SPER Committee Meeting

SUB-COMMITTEE ON THE STATUS OF PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES OF THE STANDING COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT AND THE STATUS OF PERSONS WITH DISABILITES

SOUS-COMITÉ DE LA CONDITION DES PERSONNES HANDICAPÉES DU COMITÉ PERMANENT DU DÉVELOPPEMENT DES RESSOURCES HUMAINES ET DE LA CONDITION DES PERSONNES HANDICAPÉES

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, November 20, 2001

• 1532

[English]

The Chair (Ms. Carolyn Bennett (St. Paul's, Lib.)): I think we should start, especially seeing that we were delayed with the vote and we want actually to have a conversation.

I'm just going to advise the committee that the HRDC committee is negotiating a date with Jane Stewart regarding her appearance to discuss our joint report. What we were going to do was wangle an invitation from members of both subcommittees to attend that meeting with the parent committee, and we thought that might have more heft, seeing that they wanted her to appear.

They also are trying to get the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs to appear with respect to the SUFA review process, which is of some interest to all of us. So some of us might wangle an invitation to that meeting too, in that all of us on the subcommittee are associate members of the main committee.

With the agreement of the committee, the work plan Bill has sorted out on this DTC review we would like to be able to post on the website, so that people know what we're doing. It is the beginning, I hope, of having parliamentary committees more transparent to regular citizens. Hopefully, we will be able to meet with the members of the committee in a more informal way to talk about some of the minor investigations we've done on the processes that might be possible with the CPP disability review for next year.

We might be able to have some on-line capability to talk to regular citizens about their experience. As some of you know, one of my particular interests is the people who were turned down and didn't appeal. It's difficult to get a handle on those, and it's a group that I think is of particular interest to members of Parliament, because they tend to be the people who come for our advice.

Soo that's where we're at on those.

• 1535

The Confédération des organismes de personnes handicapées du Québec has sent its regrets, but they did send quite a good letter. It's being translated as we speak, and we'll circulate it. If everybody would glance at it to see if there anything in that letter that should come to the table ronde piece afterwards, that would be great.

Let's begin with Laurie Beachell from the Council of Canadians with Disabilities, the national coordinator, to teach us what this issue is all about and why we're all here.

Mr. Laurie Beachell (National Coordinator, Council of Canadians with Disabilities): Thank you.

Chairman, could we quickly just go around the room and have people identify themselves, so that Angelo knows who is here?

The Chair: Absolutely.

Mr. Tony Tirabassi (Niagara Centre, Lib.): Anthony Tirabassi, member of Parliament for the riding of Niagara Centre.

Mr. Kevin Kerr (Committee Researcher): Kevin Kerr, Parliamentary Research Branch.

Mr. Bill Young (Committee Researcher): Bill Young, Parliamentary Research Branch.

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: Carolyn Bennett, member of Parliament, St. Paul's.

[Translation]

Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral (Laval Centre, BQ): Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral, member of Parliament, Laval Centre. I'm back after six months of absence. Welcome here.

[English]

Ms. Wendy Lill (Dartmouth, NDP): Wendy Lill, member of Parliament for Dartmouth.

Ms. Myriam Girard (Researcher, Candian National Institute for the Blind): Myriam Girard, CNIB. I'm here with Angelo.

Mr. Angelo Nikias (National Director, Government Relations, International Liaison, Canadian National Institute for the Blind): Angelo Nikias, CNIB.

Mr. Harry Beatty (Advocacy Resource Centre for the Handicapped): Harry Beatty, ARCH.

Mr. Laurie Beachell: Laurie Beachell, Council of Canadians with Disabilities.

Ms. Audrey Cole (Canadian Association for Community Living): Audrey Cole, Canadian Association for Community Living.

Mr. Laurie Beachell: Thank you.

Thank you for the opportunity to appear again before the committee and to bring to you a particular concern related to the disability tax credit. I'll try to give a quick overview and then some specifics, and then we can move into other specific examples and issues that other organizations have seen. I would just mention that the organization COPHAN from Quebec that you mentioned is a member organization of CCD and has had discussions with us about their concerns as well.

