for individuals and families who support persons with disabilities and, if so, how would we make sure that the Canada disability benefit avoids disincentivizing paid work?

[Krista Wilcox]

It's a really important question. It will be an income-tested benefit as a poverty reduction measure—at least that's how we anticipate the eligibility criteria developing for this.

You have raised a really important point. We're developing this benefit on top of an incredibly complex system of benefits across the country, and that includes provincial and territorial social assistance. It includes private disability insurance programs and federal programs like programs for veterans and Canada pension plan disability. We have housing benefits that are outside of social assistance in provinces and territories, so we are layering this on and, when we look at this in the income testing, we really want to make sure that people are going to be better off at the end of the day.

We heard very clearly from the disability community that people with disabilities want to work. They're not always able to work and gainfully earn an income, and the design of this benefit needs to really take into consideration the interactions with other programs and benefits, look at making sure that we don't disincentivize work and look at the effective marginal tax rates and how they will affect people in terms of dollar per dollar and losing money at certain income thresholds.

That's a really complex piece of work that is going on. Trying to understand the various programs that exist in the provinces and territories has really been fundamental to that, and that has been a lot of the work we have done so far with provinces, really trying to understand how their income-tested programs are currently designed and how this benefit will sit on top of them and potentially interact with them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Van Bynen. Your six minutes have gone.

We have Madame Chabot for six minutes.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd also like to thank the witnesses.

I'd like to reiterate what I said in the House. During the study of the bill, I was able to support the principle of introducing a Canada disability benefit.

The problem was that we were starting from scratch. We adopted the principle of the bill, meaning the introduction of the benefit, and we talked a lot about consultations, the principle of complementarity with the provinces, and the principle that this benefit should the established by and for persons with disabilities.

As legislators, however, we were being asked to come up with a bill whose implementation would involve a lot of regulation. The bill's objective is to reduce poverty. However, we don't know the amount of the benefit and we have no clue about what it might be.

On the basis of what criteria would you be able to say that the benefit would lift persons with disabilities out of poverty? Would the amount be calculated in terms of the poverty line? Do you have any idea of what economic indicators might be used? Is it just the poverty line or would people's income be included?

[Alexis Conrad]

We have a lot of information. There are databases containing information on the income of every Canadian. We understand the problems being experienced by persons with disabilities and know what their annual income is. From this standpoint, the problem is in evidence across Canada.

What we want to do is work with the community to learn what we should be providing, and to whom. So we want to work with the community rather than simply come up with numbers in the act. It's a somewhat different approach, and I understand that, but we feel that it's the best approach to adopt in order to provide the best possible benefit.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

I'll give you a very concrete example of how the community of persons with disabilities would benefit: In Quebec, as of January 1, 2023, people with severely limited capacity for employment would be eligible for a guaranteed basic income that would be indexed and supplemented by other measures.

Do you have any fairly straightforward studies on the status of the situation in every province and territory, and on programs that have been introduced, to help in determining which would be the best approach to adopt? I would imagine that you have data that the minister or the cabinet will be working with. Are these studies available? Can we have them?

[Krista Wilcox]

Perhaps I'll answer that.

If the question is that you would like to understand if we have data on provincial programs or you would like data around poverty across the country, the latter I can easily provide to you. We have not done an assessment of provincial programs. We do have work that we're doing with provinces and territories to understand their programs but not in an assessment way.

I can certainly provide the committee with some data on poverty across Canada and the situation. We can provide data on how provincial programs that exist for persons with disabilities...how the income support programs stack up against the market basket measure across the country. If that's the type of data you are looking for, we could provide that to the committee to support your work.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Thank you.

Even though most of the groups agree, and the buy-in rate is fairly high, some have expressed reservations about how long it will take for this new benefit to be made available.

How long will it take between the adoption of the principle and the actual implementation? People really need it now. Is it true that the consultations might last three years or more?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Give a short answer, please.

[Alexis Conrad]

One thing I don't want to do is put a time limit or specify an exact time of how long it's going to take to fully engage the disabilities community. We're doing that already. As we talked about, this is an incredibly complex environment to deliver a new benefit in.

I'm fully cognizant that the disabilities community would like this benefit to start now because the need is there. In fact, that's why the government is actually moving forward with the benefit in the first place. Our biggest fear is doing it wrong, to be honest. The interactions, which my colleague talked about, with other federal, provincial, private programs, the linkages.... The last thing we want to do is move to a model where people end up accidentally being hurt and having other benefits cut off or declined. That's why it's so critical that we do this right, that we do it right both from a process point of view but also from all of the variables.

