For newly disabled people, it depends on several things. And it's like the lottery. A person comes in and you have to look at their whole situation. So a person comes in, and if they're young—say they have schizophrenia and they're disabled at age 18—they haven't worked long enough to acquire CPP. They maybe haven't even worked long enough to acquire EI benefits. So therefore they're automatically on the welfare system.
Then you have other people. Our roommate, for example, has bipolar illness, and he had a job with a major pharmaceutical company. He was a rep. He was pulling down probably between $60,000 and $100,000 a year in income. When he started to have trouble, his employers wanted him to go on long-term disability. His employers were supportive of his going on long-term disability, and his psychiatrist and his doctor were not supportive of his going on long-term disability. He was subsequently fired, and he now lives on CPP disability. And it's taken years to find somebody who will be supportive to get him on AISH. So he has to pay for all his own medications out of $800 a month. He doesn't even have access to those benefits. So it's a very serious issue.
Then you have other people who had benefits and were resisting going on long-term disability. One woman in particular had access to long-term disability and she didn't want to go on it, so she tried to stick it out. She was fired. Two months later she was diagnosed with MS, and then there's no way to access her benefits, right? That's all gone. She lost her benefits.
This is one of the things that can be particularly risky if people are afraid to disclose any medical issues or if they're unaware, because when you're first getting diagnosed you're not aware of what's happening to you. So that's also a problem, and then people lose their benefits.