The disability tax credit, basically, is a tool to try to offset additional costs of disability. Living with a disability in Canada does mean, frankly, having additional costs, and that has been recognized for a long time. It has been recognized that there is a need to level the playing field, to assist people with those additional costs, so that the individual is not bearing that responsibility alone and the cost is offset by our society as a whole, rather than by the individual. If you go back to the task force on disability issues chaired by Andy Scott, their 1996 report, and look at the recommendations there regarding the disability tax credit, it provides a good background, and in the brief material we've presented I quote the recommendations from the Scott task force.

In essence, the community has worked long and hard to improve the tax treatment of people with disabilities, to provide greater fairness for addressing additional costs, and we have seen incremental improvements over time of the tax treatment related to disability. However, at some point incrementalism in and of itself is sufficient, and incremental steps without a broader vision can actually create greater unfairness. We have to ensure that there is a broad vision in understanding why the disability tax credit is in place and what the intent is in achieving it.

• 1540

The definition and eligibility are found within the Income Tax Act itself, and this is the responsibility of the Department of Finance. The implementation of the tax credit becomes the responsibility of the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency. There have been no changes within the definition, within the legislation, for some time. However, there are changes in the administration and interpretation. The question the community asks is, why are we finding people ineligible, when they have been eligible and there has been no change in the definition? What has occurred to make people not eligible for this benefit?

At present there is a review going on. We understand between 75,000 and 90,000 individuals have received a letter from the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency. I quote from the letter:

After reviewing your file, we have determined that we do not have enough information to continue to allow your claim for the 2001 and future tax years.

But the letter does not just request additional information, it basically says you are ineligible for the tax credit next year unless you file additional information.

In 1996-1997 there was a similar process, whereby many individuals lost the disability tax credit. While the claim for additional information may be valid, and we understand that the letters have gone to individuals who filed prior to 1996—and some filed as many as 20 years ago—their situation has not changed. Now what is required of them is a visit to their doctor. They must get their doctor to fill out the T2201, resubmit, and then, hopefully, remain eligible for the tax credit.

I think it's important to note that the tax credit in and of itself does not address all people who have disabilities, in that for it to have benefit for you, you have to have a taxable income, or you have to be able to transfer that tax credit to a family member or spouse or someone who is supporting you, so that it can be used in that way. It also should be recognized that it is not a dollar-for-dollar recovery of any additional costs. As with many tax measures, it is a percentage of those costs that are recoverable.

There is also the medical expense credit, which has a listing of those kinds of things that fit within the medical expense tax credit, and again it is subject to the threshold of 3% of income etc. Harry Beatty can probably speak to these issues more appropriately than I can.

At this time our concern regarding tax and disability is, are we trying to create greater fairness? Is there an ongoing vision of a tax system that will help us offset the additional costs people face because of their disabilities? Or, because there is now some discussion of the potential of a refundable tax credit as a first step to a broader social policy initiative, are we actually implementing processes to reduce the number of eligible candidates, so that the cost of any refundable program would be less? Having looked at what happened in 1996-1997, we have to be suspicious.

There was also the suggestion, when some individuals phoned the 1-800 number, and also when I talked to officials in the department, that there had been, since people made the initial claim, significant medical breakthroughs. Jim Derksen, who many of you know—Jim had polio in the 1950s and uses an electric wheel chair—in discussion with his doctor, thought they might submit a letter to CCRA saying there had been no miracle as yet, that he did not walk and probably will not walk, and if a miracle did occur, they would be pleased to inform CCRA of that. Those who are not walking are not being made to walk and those who are not seeing are not being made to see. The brief I handed you is, no miracles as yet, but we'll let you know if any occur.

• 1545

We're unclear as to the purpose of this whole review. However, it gives us the opportunity to raise some long-term issues about definition and the process of identifying people. The definition, as you know, talks about limitation in activities of daily living etc., and activities of daily living are very limited. They are walking, seeing, thinking, remembering, perceiving, dressing, feeding oneself, etc. They are not going to work or going to school. They are not managing your house and housekeeping. Those are definitions in the act that we think could be broadened. It is not that we just want to look at the additional costs individuals have in dressing themselves, walking, etc., it is the costs people have participating in our community and in work, costs that are not offset by other mechanisms.

A long-standing concern of our community has been the issue of using medical certification as a means of determining eligibility. No offence, Dr. Bennett, but physicians may know why an arm does not function, but they may not have any idea what that means for the individual's job or their going to school or their driving a car or any of those kinds of concerns. So while physicians may be very good at the diagnostics, the implications of those diagnoses are areas that they do not necessarily have great expertise in.

