Thank you.
There is common ground between every group and individual who has presented to you and every speaker from every party who has addressed this bill that disability poverty is absolutely unacceptably high and must be eliminated. There is common ground that legislation to create the Canada disability benefit must be passed quickly.
We don't need to debate those points. We need to talk about what needs to be done so that this bill achieves what the minister said it would in her very first statement on the bill at second reading—the commitment that no person with a disability should live in poverty in Canada.
This bill does not ensure that. We propose amendments that will. It is undisputable that under this bill there need never be a Canada disability benefit or, if there is, it need not exceed a dollar a month. There is no assurance that it will be maintained from one cabinet to the next or from one government to the next. There is no assurance that people with disabilities who need it will all be covered. There is only one policy decision in this bill that is clear—that upwards of a third of all people with disabilities over the age of 15 are assured that they cannot receive this benefit, no matter how poor they are.
We propose amendments that will speed up getting money into people's pockets, because as it is drafted now, this bill is a formula for that happening slowly, not quickly.
To support what we are tabling, which I will quickly summarize, we've tabled with you an open letter, already signed by 37 organizations drawn from six provinces, a wide spectrum of disabilities and national and very local organizations that are united around an agenda of six reforms.
The government has committed itself to the maxim “nothing about us without us”. This letter is the “us” that the government must listen to.
First, this bill cuts out anyone older than what is defined as “working age”. Upwards of a third of people with disabilities over the age of 15 are over the age of 65. That makes sense because aging is the greatest cause of disability. Thirty-five per cent of people who, like me, are visually impaired are over the age of 65. They are cut out of this bill completely. We ask you to change that. Allow cabinet to create a Canada disability benefit that leaves no impoverished person with a disability behind.
In support of that, I say something with which no one can disagree. Disability poverty does not end at age 65. There is no reason a person, if they get the Canada disability benefit before that age, should ever experience a fall-off, a reduction in their income, upon achieving the age of 65.
Second, this bill should set, as you just heard, some kind of minimum or standard to assure impoverished people with disabilities of what they're going to get. The open letter talks about a minimum dollar amount that cabinet can raise but cannot go below. Another way of focusing on this, which I invite you to consider, is to have the bill also designate the ultimate net income that people with disabilities should be entitled to and assured of receiving between what they get from the province and what the Canada disability benefit will add to it. Let people know what the end goal is, and then cabinet, in making regulations, can fill in the details.
By the way, this bill does not assure that the benefits will be indexed to inflation. We call for that indexing to be assured by legislation.
Next, this bill does not set a mandatory start date for the money to start flowing. If we want to get it to people more quickly, a start date should be enacted now and the government and the bureaucracy driven to meet that deadline. To that end, the bill permits cabinet to make regulations; it doesn't require them to ever do so. If they don't, there's no benefit. Set a mandatory deadline. All of us folks are driven by deadlines, and so are they.
Next, we've heard about no clawbacks, but all the minister has told us is that she's trying to negotiate agreements with provinces. The problem is, those agreements may not be enforceable, or another government may get elected in a province and decide they don't want to comply with that agreement, that they're backing out of it. This bill should be amended to provide enforceable ways to ensure that clawbacks do not occur.
Finally, and you've heard it from many, this bill does not ensure that people with disabilities will truly have a voice in the regulations.
Now it's nice that the bill in its preamble recites the principle of nothing about us without us, but nothing requires the government to consult with us. I accept that the government will consult now, but that doesn't ensure that the next government will, or the one after that. More importantly, it's not enough to just have websites where we give input or we talk to public officials. We need to be able to talk directly to those making the decisions, and we need to do so with the government making public the spectrum of options to be considered.