Human Resources Committee on Nov. 16th, 2022

[Michael J. Prince]

Thank you for the question.

You will see that in my submission I recommend some additional language in the preamble that says we recognize “that disability is an evolving concept that, in interaction with a barrier, hinders a person's full and equal participation in society.” That language is a shortened version of both what you will find in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and a much longer definition in the Accessible Canada Act.

For the purposes of this framework bill, I thought there should be at least some brief reference to the notion of disability, but without burdening the legislation by trying to provide a long laundry list of what all of the conditions or impairments or dimensions are. Society's understanding of mental health and of socio-psychological disabilities has evolved greatly over the last generation, as has the concept of episodic disabilities, a term that hardly any of us used 10 or 15 years ago, the idea that people live with fluctuating and cyclical conditions. Our programs have done a very bad job historically of acknowledging something that's not a physical, permanent and obvious impairment. The public policies of our society have to evolve to catch up with the true lived experience of young girls and boys and adults, men and women, whoever.

I'm suggesting to you that a friendly amendment could provide some additional language about disability that could be included in the preamble, but that should be left to the regulations and the co-discussions with disability groups.

Perhaps I could just speak briefly to the notion of disability on the intergovernmental side, because this is going to be an income supplement. It's going to be a supplement to provincial programs and federal programs that currently exist. As you all know, a great variety of definitions of disabilities currently exist. If this supplement is going to work quickly and effectively as an addition to those existing programs, it's going to have to take a fairly generous and flexible and responsive approach to what disability is, basically mirroring—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Prince.

Thank you, Mr. Van Bynen. We've gone over the time.

Ms. Chabot, you have the floor for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I also like to thank the witnesses.

I'm going to go back to the concept of disability.

Mr. Prince, you're absolutely right: The definitions in French and English are not the same.

I will use what we experienced in Quebec as an example: 16% of the people who could have been eligible for the one-time disability payment, which was up to $600, didn't apply because of the definition.

You said that the definition needed to be made clearer through the shared regulations. Did I understand you correctly, or do you instead feel that parliamentarians should clarify the definition in the wording of the bill?

[Michael J. Prince]

Thank you for your question.

I wouldn't suggest that parliamentarians try to solve this question in the draft bill. As Ms. Carr warned us, if one tried to get into the technical details at this stage of a bill in a committee, it would unduly delay it and completely go against this great desire to perhaps tweak the bill but pass the bill fairly quickly.

Where the discussion on eligibility and harmonizing definitions of disability will happen is both with respect to the regulations and, quite honestly, with respect to the intergovernmental agreements that will have to be negotiated and reached with the minister. Once the bill becomes law, she will have the legal authority to enter into formal agreements with provincial governments and territorial governments and departments. It's there where the creativity will have to be.

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

Thank you.

[Michael J. Prince]

Just quickly, I have one last point.

I would hope that not only the federal departments enable nothing without us, but that in the provincial realm, provincial governments provide equal opportunities for disability groups in their own jurisdictions to be involved somehow, creatively, in what traditionally are closed intergovernmental discussions.

There needs to be greater transparency and opportunity for disability groups to have a voice, not just with their local MLAs or MPs, but with both orders of government, to ensure that we start to try to dovetail these definitions.

Thank you.

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

Mr. Prince, I'd like to clarify your comments.

You said that in Bill C‑22, some guidelines were unclear, including the principle that nothing should be done without the involvement of people with disabilities. In your view, there is merit in clarifying these aspects, particularly with respect to the income threshold for the Canada disability benefit. That's our dilemma, and the testimony is important.

Should we clarify this upfront or should we wait to clarify all these things in the regulations?

[Michael J. Prince]

Again thank you for the question.

I think this speaks to the issue of adequacy or the notion of what a floor or a guaranteed supplement would look like if it's modelled after the seniors benefit of the GIS. I'll embellish my answer to your question. I would think that this income supplement has to be GIS-plus.