It is also a question in our community that we medicalize everything and are using one of the most expensive systems of certification and eligibility. We have more people going to doctors for the disability tax credit, the Canada Pension Plan disability benefits, parking passes, etc. than ever go to their doctor for any health concerns. We are having doctors fill out forms, for which now many are charging up to $25 or $30, and send them on, which is not an insured benefit or an insured service. Therefore, it is again a cost borne by the individual. So there are major concerns also with the medical certification process.

The Chair: Laurie, I want to tell you that I spearheaded a movement that physicians not have to sign the Ontario Camping Association form, saying I was being asked questions only a mother could answer, and I didn't think I should actually have to sign these stupid forms, and could they please change the form. I used to write on it “Change the form”. I couldn't agree with you more, it is dumb.

Mr. Laurie Beachell: The medical profession itself wants a very simple form. That's why we've moved to a simple yes-no form and a checklist, and that's why we think the form has become more restrictive, in that doctors do not want to spend a lot of time doing this. It is not their purpose, it is not what they are trained to do. They want a very simple yes-no process, which we think actually begins to limit eligibility, because the questions are: Can you walk? Can you see? Can you think? Can you perceive? Can you remember? Can you dress yourself? etc. It's a yes-no check mark.

We have individuals who can walk and might walk 50 metres, and may not necessarily take an inordinate amount of time to do so, but that may be all they do in the day. I think you've heard this story before. We've had family members of children with muscular dystrophy whose child continued to walk, but whose condition was deteriorating. It was much easier for the child to use a wheelchair, and that was going to be inevitable. To save energy, the kid uses a wheelchair some of the time and some of the time walks. That child would not fit the definition, but the family clearly has additional expenses related to that child's care and support.

• 1550

So I guess we want to find a way of using more appropriate questions to get to the definition, and we want to find ways of identifying the fact that people have additional costs. It becomes a form that is a medical checklist, rather than a form that really looks at the purpose: do you have additional costs related to your disability that are not offset through any other program? Some of those will not be identifiable, not producing receipts, and quite basic. In my office our controller uses a wheelchair. I park two blocks away at the cheap parking lot. She parks next door in the hotel and pays $30 more a month for her parking space because she will not wheel those three blocks in a wheelchair. So there are all those additional costs individuals have that are part of recognition for the disability tax credit.

We have concern with the current review. We have concern as to whether we are losing the vision of the purpose. We have questions, and our skepticism says, are we tightening things up because we are hopeful of a broader initiative and we want to reduce the costs of that broader initiative in some way?

Is this an opportunity for us to once again engage Finance and CCRA in a discussion about a fairer system of addressing the additional costs of disability through the tax system? We recognize that tax is a very blunt instrument, and when we talk about disability and creative ways of addressing needs, we talk about flexibility, we talk about individual need, we talk about a range of creative options. It is not exactly how we describe our tax system, as flexible, creative, meeting individual need, etc. Maybe there's a disconnection here from what we're really trying to do. While we've seen and we appreciate the incremental improvements in tax treatment, continued tax treatment to address the issues of disability may not be the best way of really improving the status of people with disabilities.

I'll leave it there and ask Harry Beatty to speak to you more about some of the technical matters, and then we can go to questions, if that's acceptable, after all of us have had an opportunity.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thanks very much.

Harry Beatty.

Mr. Harry Beatty: Laurie and I did coordinate a bit on issues, so I'm not going to be talking much about the functional criteria of “severe” and “prolonged”, but dealing with other aspects of the disability tax credit.

First, there are three different places on the income tax return where the credit may be claimed. A taxpayer who has a disability himself or herself makes the claim at line 316. A taxpayer who has a dependant with a disability, other than a spouse or same sex partner, makes the claim at line 318. A taxpayer with a spouse or same sex partner with a disability, if they can claim with respect to the spouse or same sex partner, does so at line 326.

With the 318 claim, I've just set out some of the factors that have to be looked at. This is certainly one of the most confusing parts of the whole system. I suppose you could ask officials from Finance or CCRA to provide an explanation. I'm not going to go through all the details, but the rules are different for different classes of relatives. I believe everyone but children and grandchildren have to live with the taxpayer to make the claim. If you have a spouse, that makes a difference. Whether the taxpayer supports the relative or not makes a difference, which, I think, is probably the most reasonable requirement, as does the relative's taxable income, not including social assistance. I'm sure many people are confused by that, because other dependency claims include social assistance income, but this does not.

