Madam Speaker, these proceedings on Bill C-81, an act to ensure a barrier-free Canada, have the potential for tremendous historic significance. We are debating a bill that, if done properly, would create breakthrough legislation that would profoundly impact Canadian society for generations to come. I believe everyone in this chamber is cognizant of the importance of what we are doing here today. Therefore, I speak in support of this bill based on the premise the minister stated yesterday: to get it to committee as soon as possible so that we can make it as substantively great as we possibly can. I agree.
This bill is not all that it needs to be as it stands now. It will require substantial amendments. While we commend the government for tabling it, this bill will need to be altered dramatically in order to become good legislation. That is why New Democrats commit today to working with the government to provide good-faith amendments so that Bill C-81 can become the historic accessibility legislation that persons living with disabilities in Canada deserve.
New Democrats have long been committed to the rights of people with disabilities. It has been our long-standing position that all of government, every budget, every policy and regulation, every grant should be viewed through a disability lens. Our ultimate goal has always been to help foster a society in which all citizens are able to participate fully and equally. We believe that this cannot even begin to happen until all of our institutions are open and completely accessible to everyone.
In fact, New Democrats have supported the establishment of a Canadians with disabilities act for many years, and the call for a CDA can be found in our 2015 election platform. CDA uses the language of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. It was an early warning when that language was switched out in favour of an accessibility act, but I was assured that was because an accessibility act would meet and reach beyond the UN convention, which Canada is a state party to. It makes sense that any accessibility bill tabled by the government should essentially be enabling legislation for Canada's obligation to fulfill the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
Canada ratified this convention in 2010, but until now, has done nothing to bring our laws into conformity with it. Indeed, I tabled a motion in this very chamber, Motion No. 56, that calls on the government to implement these obligations. The convention sets out the legal obligations of states to promote and protect the rights of persons with disabilities. It does not create new rights. There are a number of principles and articles within the CRPD that are extremely important to people with disabilities. These principles address rights, such as the ability to live independently, freedom from exploitation and violence, the right to an adequate standard of living, social protections and more.
Rather than considering disability an issue of medicine, charity or dependency, the convention challenges people worldwide to understand disability as a human rights issue. It establishes that discrimination against any person on the basis of disability is a violation of the rights, inherent dignity and worth of the human person.
The convention covers many areas where obstacles can arise, such as physical access to buildings, roads and transportation, and access to information through written, electronic and alternative forms of communication. The convention also aims to reduce stigma and discrimination, which are often reasons people with disabilities are excluded from education, employment, health and other services. It is crucial that societies eliminate these forms of discrimination, not just because doing so is the right thing to do, but because it will enable a previously ignored and sizeable section of our population to contribute their talents and abilities to the betterment of us all. Everybody wins when everyone is able to contribute.
It is important here to note that the convention is our ideal. It is up to governments to bridge the distance between these ideals and the lived reality of people living with disabilities. We debate one such bridge here today.
While the NDP supports Bill C-81, we do so with the understanding that it will not fulfill our obligations to the CRPD. It is one step in the right direction and I celebrate that significant step. Why? Let me tell the House some of the reasons.
First of all, it is the most comprehensive federal bill addressing issues faced by Canadians living with disabilities to be tabled in this House in over 30 years. This alone is significant. The previous government had 10 years' worth of opportunities to bring forward a national act and it emphatically chose not to.
Bill C-81's very title trumpets a worthy ambition, an act to ensure a barrier-free Canada. The stated purpose of Bill C-81 is to create a barrier-free Canada “through the proactive identification, removal, and prevention of barriers to accessibility wherever Canadians interact with areas under federal jurisdiction.”
Creating a barrier-free Canada is indeed my intent and why the NDP seeks amendments. We will work with the government to fine-tune this bill so that it truly realizes its own stated ambitions, until it becomes the kind of landmark legislation that people living with disabilities deserve.
Bill C-81 will establish several important new officials and agencies. These include a new accessibility commissioner for enforcement, a new Canadian accessibility standards development organization, which will elaborate model accessibility standards that the government can enact as regulations, and a new chief accessibility officer to advise and report on progress and needed improvements. It even creates a formal complaint process and a review process to gauge the bill's effectiveness over time. These two processes are especially crucial for a bill like this to have successful outcomes.
It is vital that a feedback loop be established between those who are to benefit from the bill and the bodies responsible for administering it. A complaint process allows for this, and the review process will allow for proper responses to the bill's shortcomings as they are discovered. Yes, these sections of the bill are both commendable and important. However, there are sections of Bill C-81 that I believe miss the mark and that undermine the bill's own stated goals. These are the provisions that I and my party will work in good faith with this government to fix, should our efforts be welcome.
Most obviously concerning is the bill's lack of mandatory timelines for implementation. It allows but does not require the government to adopt accessibility standards, and yet does not impose a time frame within which implementation is to happen. Without these, the implementation process, even its start-up initializing process, could drag on for years. Curiously, neither does the bill require all federal government laws, policies and programs to be vetted through a disability lens. This seems a strange omission indeed. I respect the current accessibility minister's commitment to this file and can only assume that this is an accidental oversight which she will correct immediately.
It might be helpful here to take a moment and explain to those listening just what is meant by the term “disability lens”. In this context, the disability lens is a way to examine public policy. It helps lawmakers such as myself make sure that when a new law, regulatory measure, course of action and funding priority is being debated or implemented, the needs of persons living with disabilities are taken into consideration. Just stopping to ask whether people with disabilities are even considered over the course of the policy's formulation can go a long way to making it better and more just.
