Thank you for that question.
One of the challenges is that the government has not conducted a census on the institutional population since 1991 when it did the HALS institutional survey, the Health and Activity Limitation Survey. At that point it was beneficial to do that survey, following a committee hearing much like this, which revealed the significant impacts of institutions and particularly disability obstacles in Canada.
Since that time, we haven't had up-to-date information on the size of the institutionalized population. Right now we know that over 100,000 people are living in institutions. If we include long-term care facilities, it's around 190,000. Those are numbers pulled from the Stats Canada survey on residential care facilities.
A challenging part of understanding what is happening in institutions is that the Canadian disabilities survey doesn't actually go to institutionalized people. As a result, we don't know what's happening inside institutions. We also don't know how specific government bills targeting ending disability poverty are going to impact institutionalized people, because in institutions you receive a different level of legislated poverty. In Ontario that is about $149 a month, and across Canada it peaks at $300. Imagine living on $300 a month.
We don't have a lot of numbers, and I think that's one of the most concerning aspects of this. We don't know the size of the population afflicted by institutionalization, and we also don't know the size of the population, particularly the population of people labelled with mental disorders that will be expanded under the changes to track two.