• 1555

Similarly, there are some complicated rules about getting a transfer of the claim from a spouse or same sex partner. Even the word transfer, used in the explanatory materials, is, I think, confusing to a lot of people, because it seems to imply that a small child would be transferring something to the parent. Of course, it doesn't literally mean that. It's just another example of how in some ways the legislation fails to be clear or transparent, to use the technical jargon now, as tax and social legislation in particular should be.

How about the value of the credit? Perhaps some of you are very familiar with this, and I won't go into a lot of details. In the 2000 budget, I believe it was, Minister Martin announced an increase of the value of the DTC, the size of the claim, to $6,000 from $4,393, which it was for the 2000 taxation year. I am sometimes concerned that with this figure, for people who are not aware of the claim or too familiar with tax, it may seem to some—I'm sure not to you—that the government is giving families or individuals with disabilities $6,000. Of course, it isn't, because like all of these claims, the non-refundable personal credits, it's converted to a 17% federal tax credit. Even with the $6,000, the federal tax saving is a maximum $1,020, if I've calculated correctly.

There is some impact, of course, on provincial tax as well. Depending on the province, you may be looking at a maximum claim, in actual dollars, of $1,500. Of course, though, it's non-refundable. That means, as CCD has pointed out many times, lower income individuals with disabilities and families with dependants with disabilities don't benefit. Even if they can benefit, many people with disabilities have reduced incomes and benefit less.

When we look at being unable to make any claim at all, I've mentioned the non-refundable aspect, and others will talk about the interpretation of “severe and prolonged”. I also wanted to mention the rule that someone who makes a medical expenses claim for care in a nursing home or institution or a medical expenses attendant care claim of over $10,000 loses the disability tax credit eligibility. In effect, the person is forced to choose between the two claims.

People who are paying over $10,000 for attendant care for themselves or a family member out of their own pocket clearly have a very significant disability issue. It just seems to have no rationale to take the disability tax credit away from these individuals. I suppose the only theory could be that people would tend to have fewer other disability-related expenses, which may be true for someone in a nursing home or institution, but would rarely, if ever, be true for people living in the community or living with family.

• 1600

As for the number of disability tax credit claims, I looked at the publication Tax Statistics on Individuals. I'm not a statistical expert, but you can, of course, check this information with CCRA officials. It gave about 450,000 claims by individuals for the DTC and for dependent family members other than spouses. The way the statistics are set out, you can't separate this spousal claim from the other possible spousal claims not based on disability. I'm sure, again, the CCRA officials could do that. For 1999 the figure, assuming there's been no change in definition, seems to have increased by about 8,000. With an aging and increasing population, that is virtually no increase at all, or, taking account of those factors, maybe even a slight cutback already. So it is not the case, I would argue, that the number of claims has increased drastically.

The total cost of the program, according to this report, which I didn't put in this brief presentation, is just under $2 billion, which sounds like a big number, but given that the incidence of disability is about 15% of the population, when you start dividing it up, it isn't very much money. As I've already explained, the maximum amount, which not everyone gets, even with the proposed increase, is going to be about $1,500, certainly targeted to some extent at higher-income people.

I think it's worthwhile as well pointing out further tax consequences of disability tax credit eligibility or ineligibility, because the DTC criteria are used for other claims in the tax system. There is the higher child care claim for an older child with a disability. Basically, if a child is over seven, in the ordinary case, if the child does not have a disability, the maximum child care claim is decreased, I think logically, to take account of the fact that the child will be in school. There is an exception, which is good, if the child has a disability, but again, to continue to get the higher permissible child care expenses after seven, the child must qualify for the disability tax credit to get the maximum claim. So this also affects families with a disabled child, if their child, for example, has a disability where significant care is required, but doesn't meet the “severe and prolonged” test.

Adults who are making the claim for work or training-related attendant care expenses at line 215 must qualify for the disability tax credit and for the attendant care medical expense claim I mentioned earlier.

For other claims, the disability tax credit is one way of qualifying the results of the strange notion of “infirm”, which I don't know if anyone understands too well, as it's not defined in the act. There's no form for it. I never quite understood what it meant, but it's still in there.

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I've mentioned a few other claims for which the disability tax credit is probably the best way of qualifying, but there may be another alternative definition, home modifications as a medical expense claim. The other way I think is that the person lacks normal physical development—I think that is the phrase.