I like the succinct way the Council for Canadians with Disabilities promotes using a disability lens. It encourages us to ask a series of questions.
Does the policy view disabled people as members of a minority group with special needs, or does it view disability as one of many variables in the population and thus aim to structure society so as to ensure universal access and coverage?
How would the policy relate to other policies, legislation, regulations and programs within the jurisdiction in question? How would it relate to others, or even within the same ministry?
This is another important consideration. Who will win and who will lose when this policy is implemented? How will the allocation of resources be affected by this policy? How will this impact other disability groups?
Of notable concern is that Bill C-81 would allow, but again would not require, the minister to work with provincial and territorial governments to improve accessibility. It would be absurd for a national accessibility act in a country such as ours with our unique brand of federalism not to include a requirement to work with provincial and territorial governments to improve accessibility.
The Council of Canadians with Disabilities has been a great resource for me as well. Another non-partisan resource I appreciate is the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance for its analysis of this legislation. Its outstanding work allows government representatives, bureaucrats and members of Parliament to do our jobs better when it comes to developing policy and law that provides meaningful impact.
One issue of great concern regarding Bill C-81 is the way in which it would give various public bodies sweeping and unaccountable powers to exempt any or all obligated organizations from a number of important obligations under the bill. This is especially concerning because it has been my experience that where such exemptions exist, they will be used.
Section 46 of the bill, for example, empowers the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, CRTC, to totally exempt any obligated organization it wishes within its mandate from any or all of the accessibility plan requirements. Worse still, the bill provides no means by which persons with disabilities can register their concerns before a decision is made to grant an exemption. This is deeply troubling.
Also problematic is that another section of Bill C-81 gives the federal cabinet the power to make regulations that can exempt any obligated organizations from a wide range of obligations under the act. The bill would allow cabinet to do this, and it need not provide any reasons when it does. Seriously, if cabinet is allowed to do this, why are we here today?
I also find it perplexing that while the bill requires obligated organizations to establish accessibility plans, it does not require these plans to be good plans. It does not require an obligated organization to implement its accessibility plan. This is curiouser and curiouser.
Potentially quite troubling is a situation created in section 172 whereby a regulation created by the Canadian Transportation Agency for example, without debate, could end up trumping obligations under the Canadian Human Rights Act. It should be a basic principle of Bill C-81 that no provisions therein supersede any human rights. This is a perfect example of some of the technical issues that need to be addressed, and I want our stakeholders who understand the impact of this troublesome section to know that we will seek to have it removed.
The bill likewise separates enforcement and implementation in a confusing way over a tangle of different public enforcement agencies rather than providing people with disabilities with the simple one-stop enforcement they need. The CRTC will provide enforcement for its obligated organizations and so too will the Canadian Transportation Agency.
The bill does this, despite the reality that both the CRTC and the CTA have an unsatisfactory track record when it comes to enforcing accessibility over many years. As this is not a new problem, it boggles the imagination as to why the important bill does not address the core problem. It is absolutely vital that persons with disabilities and stakeholder groups be able to navigate our federal system in order to effectively realize their rights and also that the various agencies and institutions are able to respond to criticisms.
Moreover, this snarl of enforcement and administration will result in very similar regulations being enacted by the very different agencies involved rather than by one single agency. The duplication will not just risk inconsistencies, it will create them, causing even further delays. The predictable result is the real possibility that some sectors of the economy will have these regulations ready for them before some other sectors.
The bill should be looking to eliminate the interdepartmental patchwork system that is already in place rather than making it more complex. We simply must fix it. Many of us who follow these issues were seriously expecting that Bill C-81 would include provisions to simplify these processes.
Earlier this year, a private member's bill of mine, Bill C-348, was debated in the House. It was designed to create a one-stop shop at the individual level to make it significantly easier for persons living with disabilities to navigate the programs available to them from the federal government. At present, persons with disabilities have to prove that they are disabled each time they apply for a federal benefit and with each separate application will typically have to pay a doctor for each time there is paperwork involved. This is an unnecessarily punitive system for so vulnerable a population.
My bill, of course, was voted down by the government. It was not a whipped vote, yet every Liberal member in the House that evening voted against it, every single one. I had hoped that such discipline on the part of the governing party meant that they perhaps knew something I did not know, that perhaps this upcoming accessibility bill would include provisions to streamline these processes, but no, this was not the case.
The complaint process will also be unnecessarily confusing. The splintering of the implementation and enforcement mandate will substantially weaken the bill. The likelihood of this creating confusion among many, including public servants, obligated organizations, and people with disabilities and their advocates who come to the federal government seeking justice is all but certain.
Stakeholder groups and disability advocates know from brute experience that this confusion will force them to run from enforcement agency to enforcement agency with their complaints, going around in circles. “Sorry, no, wrong agency” they will be told, they have to go to transportation. Persons living with disabilities have had enough of this particular brand of bureaucratic confusion. We know this is a problem. Let us fix this too.
I would also like to note that Canada's hearing impaired community has asked the government repeatedly that the Official Languages Act be amended to have American sign language and Quebec sign language designated as official languages so that accessible communication is taken seriously.
This sets the course for the direction of the NDP. This is where we are going in our support to bring the bill to committee. There are many provisions we will be looking to amend. Those that I mentioned here today are merely broad strokes of what we in the progressive opposition are committed to standing up for and remedying.
In closing, I would also urge the committee to hold its meetings in different places across this country. As the most significant piece of disability legislation since the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, we owe it to Canadians living with disabilities and the people who care about them to demonstrate our intention for meaningful legislation that fully includes every Canadian in the participation of our society.