I will absolutely tell the committee that I would love this benefit to start tomorrow, but it is so complex that it takes time to get it right. We are moving, absolutely, as quickly as we can, and the minister is fully committed to moving this as quickly as we can. However, I can't stress enough how complex it is and how important it is that we do it right.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Chabot.

Ms. Zarrillo, you have six minutes.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the technical staff for coming to share with us today.

I know that there's actually quite a large piece of the disability community watching this today. They're interested in these answers around when it's going to come, how much it is going to be, and who's going to get it. There was some talk today about how much consultation has already gone on.

My question is just around what studies have already been done, what findings are available for us as the committee to look at. First of all, about the estimate of how many people would be covered and be eligible for this benefit, have there been studies on this? Are there findings? Could you share them with the committee?

[Krista Wilcox]

In terms of studies, what I can say is there are about 6.2 million Canadians with disabilities across the country. There are about four million working-age persons with disabilities in Canada—that's between 18 and 64. There were about 917,000 working-age persons with disabilities living in poverty in Canada in 2017. We can provide the statistics that we have on those.

In terms of whether or not they would all be eligible for this benefit, that would be determined by the eligibility criteria that would be set out in the regulations. This is a really challenging population to get at, as we talked about already. Defining disability and how you look at it is a critical piece of this.

In terms of what we know about people living in poverty, we know that with the severity of disability the risk of living in poverty and the risk of living in deep poverty goes up tremendously. We will want to take that into consideration in designing a benefit to best target this population. We know that people with disabilities who are living in poverty have various sources of income, not just social assistance. They have federal income supports. They have support from private insurance. We know there's about 10% of the population of people with disabilities with no source of income. I think it's really critical for us to to be able to understand that population, and how best to target this benefit to make sure it's getting at that population of persons with disabilities.

As I mentioned before, I'm happy to share with the committee the diagnostic information we have on persons with disabilities.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you, and definitely I'd like to see that diagnostic. You said a number of things that are very important. Has there been analysis? Has there been a deep-dive analysis around eligibility? Maybe there's a phased approach. There has to have been, in the last seven years, some conversation around what this should look like. I'm really trying to get an understanding of what the will is behind this bill.

Even in the preamble, it talks about reducing poverty, but I'm trying to get an understanding of what is the will of the bill. I think there are many people for whom this is very important. They need to understand, are they going to be eligible? Is this going to come to them?

I'm looking a little bit deeper around how much studying, how many findings, what kinds of reports are available on what this could look like. I have to believe there is some additional information other than the top-line data that can come out of StatsCan.

[Alexis Conrad]

Yes, there are other sources of information. I mentioned in the beginning that one thing we've been doing is working with the disabilities community for them to help us understand this issue. Rather than telling them what's right for them, we want them to tell us what they think is going to work best for the community.

There are groups, like Disability without Poverty, who are doing a lot of analysis. They share it with us. We do a lot of analyses, as my colleague talked about, looking at how people interact with the market basket measure. We're working closely with provinces to understand how their programming works. It's an unbelievable amount of analysis.

The goal really is to change the lives of the disabilities community in Canada, who live in poverty in such larger numbers than the rest of the population and need the support. I can't tell you who's going to be eligible. I can't tell you how much, but I can tell you that we're going through a very deliberative, detailed process to understand how this should work best so it can benefit people.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Just on that, what does that timeline look like? I'll ask again. Is it going to be more than a year before people are going to see this in their bank accounts?

[Alexis Conrad]

As I said, I can't speculate. To be honest, I can't speculate on how long Parliament will consider the bill for. Once the bill moves through Parliament—which is why we're obviously hoping it moves quickly—then we can move ahead with the next phases of it. Once we have the benefit designed, then we have to design the implementation and do the regulations. We're doing as much of this stuff in parallel as possible, but it is very hard, detailed, complex work.

I honestly wish I could just tell you, “This is the date the benefit's going to launch”, but I'm a hostage to other processes. Our ambition is to get through those as quickly as possible because we know what the need is, but I can't honestly give you a timeline.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you for that.

I guess one of the concerns I have as a legislator is that I want it to be the best it can be, and it seems like we don't have answers to what that best is going to be. There isn't even a commitment in the bill to eliminate poverty. I don't think there's anything in the bill that talks specifically about the Poverty Reduction Act or any tie to it. I'm really—