So we're not just talking about the potential value of the claim itself, but eligibility for other claims. Perhaps a wider concern is that this is really a restrictive interpretation of who is disabled. It's not just that it's happening in the tax system, but it is happening in other programs, provincial, in agencies for that matter, as well as federal, a narrowing of the definition. So again I think it's the public message or signal given by saying, we're going to review everyone, we're going to define it perhaps even more narrowly or require more stringent evidence. It doesn't just affect the actual value of these claims, but is something that may carry over into future programs. That is the concern of people in the community.

What I think these functional criteria do not really allow for is the increasing knowledge we have about the capacity of people with disabilities to be independent, to live more autonomously, to overcome limitations, perhaps with the assistance of technology. Too many programs, including this one, say to the person, it's great you've been able to overcome this obstacle, now we're going to take your support away. I think that is a basic issue that has to be addressed. We can't penalize people or families every time they are involved in some initiative or adaptation that assists the person to live more productively and fully with the disability.

Finally, there is the matter of appeals. Of course, there are appeal rights, but it's an uphill battle for most individuals and families. Many people don't understand the appeal right. Some people miss the ninety days for filing the notice of objection. A major thing, for reasons Laurie has already touched on, is that many physicians are especially reluctant to become involved at an appeal, because now you're not just talking about filling out a form, but there's perhaps a more detailed form or an in-depth report, and often the doctor or other health professional is faced with the option of billing the patient for this—keeping in mind that the maximum value is $1,500. Psychologists can't ask a person with a learning disability for a $3,000 report, even if that might document the eligibility, and they probably would not want to.

In the tax court, of course, though some very articulate people have done very well on their own up against the government, many people find this just too daunting a prospect and won't try. I encourage people to try, give them a couple of precedents, and tell them, go, and hope you get the right judge. Some seem to be a lot more inclined to assist the individual than others.

So those are my comments. We agreed that Angelo would be next.

The Chair: Angelo Nikias.

Mr. Angelo Nikias: I'm happy to be before my favourite subcommittee again, because your subcommittee has demonstrated a real willingness to help Canadians with disabilities achieve equal citizenship. The way you have responded to this issue is proof of that.

• 1610

The issue that is before us today has already been set out by Laurie and Harry, and in the interest of saving time, I'm not going to restate it. There is the brief we have submitted in writing.

People, basically, who have received the disability credit for some time have been asked to requalify themselves. We believe this exercise is entirely unnecessary in the case of people who are blind, as well as in the case of people with other permanent or irreversible disabilities. Let me explain to you that people who are totally blind or whose vision is 20/200 or less, which is also the legal definition of blindness, are not likely to regain their vision. There has not been a miracle in Jim Derksen's case or in mine.

Dr. Ralf Buhrmann, an epidemiologist and ophthalmologist with the Eye Institute in Ottawa, and Dr. Ray LeBlanc, chair of the National Coalition For Vision Health, stated that the three leading causes of vision loss in Canada are age-related macular degeneration, 55%, diabetic retinopathy, 8%, and glaucoma, 8%. In all these conditions vision loss is irreversible. According to Dr. Buhrmann, “it is extremely rare that persons referred to the CNIB with blindness would have any prospect of recovering their eyesight.” In fact, since 1996 only 21 of the 100,000 CNIB clients have regained some level of vision sufficient to have their status changed from legally blind to low vision. To request this entire population to obtain and file certificates re-establishing their right to the disability tax credit in order to detect a tiny number who may have regained sufficient vision to no longer qualify seems unnecessary and counterproductive.

Also, this exercise involves a cost, both to the individuals involved and to the health care system, which is already strapped to the limit financially. And I have set out there what it costs to obtain the medical disability tax certificate. The CCRA claims that people can recover this cost when they file for income tax. It's not that significant. In most cases, people will retrieve about $7. It's not really worth it.

There are also very long waiting lists to see an ophthalmologist, and we do have a shortage of ophthalmologists in the country. So again, it's not really efficient or helpful to send people who have already qualified for this visibility benefit back to their ophthalmologist time and again.

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We don't really object to CCRA requesting information from persons claiming for the first time the disability tax credit. It would also be reasonable to request information in cases of medical breakthroughs rendering vision restoration likely. However, this has not been the case for the last 20 to 30 years. I spoke earlier about the fact that very few people have recovered their sight, 21 over the last five years.

