Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Finance is on record as saying Canadians with disabilities must rank very high on everybody's priority list. However, he sets policy on the disability tax credit, which is so narrowly defined that persons with schizophrenia do not qualify, even though 1 in 100 Canadian families have a member with schizophrenia.
Furthermore, a doctor has told me that patients with cystic fibrosis, who spend a good deal of their day just trying to breathe, are also disabled from the current policy.
Hundreds of thousands of Canadians with disabilities who desperately need financial support to deal with the crushing costs which stem from their disabilities find it easier to get through the eye of a needle than to get help from the government. If the minister is truly committed to assisting disabled people to become fully functional citizens, he must broaden his rules around the disability tax credits and the medical and the infirm dependent tax credits so that they will provide real refundable benefits for all disabled Canadians.