Canada Disability Benefit explained

David Lepofsky:
I think everybody agrees the government says that the aim of this bill is to lift people with disabilities out of poverty, and that's good. But at the very least, you'd think it should ensure that their income is higher than the poverty law. And I defer to the disability poverty experts on that one. But one of the things that's quite frustrating is this, the government announced its intent to create this benefit two years ago. They brought a bill before the House of Commons a year ago. It died because they called an election so they brought it forward now. It's gone through first reading, second reading, and it's already had a week in public hearings. And we still know absolutely nothing about what the dollar amount is that they're proposing to pay. We know that they mean it as a top up for provincial disability benefits.

Joeita Gupta:
I'm Joeita Gupta and this is The Pulse. Over the last two years, the cost of living has continued to soar. As a result, Canadians with disabilities have been loudly calling for the federal government to improve financial supports. Many Canadians with disabilities who are working age remain either unemployed or underemployed. And many Canadians with disabilities continue to live in poverty. Several Canadians with disabilities rely on provincial social assistance programs, which have historically fallen short of the cost of living and are unable to provide a decent standard of living.
In response, the federal government recently announced Bill C-22, which would result in the creation of the Canada Disability Benefit. But although this is welcome news for disability advocates, there is very little known about the program itself. For example, we don't know who's eligible and we don't know when the payment will actually be made. Today we discuss Bill C-22. It's time to put your finger on The Pulse.
Hello and welcome to The Pulse on AMI-audio. I'm Joeita Gupta and I'm joining you today from the Accessible Media Studios in downtown Toronto, which is located on Treaty 13 lands and subject to the Dish With One Spoon treaty. Today I'm wearing a light brown crewneck sweater, which is cable knit and my hair is pulled back in a bun. We're talking about the Canada Disability Benefit. It's been making headlines across the country. And to give us more of feedback about the benefit, who's eligible, what would be involved, and what's missing, we're joined today by a well-known figure, at least a voice that many of us have heard right here on the program, I'm pleased to welcome David Lepofsky to The Pulse. David, hello and welcome back to the program. It's great to have you with us.

David Lepofsky:
Always great to be talking to you.

Joeita Gupta:
So David, can you tell us a little bit about what Bill C-22 is and what it's intended to do for people with disabilities?

David Lepofsky:
Upwards of a million people with disabilities live in poverty right now in Canada, which is shameful according to the federal government, and they're right. The Trudeau government is proposing to create a new benefit, a new financial payment for people with disabilities to be called the Canada Disability Benefit. It's meant as a top-up over and above other benefits that people with disabilities get, not a replacement if they're living in poverty. So all of that is good. It's a response to a long-standing need and it's long overdue. But to answer your question, what's Bill C-22 going to actually do? Well, if it's passed in the terms that's written in now. It may do absolutely nothing. I know that sounds ridiculous, but the bill speaks well in terms of intention, but it's very weak in terms of how it actually applies or works.
The bill doesn't require the government to create a Canada disability benefit at all. It just says the government may. So they might or they might not. It doesn't set a minimum amount for the benefits. It just says cabinet can decide how much to pay. So it could be generous, it could be just a buck a month. It doesn't say who's eligible so cabinet can make set eligibility requirements that are really narrow. With one exception, it does make one decision. This is the only detail in the bill, the only specifics in the bill and it's bad. The bill says that the benefit can be paid to working-age people with disabilities. Now, we don't know what that means, but we got to submit sort of 18 to 65 or something like that. So here's the problem. Disability poverty doesn't end at age 65. It just doesn't. We have people right now with disabilities over the age of 65 who are living in poverty. And this bill would do nothing, absolutely nothing for them.
So let's talk about blind people for example or people with serious vision loss. Disproportionately, they're seniors. In fact, I'm told by CNIB that at least more than half of people with serious vision loss are 65 and older. Well, a Canada Disability Benefit, which leaves out a majority of people with vision loss ain't much of a candidate disability benefit.
There are other problems. Not only does it leave it up to cabinet to decide pretty much everything, it sets no timelines for cabinet to make regulations. They might make regulations, they might make them quickly or they might take forever or they might make none at all. But beyond that, it also provides no parliamentary oversight once this bill is passed. You see, if some of these basic specifics were built into the bill, if the bill required the benefit to be paid, set a mandatory minimum for the payment and a start date for the payment, then if another government gets elected, they might amend the regulations to make the benefit stronger or more, but they couldn't cut back on it unless they bring the matter before Parliament for votes in the House of Commons and oversight by the Senate.
See, this bill gives a blank political check to cabinet to decide everything, including things that Parliament should be deciding. And right now we have a minority government, which means in the House of Commons, the Trudeau liberals have a minority of votes. But what they're saying is, "Please take all the policy decisions out of the place, the House of Commons, where we have a minority of votes and give them over to cabinet where we have the monopoly on votes." That's a bad approach to democracy and it's worse because it means a subsequent government could get elected that wants to cut it back and could do it in secret votes in cabinet without any public debate and any oversight by the House of Commons or the Senate.