The current monthly payment this fall for a single person on GIS is $1,023. I think the Canada disability supplement has to be at least that. It needs to be, like the GIS, indexed quarterly to the cost of living. It needs to be non-taxable as a benefit and it needs to have an earnings exemption associated with it that is far more generous than with the GIS.

When the GIS was first introduced, there was a tremendously high clawback. The assumption in the 1960s and 1970s was that seniors weren't going to work. You retired, you got your pension and that was it. We now know. Over the years, the earnings exemptions attached to OAS and GIS have gone up to acknowledge that people continue to work even if they're eligible for this benefit. It's a very modest earnings exemption.

With this Canada disability benefit, there's an opportunity to set a very generous earnings exemption. Again, not everybody with a disability is going to earn a lot or work, but we need to send a signal that we are not labelling the recipients of this benefit as unemployable or having, by definition, work incapacity. We have to acknowledge that there's a desire and an aspiration by many—particularly younger people with disabilities. There's a generational shift here in aspirations for work. We need to support that.

Again, I think these regulations could be done within six to eight months with the full involvement of the disability community. If you look at the list of what has to be done in regulations under this bill, from (a) down to (q), or however far into the alphabet it goes, a lot of those could be done pretty readily. I'm confident that payments to Canadians could be possible at the end of 2023 or very early in 2024—in the next fiscal year.

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

Would you like us to propose an amendment—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Madame Chabot, time is up.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Madame Chabot.

We'll go to Ms. Zarrillo for six minutes to conclude.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to ask my questions of Ms. Hemmelgarn.

I just want to say how powerful your testimony was today. You speak for yourself and your family, but you also speak for many families who have come to speak to me over the years. I want you to know that you're not alone, but I see the fight and I see the exhaustion, and it shouldn't have to be this way for you. I just appreciate so much your coming today.

My question is around the fact that, as legislators, this is the opportunity for us to ensure, as you said, rights for your daughters, yet you worry about who will take over, such as adult siblings. I've had residents come to speak to me who were in their sixties and who have sisters and brothers who are still supporting each other. You also spoke about assets. One had a trust that was set up from their parent before their parent passed. The person now has to go into assisted living, and they have to pay capital gains on their condominium that was bought by a trust. There are so many things. It was so powerful, what you said today.

I feel the pressure of making sure that your daughters and other people's kids have the income support that they need throughout their life. I'm worried. To me, having it all in regulation is almost like an untenable risk right now, when the stakes are so high, to say that we don't know what the income is going to be, that we don't know who is going to get it, and that we don't know when they're going to get it.

My question for you is around that untenable risk of it ending up not being enough to lift them out of poverty. Do you have any words for me as a parent, as a mom to a mom, about how I can get over that fact that I feel like I need to do something to protect the adequate income in this legislation rather than just in regulations? How can I get over that to just let the chips fall?

[Rosemarie Hemmelgarn]

There are a lot of parameters that could be taken into consideration. There are things that I listed, like inheritance or if you're gifted money. Right now, if my daughters are gifted money, they have to report that money to SAID, and their benefit gets reduced. This is gifted money.

I just feel that, if I were to get gifted money, or if I were to give you gifted money, there wouldn't be a problem, so why should there be a problem for a disabled person? It's discriminatory. In so many different ways, they are discriminated against just for being disabled. For instance, you are limited in how much you can have in your savings account and chequing account. Why should a disabled person have a limitation for the amount of money they can have in their savings account or chequing account? Nobody else has to worry about that.

My oldest daughter came with me to advocate for them at one point at social services, and when we were done, we came out of the room, and she didn't say this in front of her two sisters, but she said, “Can you believe it? I could not believe it.” We had to walk into the room, and we had a glass window that we had to talk through to a person to ask if we could make an appointment to see our social worker. She said, very coldly, “You can use that phone right over there.” We dialed the phone to get connected with the social services person we wanted to see, and luckily we were able to see her. We went into this little room that was no bigger than 10 feet by 10 feet, no windows, and there were four of us in there at a desk. We said what we needed to say, and we left. My oldest daughter said, “I can't believe that, the way they were treated.” I said, “Welcome to your sisters' world”. That's just one small example.

