The number of cases of people saying they cannot live any longer—people with disabilities saying they can no longer stand to live because the social supports they as a person with a disability need are not being provided by governments, which are either indifferent or incapable—is now becoming staggering.
There was a case out of Winnipeg two weeks ago that achieved notoriety. There are many cases. This isn't really the proper forum in which to get into them, but cases in which people are saying the lack of social supports, their poverty, is rendering life intolerable for them now points very directly towards a social justice solution, a human rights solution, which is to say that we ensure that people with disabilities are enjoying the human rights we have agreed to internationally, the human rights obligations we say we're complying with when we go to UN treaty bodies all the time.
Now is the time to say let's lift people out of poverty and, concretely, for this committee to report that an amendment is required to ensure that any benefits provided under the regulations meet the standard of adequacy that the official poverty line has set out, which has to be interpreted in a way that takes into account the needs of people with disabilities. The two are very closely linked.
Your committee is in a position to do something about it, so, as Mr. Lepofsky has said, the devastating MAID solution is no longer one that is taken simply because of indifference on the part of government.