Joeita Gupta:
You mentioned a few minutes ago, David, that we don't know at the moment how much the Canada Disability Benefit is going to be or what the minimum amount is going to be. Given the intention of Bill C-22 is to eliminate poverty for people with disabilities, do you have some thoughts about what the minimum amount should be?

David Lepofsky:
Well, I don't want to overstate what I and the AODA Alliance claim to know. We're accessibility advocates. There are disability poverty advocates, and we turn to them for expertise on that question. What I think everybody agrees that the government says that the aim of this bill is to lift people with disabilities out of poverty, and that's good, but at the very least, you'd think it should ensure that their income is higher than the poverty line. And I defer to the disability poverty experts on that one.
But one of the things that's quite frustrating is this, the government announced its intent to create this benefit two years ago. They brought a bill before the House of Commons a year ago. It died because they called an election. So they brought it forward now. It's gone through first reading, second reading, and it's already had a week in public hearings. And we still know absolutely nothing about what the dollar amount is that they're proposing to pay. We know that they mean it as a top-up for provincial disability benefits, and that's a good idea. And we know that their aim is to ensure that provinces don't claw back your provincial benefits. In other words, if you're getting a certain amount of money on a provincial disability social assistance payment, the province shouldn't say, "Oh, the federal government's giving us money so we're going to cut back what the province pay you."
The federal government said they're committed to ensuring no clawbacks, but the bill doesn't require no clawbacks. But either way, the government hasn't said, "Here's what we want the net resulting income to be for people with disabilities who get this benefit." So how it is after two years that they don't know is beyond me. Normally, and frankly normally, I would expect always if anybody, any cabinet minister goes to cabinet and says, "Let's announce a new benefit. Let's bring forward legislation or let's announce some new program. Let's bring forward legislation," the first thing that their cabinet colleagues ask is, "What's it going to cost?"
The minister, Carla Qualtrough, has said that there's been no cost analysis done and it won't be done until after this bill is passed and until they're drafting regulations. I don't understand that. I just can't imagine that her cabinet colleagues said, "Go ahead. That's a benefit and we have no idea what it would going to cost or whether we can afford it. We'll sort that out later." They got to have something in mind. Either of two things are happening. Either they do have a ballpark idea in mind and they're not telling us, or they don't have a ballpark amount in mind or target in mind. I think that would be troubling too. The government has said they're committed to the disability communities [inaudible 00:11:33] Nothing About Us Without Us, and that they've been consulting for two years on this strategy. Well, if after two years of consulting they still can't tell us, "Here's how much money you should expect in your pocket," even in a ballpark, that's kind of hard to square with Nothing About Us Without Us.

Joeita Gupta:
When the pandemic hit a little over two years ago, the government was very quick to announce the Canada Emergency Response Benefit or CERB. We knew who was eligible, how much the benefit was going to be. We even had some estimates on how much it was going to cost. But we notice a clear difference when it comes to announcing a benefit targeting people with disabilities where we know so little. Why is that?

David Lepofsky:
I think you ask a fantastic question. I think the person who needs to answer that is the minister because she knows. We know that the government quickly came out with the CERB benefit, and that was great. We also know that the government during the early years months of the pandemic said, "We want an emergency payment to impoverish people with disabilities," which was good that they said that, but they only made one payment and it took them months to get the checks out the door. And here we have no idea how... The feedback we've heard is that people with disabilities in poverty need this money now.
Now the government's response, by the way, has been, "We want to get money into people's pockets as quickly as possible so just pass the bill as is." And I see that as trying to invoke the desperation of people with disabilities who live in poverty to justify this political blank check that they're asking from Parliament rather than having to justify their policy in a Parliament where they've got a minority of seats, they want it to be dealt with in a secret cabinet meeting where they've got the monopoly on seats.
Our answer is we've put forward a list of six focused-narrow amendments that would add details to the bill and that would actually get money into people's pockets more quickly. We should have a minimum amount in the bill that they could go over, but they can't go under. We should have a deadline by which the payment starts being paid. It should be required to be indexed to inflation. It should require cabinet to make the necessary regulations within a certain deadline. Just some examples that would speed things up rather than slow them down. And frankly, the age discrimination should be removed so that upwards of a third of people with disabilities over the age of 15, a majority of people with vision loss aren't cut out of the benefit altogether. And they could make those changes quickly that would every change they make on that list will speed up getting money, excuse me, into people's pockets.