The CCRA insist that they have to obtain required information in cases of people who are blind for the first time and in cases where they don't have significant information. However, from my discussions with them I have concluded that they are prepared to take corrective administrative steps to address this problem. I want to acknowledge publicly that they have during the last few days, after a lot of discussion with me, agreed to use the CNIB identification card as evidence that people have vision loss of 20/200 or less, because the form and the CNIB identification card use exactly the same definition.

Laurie has already spoken about the need to expand the eligibility criteria. It's strange that we should be trying to reassess people and perhaps reduce the number of people who receive this benefit. I would suggest that it's more important, and it would be more helpful and more appropriate, that we should be expanding the eligibility criteria for the disability tax credit. For example, in the case of blind people, people who don't meet the current definition, but experience vision loss do undergo significant costs associated with their disability. That type of action was recommended by the The Will to Act. We think that's really what should be the focus of the government's activity, not what they have been doing up to this point.

We have cited in our submission the case of Mrs. B. in order to indicate to you that even though she does not strictly meet the definition, she does incur extra costs associated with her vision loss, and at this point these costs are borne by herself. I don't think that's really a fair situation. In fact, what we should be doing is expanding the eligibility criteria, and also finally moving toward a refundable tax credit, such as we have spoken about many times, in order to assist Canadians with disabilities, especially those with low incomes.

Let me close by thanking you again for giving me the opportunity to come before you. I'll just tell you that this massive reassessment is not even based on fact, I don't think. I'll tell you why I say that. We obtained authorization from four blind Canadians who have received the disability tax credit for a long time. We sample-tested their files with CCRA. What we found was that in three of the four cases the file already contained sufficient information, which meant that these letters that Laurie referred to were totally unnecessary for those individuals, and yet they were sent.

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What's actually concerning me even more is that—and I cannot really confirm this—this effort to obtain additional information may be the result of practices within CCRA or within the government whereby they destroy information from time to time, then they review the files and find out that they need to have that information. If that had no cost, either to the individual or to the system, you might say it's a space-saving exercise on the part of government, but in this case it has a cost to the individual and to the system. I don't think it's a basis on which CCRA should be asking people to recertify themselves.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

We welcome Connie and Audrey for their presentations.

Ms. Connie Laurin-Bowie (Director, Policy and Programs, Canadian Association for Community Living): Connie Laurin-Bowie, Canadian Association for Community Living, and Audrey Cole, former board member of the association.

I think I'll let Audrey start off, if that's okay, but so that you know who we are, the association represents people who have intellectual disabilities and their families across the country. We'll talk a little bit about the impact. Audrey will talk very specifically about the impact of the letter. I'd like to talk a little bit about the context for people who have intellectual disabilities and their qualification for the DTC, as well as, if you'll permit me, the overall impact of yet another process for families who are already besieged with processes in trying to manage the very little bit of support they do get.

Audrey.

Ms. Audrey Cole: Thank you.

This is rather last-minute. I didn't have time to prepare anything in a form that I can leave with people.

Although I'm a member and a former board member of CACL, I'm speaking today from a personal point of view as a parent of a person with a disability, who, until we received the letter last week, had been approved as eligible for the DTC since 1987. It was my first view of this letter, which other people seem to have already seen—which leaves me with some other questions. The letter arrived last Thursday, and I immediately started to contact people to find out whether this was part of something bigger or whether, for some unimaginable reason, our son was being picked out. I discovered that the letter had gone to quite a lot of people.

I'm going to keep my comments primarily on the letter itself and some general comments on what I see as an unfortunate attitude towards disability, of which this is just one example, and the whole issue of responsibility, responsibility of both individuals and government. If some anger is detected in my comments, I can assure the committee that it's absolutely genuine.

When we first received the letter last Thursday, we were quite offended, particularly with the sentence that Laurie read out a short while ago:

After reviewing your file we've determined that we do not have enough information to continue to allow your claim for the 2001 and future tax years.

Why? Has my son's file been destroyed? When the allowance was approved in 1987, it was approved on the basis of the permanence of our son's disability and the fact that its nature resulted in severe and prolonged restriction of his daily living activities, for all of which he requires some care and attention. What additional information can we possibly supply? Nothing has changed. As with Jim Derksen, there's no miracle here. Our son hasn't suddenly learned to speak or to take care of his personal needs for toileting or nutrition, nor has he overcome the need for attendance by other people for every facet of his life. To suddenly imply that he's not supplied the authorities with sufficient information to remain eligible is arbitrary, insensitive, and totally rude.