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

It's discrimination over and over again.

[Rosemarie Hemmelgarn]

It's over and over again. Why? Why should disabled people get treated any differently than you or me? They have so many challenges with just the way they are treated, and with the system that's supposed to be helping them. It's most discouraging.

I had to advocate with SAID and social services. They're so set on policies—policies that are not invested in the people. They are harming the people. They are not flexible, and they will not change. If you try to connect with a person, they don't answer you. They pretend you don't exist. They won't phone you back. You have to phone another person. You try to find out who made these policies. You finally find out, and it takes maybe four months to get a meeting with them. When you do get a meeting, they're just stern on their policy, which is set up to fail some clients—not all clients, but some clients. They're strict and stern, and they won't change.

It's a very hard life being a disabled person. If you don't have an advocate, you're in big trouble. Many of the social problems right now in the communities and in the cities, with the homeless or the justice system, stem from a lot of these. I worked in the education system for a while, and some of the students had problems, because they couldn't learn. It wasn't their fault; they had intellectual disabilities. I moved on several years later and I worked in the RCMP. I'd see these people trickle down into that system, and it was a culture that wasn't changing. There was nobody there to help them. It started right in the school years where they never had the supports they needed. Then they're adults, and they don't have an education. They may not have an advocate. Some of them go into the justice system, and that fails them too. With many of the people we see—the drugs, the alcohol, the mental health problems, the homeless—a lot of it stems from the beginning, having intellectual disabilities.

If you're a disabled person, it's a long, hard road, and you are at a disadvantage compared to people like you or me.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Hemmelgarn.

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

I think that's a wonderful way to end it, the very compassionate...the understanding that we're talking about people here and discrimination over and over again.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for letting it go a little bit longer. That's a wonderful way to end our testimonies today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you so much to the witnesses.

Before we conclude the meeting, on Monday we will have committee business. We have some work to do. Because this is our last witness panel, I want the clerk to speak briefly and to bring to your attention the timelines we need to move to consideration of the bill.

Madam Clerk, would you briefly discuss that?

[The Clerk of the Committee, Ms. Danielle Widmer]

Yes, the chair is correct. It's the fourth meeting to receive testimony from witnesses. Moving forward, we're looking for direction from the committee in terms of the timeline for clause-by-clause for Bill C-22.

I'm just going to put this into consideration in terms of the bill, and just roll it back a bit. The deadline for briefs is tonight at midnight. We have received over 100 briefs so far. Approximately 10 of them are on the website, and 90 of them are in translation right now. You will be receiving correspondence on a weekly basis. You will receive your first package of correspondence from the first week. There are a lot in translation right now, and we expect to receive them all at end of the month, by early December.

In terms of the timeline, it will be good to understand where the committee would like to go in terms of clause-by-clause dates—either today or Monday to decide the date for the clause-by-clause and the deadline for amendments. To respect the routine motions, we ask that the deadline for amendments be 48 hours before the date of clause-by-clause. It's one of those things of understanding when the committee would like to consider clause-by-clause, so we can set up some timelines for that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Okay. We'll need to make clear decisions today.

For clause-by-clause, could we begin it on Wednesday if we made that decision today?

[The Clerk]

If the committee wanted Wednesday, to have 48 hours for the amendments and deadlines, ideally, it would have to be Monday at noon at the latest for those amendments to be submitted. I'm not too sure where everyone is with drafting.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

I have Mrs. Falk, then Mrs. Gray and Madame Chabot. We are over our two hours, as well.

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

When will we have all the briefs translated?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

She said the first week of December at the latest.

I have Mrs. Gray and then Madame Chabot.