Joeita Gupta:
We've also mentioned before that people over the age of 65, those who live with disabilities, deal with acute and deep poverty. But it's also true that Canadians over the age of 65 get CPP including disability benefits under CPP and other benefits like OAS. David, why is it that those existing programs aren't good enough?

David Lepofsky:
Well, the minister herself conceded before the standing committee on the first day of hearings back on October 31st that people with disabilities who are seniors, there's still a percentage of them who are living in poverty. It's lower percentage than people who are working age. But it's not like disability poverty ends at age 65. So here's the thing, if it's a top-up benefit, they're not going to have to top up as much for seniors if they have those other benefits than they would have to top up for people under the age of 65. So adding them is not more difficult. More moreover, adding that them will actually be in some ways easier because for the underage 65 people, they've got to try to coordinate the benefits with provinces. But when it comes to coordinating it for people over 65, they got to coordinate it with CPP, OAC, GIS, those are all federal programs. They just got to coordinate them with themselves. That should be easier to do.
If the federal government has it the way they're proposing this bill, what'll happen is if you get a benefit, a Canada Disability Benefit that is more generous than GIS and OAC for underage 65 people, then when people with disabilities hit 65, they're going to experience an income loss. And that doesn't make sense because disability poverty doesn't end in age 65. They're still going to need... And in fact as you get older, you get into your 70s, your 80s, your disability-related costs are likely to go up. So much of this that we're seeing from the federal government just doesn't make any sense. But our answer, nobody's saying kill the bill. No one's saying don't pass it. There's an agreement, I think a consensus, I should say, that they need to pass the bill, that they need to pass it quickly. But there's also no one I've heard of who says that a bill is stronger. That fails to include any of these details, that it provides better protections for people with disabilities if it provides none of these details.

Joeita Gupta:
Now, you may have mentioned this already, David, but just to clarify, this Canada Disability Benefit when it comes into effect, would it apply to all Canadians of working age with a disability or would it just apply to those Canadians who live with disabilities who are of working age, who are not otherwise employed?

David Lepofsky:
Well, we don't know because it's aimed at... Well, the language is reducing poverty, which could mean the most minuscule reduction, but that's the word of the legislation. So the focus of it is on people who are poor, but the eligibility threshold is not set out in the bill. It's one of the many things that's given over to cabinet to decide and with no timelines if ever they decide. So let me put it to this way, the cabinet would decide if they choose how much you get, who gets it and when it starts. And another cabinet could come along and say, "You know what? We're going to reduce what they get. And some of the people are eligible now we don't think they should be eligible so we're going to change the rules for who's eligible." And again, we realize there has to be some flexibility for cabinet to add to the legislation, but there should be minimum requirements in the bill which cabinet can't contradict.

Joeita Gupta:
Now the last thing I'll say on this one is that none of us wants to see the bill die. No one wants to kill the bill, David. But at the same time, there have been calls for many years now, even decades, that preexisting social assistance rates are just not enough. They do not guarantee a good standard of living for people with disabilities. So if you would, engage in a bit of a thought experiment with me. Instead of involving the federal government, why not just lobby provincial governments to increase the social assistance rates and to increase the envelope of money dedicated to social assistance? Because those programs already exist. So why not just go to the provincial government and ask for more money instead of lobbying the federal government to bring in a new program altogether?

