Mr. Speaker, we do support basic dignity in life for all people. When it comes to persons with disabilities, there are two ways that this can happen. Many persons with disabilities prefer to earn their income through work, and have the ability to do so. That is a statistical fact. A million Canadians with disabilities have jobs; 300,000 of them have severe disabilities and have jobs.
We should reform our benefit and tax system to let them keep more of their wages. Right now, if people with disabilities get jobs, in many cases they lose more in clawbacks and taxes than they gain from wages, effectively banning them from the workforce. Many in the disability community have spoken out against that.
I think of Mark Wafer, who is 80% deaf. He could not get a job when he was a kid, so he hired himself, started a business and opened five different Tim Hortons locations that employed 130 people with disabilities at full wages without government assistance, doing the same work but at a higher quality than the rest of his workforce. He had some of the highest performing Tim Hortons locations in the country by all the metrics, proving that people with disabilities have something to contribute, not just their lives but in their livelihoods. We should encourage and reward that.