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It seems to me that the public servants in CCRA responsible not only for writing the letter, but also for approving the distribution of the letter are sadly in need of a lesson in courtesy. The letter reeks of the kind of attitudes that, without doubt, impose on people with intellectual disability the greatest handicap they face. It expresses attitudes with which families like ours and individuals with disabilities are all too familiar. It seems that from birth people with disabilities and their families are constantly reminded, at best, of the apathy society has about disability, and at worst, of the disrespect in which people with disabilities are held by society at large. It has an effect on individuals and it has an effect on families.

Being a parent, in the generic sense, is a natural aspect of our humanity. I'm sure there are many parents in this room. We tend to love our children with a fierce intensity. We fight for their well-being. Those instincts are no different if our child has a disability. What's different is that the fight just never ends. I should say that we were a little late in starting in the business of parenting. My husband is now 83, I'm 74, and our son is 37.

For the last 37 years that fight has continued for absolutely everything our son has ever needed. There has been nothing that has been achieved without long, hard fighting. One knows what kind of reputation one acquires when one has to fight for something like that. But the greatest battle is against the constant bombardment of insults and discrimination that are faced by individuals and their families. As far as my family is concerned, this letter seemed to be just one more assault on the dignity of our son and his family.

My family accepts fully its responsibility to pay taxes. I think it would be really nice if we had to pay a lot more, because that would surely mean that we had more from which to pay, but we've never balked at paying what we owe. We feel it's our responsibility to do so. It's been said before that the tax benefit is of little use to people with disabilities or their families who have insufficient income to be paying taxes, but nevertheless, it is one example of an appropriate response by a government, putting into place one means of addressing the unfair financial burden faced by people with disabilities and their families. It was certainly welcomed by our family.

I would make a little point about the cost we're talking about. I hadn't thought about that 17% stuff. I know Harry's explained it to many of us so many times before. I just struggle to fill in our income tax forms every year, without analysing too much. But Harry mentioned that under the new rules it would actually work out to about $1,020 for a family on that family income. I wonder if we ever stop to think what that means. In the case of a family of older parents, such as ours, with a 37-year-old son who needs constant care, that equals approximately the cost that we pay out of our pocket if my husband and I want to take a maximum of two four-day long weekends in a year. So it's a tremendous benefit, as you can imagine. There aren't many 83- and 74-year-old parents of 37-year-old sons who have to do something like that before they can even think of going away, because he still lives at home and we still have the bulk of the care. So that's just one example of the tremendous benefit that has for one family.

• 1630

This is not a big deal. This is not giving away the wealth of the country—there aren't enough people to bankrupt the country if we gave everybody that. It's not enough to be an issue, and to me, it's unacceptable that it should be an issue. We have a sort of poorhouse mentality that remains in our thinking about these things. In the letter itself it almost implies that there's an assumption that people receiving the benefit are probably cheating, and therefore we have to start and make sure that they're not, and I find that particularly offensive.

It's as offensive as the bizarre implication in the new form, which I'd never seen until Thursday, in the section that actually suggests that an inability to “manage or initiate personal care without constant supervision”—those words are taken from the form—constitutes evidence that the person is unable to perceive, think, and remember. I can't imagine where that notion came from. Although my son isn't able to speak, I know quite well that he does perceive a lot. He does understand a lot, but it doesn't extend to his being able to take care of himself. As citizens of Canada, people with disabilities in their families don't need these kinds of gratuitous insults, particularly from government.

I accept that there have to be mechanisms for accountability, I certainly don't object to that, but I think it has to look somewhat different from this particular letter. This letter and the policy, which can only seem to us to be based on cost-cutting, is an unwarranted assault on Canadians with disabilities, in our opinion. This government is sworn to uphold the noble principles embedded in the charter, and thus should be thoroughly ashamed of the part it's playing in this attack on the well-being of some of its most vulnerable and disadvantaged citizens.

Those are my comments. Thank you.

Ms. Connie Laurin-Bowie: Thanks, Audrey.