David Lepofsky:
Well, I would leave it to the disability poverty advocates who've pressed so hard for the Canada Disability Benefit to answer that, but I suspect the answer would be this. Lobbying 10 provinces, especially people with disabilities, especially for folks languishing in poverty, makes it a 10 times the burden and then add the territories too on us, and provides for fragility because all you need is a province that later in elected government that decides, "Let's cut it or let's not increase it, or let's reduce the eligibility and we got a problem." Here, the idea of a national benefit I think is a commendable one, and the federal governments to be credited for agreeing to this in principle becomes the standard, which once it's passed, it's embedded as long as it's embedded and can't be overturned without legislation. But if it can be overturned with regulations, it's way less secure.
So let me give you an example so you understand this. Let's say this cabinet passes a regulation that sets a benefit at a certain amount and it's a good amount and they set eligibility criteria and they're good. Then let's say there's election and another government gets elected that wants to cut it, but they only get a minority government. Well, if all they got to do is amend regulations, then that new federal government has a monopoly of the seats in cabinet, can not only can they reduce it or gut it. In cabinet, they can do it in secret and we just find out, "Here's the vote." If the basics aren't embedded in the legislation like a minimum mandatory requirement for it and so on, a dollar amount, then they could only reduce that amount if they get a majority of votes in Parliament, in the House of Commons. Well, if they only win a minority government in the next election, they wouldn't have those majority of seats.
Do you see what I mean? So in terms of protecting people who need this money, what we are proposing provides more safeguards, it makes it more enduring. The other thing you need to know is this, the minister Carla Qualtrough has commendably said she's involved in trying to negotiate agreements with the 10 provinces to ensure no clawbacks. And credit to her for saying that she's doing that and for her trying to do that.
There are two problems with this bill. The first is, all of those discussions are secret. We don't know where they're at. The minister says she's committed to Nothing About Us Without Us, but us, we don't have a clue where those negotiations are at. Much less do we have are we participants in them. But people with disabilities, the public, have no idea where they're at. The second thing is just negotiating an agreement with a province isn't good enough because they might sign an agreement, but the province could later and could have an election. A new government could come in and say, "You know what? We're going to pass new legislation to withdraw our agreement." What we need is legislation that ensures that no clawbacks, with consequences for the province if they did. And this bill does not provide for that.

Joeita Gupta:
I have to say, David, you've done a really good job of explaining what the bill is and also outlining some of its shortcomings. For those of us listening at home, if we wanted to keep up with the progress of the bill, where should we go?

David Lepofsky:
Well, I'm going to suggest two things. First, on the AODA Alliance website, we have a link where you can see all of our activity on this issue so you can keep up to date. That's www.aodaalliance.org/c22 because it's Bill C-22. aodaalliance.org/c22. You can also go to our homepage and sign up for our email updates because then we'll keep you posted. Our hope page is just aodaalliance.org. You can follow us on Twitter and retweet our tweets because we've tweeted to every member of the House of Commons and we are going to keep up the pressure where @aodaalliance and we really appreciate your retweeting our tweets because that adds your voice to ours. It ramps up the pressure.
The other thing you can do is you can write the standing committee that's considering this. They're called the Huma Committee, H-U-M-A. It's short for a long name and I always forget it, but it's the Committee of the House of Commons dealing with this bill. They're the committee that's going to vote on amendments. You could just email them and say, "Please strengthen Bill C-22." That's all you got to say. If you want to go further, say, "Please [inaudible 00:25:10] you endorsed the AODA Alliance brief on Bill C-22." But either way, just saying you want it strengthened will really help us. Let me tell you the email address. It's P... Let me start again. It's huma, H-U-M-A, @P-A-R-L.gc.ca, H-U-M-A@P-A-R-L.gc.ca. But do it fast because they're going to be voting on amendments probably pretty soon.

Joeita Gupta:
All right, well, we'll put all of that in the descriptions. If you look down below in the description, we'll have the Twitter handle for the AODA Alliance, not to mention the email addresses that David gave out. David Lepofsky, thank you so much for speaking to us today and talking to us about Bill C-22. It was great to have you on the program. Thanks for joining us.

David Lepofsky:
Thanks so much for covering this.

Joeita Gupta:
That was chair of the AODA Alliance, David Lepofsky, and he joined us today to talk about Bill C-22. I hope you'll have a chance to check out the AODA Alliance webpage and to keep on top of the developments with Bill C-22. Unfortunately, we are just about out of time. I hope you will provide feedback on the program. You can always write to us at feedback@ami.ca, or you can find us on Twitter @AMIaudio and use the #PulseAMI. You can also give us a call at 1-866-509-4545. That's 1-866-509-4545. And of course, don't forget to like, rate or subscribe to the podcast if that's how you caught us or subscribe to the YouTube channel. Make sure you hit that little bell so you can be notified of future videos as well. We cover a range of topics of interest to the disability community and beyond so we hope to catch you on future episodes. I've been your host, Joeita Gupta. Our videographer today has been Ted Cooper and Matthew McGurk. Marc Aflalo is our technical producer and Andy Frank is the manager for AMI-audio. Thanks for listening. Enjoy the rest of your day.