Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the minister for ACOA.
The debate raises a number of questions that are interesting for the House to consider. There has been a lot of work done, beginning with the work done some years ago by the member for Fredericton when they first began to look seriously at the question of providing greater support for people with disabilities. The work by the subcommittee that is the subject of the motion was an important piece of work that rightly had all party support.
It raises a question in the minds of all of us. I think it is a question that I and those of us who are on the government operations committee want to spend some time thinking about also. The question is why is it that smart people make stupid decisions? It is a funny question in a way.
I was a public servant within the department of family services in Manitoba for many years. Some of my colleagues and certainly those in the minister's office would call it the department of personal pain. In many ways government has to work in space that is very difficult for people, dealing with crises and great problems in their lives. The government tries to act to provide some remediation and it can never satisfy the demand.
In fairness to the public servants, they are always caught in this terrible collision between a huge level of demand and an equally strong pressure to maintain a balance or control on public expenditure. Yet every now and again caught in that nexus it is too easy to forget what is actually happening.
About two and a half months ago I received a call from a fellow I know in Brandon, Manitoba. He said he had applied for the disability tax credit for his daughter and was refused. He wanted me to help him understand why. I know his daughter. His daughter was born without her left arm; she has nothing from just below her shoulder.
I said that this could not be possible, that obviously some mistake had been made and somebody just did not understand what was going on. I thought maybe he had submitted the wrong form. I said I would see if I could sort it out. When my staff called the department they were told that because the child was born without her left arm she never would have missed it and therefore she could not be considered to be disabled.
I am not a lawyer, but I did study a commercial law course once and I remember the professor talking about the principle of the reasonable person. Would a reasonable person standing back and looking at that circumstance think that was a reasonable response? Of course he would not. It is absolutely outrageous.
By and large I have a great deal of respect for the public servants here in Ottawa and across the country, but how do smart people end up making a decision like that? How do smart people end up getting themselves so tied up in knots that they get so focused on the definition they have to apply and how to apply it that they lose sight of the fact that they are applying it to a human being?
I think that is an interesting question. It is also one that speaks to a related issue which is the need for the members of this chamber to become more active on these issues. The example of the subcommittee is an excellent one. By and large by allowing ourselves to become caught up in short term fatuous partisan debate, we have forgotten that part of our role here is to represent a set of values.
I have debates with the Auditor General all the time. I have great respect for our Auditor General. I had great respect for the last one; I worked closely with Mr. Desautels and I like the new Auditor General very much. I think at times the Auditor General gets called upon to determine or state what is valuable because of an absence of direction from this chamber. While the Auditor General's staff may be great people to count the pennies, they are not necessarily the people who should be determining the values of the country. That is a job for us.
It is passing strange to me. Just as I was sitting here listening to the debate I sent up to my office for the most recent report on tax expenditures, because this is essentially a tax expenditure. One document says it is about $360 million a year. Another report says it is $310 million but that report could be a year out of date. That is the total expenditure we are making to assist in making lives a little bit easier for some of the most vulnerable people in our country.
We seem to spend not a lot of time debating the fact that we give $1.7 billion in tax expenditures to people who win lottery tickets. We give $590 million to people who pay a little interest so they can earn more money. We give $565 million to people to deduct their union dues. We give $260 million toward the deduction of luncheon expenses. We seem to do these things with relative ease, yet when it comes to providing a relatively modest amount of additional financial support to a group of citizens who are by definition among the lowest incomes and most vulnerable in society, we tie ourselves in knots trying to find ways not to do it.
Surely it is a response of a system that has gone a little mad. It is important that the House support the work of the subcommittee. The subcommittee did what we say committees should do in undertaking their responsibilities. Members from all parts of the country and all political persuasions came together and reached unanimity.
Unanimity is not an easy thing to do around here. Many of us would argue that we would be a lot better served if we strove harder to find unanimity in our committee reports and we would be far more influential if we did that. We finally have one that did it.
The subcommittee looked at the issue in detail. Very talented members spent a lot of time looking at the issue. In their responsibilities as members of Parliament, they came to a set of conclusions they believe are in the best interests of the people who are affected by this. The members did that unanimously and the House should support that work. We should applaud them for what they have done and frankly, we should urge other committees to do the same thing.
Given the conversations I have had with other members in the House, I think that the work of the subcommittee has been largely accepted and is respected by the government. I suspect we will find that the government will vote for the motion. I look forward to the opportunity to do so.