Human Resources Committee on Oct. 26th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Ms. Zarrillo, I have to interrupt for a moment. The bells are ringing for a vote in the House of Commons. I need unanimous consent to proceed.

We need unanimous consent to proceed, and we will suspend with five minutes to go, if that's okay, and if members are agreeable to using their voting app from here.

I need direction from the committee. Do we have unanimous consent to continue? It's a 30-minute vote call.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Yes, as long as we suspend to vote.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Yes, we'll suspend in time to allow everybody to participate by voting app. Is that agreeable?

Okay. I see unanimous consent. Thank you.

Ms. Zarrillo, your time is up. Would you wrap up your question? We'll give time for a short answer.

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

Thank you so much.

What data is available to this committee that can help us understand eligibility, timelines and amounts? What is available?

[Alexis Conrad]

I'm sorry. I don't have time to give you a list of all the pieces we're looking at. We've had some requests already from the committee, for which we'll provide that kind of data if there are specific requests. We'll do everything we can to provide that to the committee, because we do think it's important that you have the most information possible to advance the bill.

I'm sorry. I know that's a difficult answer. If there are things that you specifically need, we'll look inside to see if we have it. If so, we'll happily provide it to the committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Conrad and Ms. Zarrillo.

I'm going to follow the process we had, which will take me to Mrs. Falk for five minutes. Then I'll go to Mr. Long, because I'm going through the questioning process. We have 15 minutes left.

Mr. Morrice, you're not a member of the committee, so I cannot recognize you.

Mrs. Falk, you have five minutes.

[Rosemarie Falk, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Just so I can recap here, what I heard was that there was no assessment done on the provincial programs. Is that correct?

[Alexis Conrad]

No. In fact, we're working very closely with the provinces. I'm sorry if I said anything else.

[Rosemarie Falk, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

Oh, I thought....

[Krista Wilcox]

Maybe I could just clarify. We would never assess a provincial program. That's a provincial responsibility in the sense of assessing the impact of those programs.

We've looked at them. It's information sharing at this point, in terms of gathering the information about the programs.

[Rosemarie Falk, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

Okay. Thank you.

In my opinion—and maybe it's just me—I definitely like to do my homework beforehand so that I know what needs to be done and what boxes need to be checked, to make sure that when we get to the next phase we can check those boxes off.

I was a part of this committee in the 42nd Parliament when this particular committee studied Bill C-81, the accessibility act. We repeatedly heard from stakeholders at the time that they wanted things placed in the legislation versus in the regulations, because they wanted stability and they wanted predictability.

What I've heard and what has been said is that the benefit amount and eligibility for this program are not included in the legislation as drafted. My question is, why was it decided to exclude the basic and integral information to this program from the scrutiny of Parliament?

[Alexis Conrad]

I'll give you a sense of the logic behind it, building on what I said at the beginning in terms of the framework legislation. Not only is it an opportunity to make sure that the voices of the disabilities community are part of the conversation to feed into the program design, but we also know that the nature of disabilities programming across the country—my colleague talked about this—is dynamic. It changes. Frequently there are changes made by provinces, or in jurisprudence there are changes, and the regulatory process is much more flexible in terms of making sure that the benefit design keeps up with making sure it's still meeting its policy objective.

Some people may have mentioned, through the Accessible Canada Act consultations, that they would like the details in the legislation. The feedback we have gotten from the disabilities community through the engagement we've done is that they prefer this. They like this approach because they feel more a part of it, but also because it is a more flexible, dynamic process to keep pace—

[Rosemarie Falk, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

Thanks. Is that in the same vein as the provinces and territories? Have they said the same thing, that they'd like to see that in the regulations versus the legislation?

[Alexis Conrad]

Provinces have consistently told us that they like the framework legislation approach rather than our presenting them with what it's going to look like and their having to figure out what to do about it. They're involved in the conversation at the beginning.

Every conversation we've had with the provinces has told us that they like the approach and they feel engaged. Given the importance of making sure that the provincial benefits and the federal benefit harmonize and always help persons with disabilities, that level of support from provinces is key to making this a success.

[Rosemarie Falk, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

In my province of Saskatchewan, people with significant and enduring disabilities have access to the Saskatchewan assured income for disability, which is called SAID. We know that benefits do vary from province to province.

How is this new benefit going to interact with existing benefits? Will provincial benefits be clawed back as a result of this benefit? If you don't have the answer to that, has there been inquiry with the provinces and the territories if this is going to happen?

[Krista Wilcox]

I think it's a really important question. It's fundamental to what we've been doing with provinces and territories. Minister Qualtrough has been clear in her messaging publicly and with provinces and territories that this is not a transfer to provinces and territories. We need to make sure that people are better off as a result of this new benefit, which is meant to supplement existing sources of income for persons with disabilities, as is said in the bill.

The work we've been doing with provinces and territories to date is to really understand the complex web of programs. You mentioned one, which is an income support program, but within Saskatchewan there are also many other programs that rely on income tests for disability supports—

[Rosemarie Falk, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

For sure, yes.

[Krista Wilcox]

—that people could inadvertently be cut off from.

That's really what we're trying to do as part of the process in terms of using framework legislation so that we can ensure that, before everything is finalized in regulations, we understand properly—

[Rosemarie Falk, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

I really want to throw my voice behind consultation. That consultation needs to be done with the provinces. We've seen over and over this Liberal government railroad through provinces and force what it wants onto the provinces. Not all provinces are the same. We have regional differences. It's just different from province to province. I sure hope that the consultation has been done with the provinces and the territories, because this is for the benefit of the people who have disabilities.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mrs. Falk.

Now we go to Mr. Long for five minutes.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Thank you, Chair.

Good afternoon, colleagues.

Thank you to our witnesses. Thanks for your work on this.

My questions are along the same line as MP Falk's. I will say, just for the record, that I'm glad we forced provinces along on things like day care—Premier Kenney and Premier Ford. I'm glad that we brought them along to accept the day care programs that are benefiting all of our constituents around the table.

Along the lines of MP Falk, one concern a lot of my constituents have that they come into the office and talk to me about is this: “How will it look? How will it intertwine with the provinces? Premier Higgs is going to cut some of our benefit.”

Do you envision this, as my colleague MP Falk was saying, as a province-by-province negotiation? Will it look different? Do you expect it to look different province by province? For example, our housing benefit is different in one province from another. I know we had the negotiations with child care. How do you envision that's going to look rolling out?

[Alexis Conrad]

I'll start. To go back to the question of engagement with the provinces, yes, this is absolutely fundamental to this process. That's the journey we're on at all levels, collectively with the provinces so they all hear the same thing and bilaterally with them so they can understand the specifics of how it fits with them.

As we know, provincial programs differ so much. There are different elements of them. There's different eligibility. There's different interaction with other programs. By sitting down with them and walking through it, one process they're going through is understanding all of the links with their own system.

On the provincial side, they will try to make sure they understand, when a federal benefit comes in, that they don't accidentally disqualify someone or reduce the income they're getting from another program. That's the spirit with which we've been working with them on an analytical basis to understand all those links. To be honest, part of that is why it is so complex. It is a very difficult and very differentiated landscape across the country.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Thank you for that.

I'll yield what's left of my time to MP Morrice.

Thank you.

[Mike Morrice, Green, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Long.

Chair, how much time is remaining?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

You have two minutes and 20 seconds.