Thank you, Mr. Brassard.
I'm thankful this committee is meeting virtually. It means that Thai and I do not have to run the gauntlet of getting from here to Ottawa. We would have had to face no less than six major regulatory hurdles from planes, trains, automobiles, airlines, hotels and motels.
Ladies and gentlemen, you and the committee are in the position to significantly advance the rights of Canadians and veterans with disabilities across this country, now and well into the future. We desperately need a national standard that protects disabled individuals and their service dogs while providing oversight, stopping unscrupulous or unqualified businesses from capitalizing on a perceived opportunity and protecting the public from abuses.
You must ensure the establishment of a Canadian federal standard for service dogs, but you cannot—and I repeat cannot—invite back to the table any individuals or groups who deliberately sabotaged the first attempt at national standards. A self-appointed subversive group took CGSB's work product to the Standards Council of Canada and succeeded in creating such a toxic environment that the impasse that CGSB was confronted with was an inevitable conclusion. They set out to derail the process and they succeeded.
Even more stunning is that the deputy minister of VAC was apprised in writing of the impending implosion months before it happened. He acknowledged this and did nothing to prevent what transpired. That may seem like a shocking position. I will be forwarding to the clerk this pile of supporting emails as an annex to these remarks. I wrote those emails. You need to submit an ATIP request on the Standards Council of Canada and the folks on the complaint committee. They have forfeited any right to be a part of this process. Some of those same individuals are attempting to use a private enterprise to produce a standard that they want to offer to the government as a “done deal” solution. You absolutely cannot let that happen. Do not fall for that. You need to know the facts.
Third party objective standards should pair the federal offices of Accessibility Standards Canada with the standard experts at CGSB, unimpeded by obstructionists, to produce a standard that will be adopted at the federal level. CGSB has produced a standard. There's little work to be done. Provinces need to become involved to provide unimpeded interprovincial reciprocity.
The standard needs to encompass three parts. The first is a universal public access test. The second, which will be provided by subject matter experts, is the skills and testing for each subset of dogs. The third is the SRO regulatory oversight piece. Danielle Forbes referred to this in her testimony when she spoke about what is required when you become a member of an organization like ADI.
The short version is that we have no national standards, even though Seamus O'Regan pledged in the House of Commons just after April 18 of 2018 that we would have national service dog standards by the fall of that year. To date, nothing has been done.
Does that clarify things a little, John?