I guess anger, the word Audrey used, was the case when I heard from some of our members and from other disability organizations that this letter had gone out and that we would be potentially having hearings and having an opportunity to talk to the committee about it. I was angry too, for the reasons that others have expressed and for one more reason, which is that we have been working for a number of years to move the markers forward, and to be pulled into a discussion where it feels like we're defending what very little is already on the table is incredibly frustrating and anger-making. I think Audrey's anger is shared by many families we've talked who will be potentially affected by the letter, and who on a daily basis fight for the very little bits of support they get. I think, though, for us as advocates working on policy issues, it comes as a tremendous disappointment that the main point of contact Canadian citizens have with their federal government is a letter from Revenue Canada saying, we suspect you of cheating on your taxes.

So I struggled. We have a brief that we'll share with you about the particulars of the DTC and its impact on families, and particularly about the form that talks about thinking, perceiving, and remembering. I don't usually do this. I work on policy and often will present to this committee on policy issues, but I was thinking about the presentation I was doing: How many people do this? They decide on their presentation and then throw it out, right? Well, I was thinking about the presentation on the way here, and had my boarding pass in hand. Dr. Bennett has revealed her secret of speeches to us, and told us that she writes her speeches on the backs of boarding passes. So I was doing the same, thinking, our brief speaks to the details of the DTC and our wants and desires to expand it and its impact on families, so I'll come back to that to make the link.

• 1635

What I kept coming back to is my friend Val, who lives a few doors down the street from me. Val has three boys. She's my age. She had a very good job as the head of an international voluntary organization. Her husband has a very good job. Her middle son has autism, and Cameron doesn't go to school with my son, because his particular disability means that he has a lot of needs, and our local school won't support him to be there. They will nominally, but they don't welcome him. It's just a tremendous battle on a day-to-day basis. Cam also has all kinds of needs associated with services and supports, and in the last couple of months he has begun to demonstrate behaviour problems that are quite difficult for his family to manage. He's seven years old, and he is a lovely little boy. He plays, he watches animated movies, he's very sweet, but he has a lot of needs.

The impact on his family is such that Val quit her job a month and a half ago. She gets up in the morning and makes sure he gets his diapers changed, and she moves him to his special school. They have a van that comes, and she manages that on a day-to-day basis. Her other children can't participate in extracurricular activities, because they don't have extra hands to deal with Cam when they're there. She has limited access to some supports in the community, but every time Val goes to ask for some help, they tell her, why don't you just give him up, why don't you just take him into residential care?

We talk nationally about a citizenship framework for people with disabilities. If we continue to move children out of their families, when they become adults, they will never realize those citizenship rights. We eat away day after day at the resolve of families like Audrey's, and Audrey has made it many years. I look at my friend Val, whose son is seven years old, and I don't want to tell her, you're still going to be fighting.

A letter comes to a family like that from their federal government, and I say, I'm going off to Ottawa to tell them all the important things they should do, and they say, well, tell them about respite, tell them about programs I need and services. And I say, the federal government doesn't do those things, those are provincial things. So what should I tell them? The answer, inevitably, from Val and other people who talk to me is, ask them why they're relevant to us. I think that if the only relevance is Revenue Canada putting yet another set of barriers up, we have a huge problem in this country.

So I will come back to our policy framework and make it as practical as I can. The tax system is one vehicle for the federal government to provide limited supports to people with disabilities and their families. There are a number of ways in which the tax system can be expanded to provide that kind of support, both in offsetting costs and in providing supports for indefinable costs. We've presented those. I have copies of Mr. Duff's paper, which we circulated last year and the year before and we'll circulate again, because most of the provisions in the paper have not been implemented.

I would like to thank the committee for the work it's done in this area in the past. In the last two federal budgets we've had quite a significant number of advances in the tax system. There are other ways the federal government can provide direct assistance to individuals and families, through the EI system, potentially, CPP disability, and other arrangements.

The next category I would say the federal government needs to continue to pursue is programming and support to community development. Again, we've talked about a range of options that the federal government has at its disposal to advance at least some basic supports in communities and in the transition to places where families can live decent and inclusive lives.

• 1640

Finally, I would say there needs to be a commitment of the federal government to work with the provinces in developing supports, where the provinces can deliver the needed, on-the-ground services families require.

So those three areas, broadly speaking, I think need to be recognized as a way to move forward. I think the particular issues concerning the DTC are critical as a way to lever some attention to the issues, but I think we need to always be pushing the envelope, and I'm afraid we're getting pushed again into simply defending the very little territory we have.

The last thing I said to Val when I told her I was coming was, well, it's okay, the federal government is going to have a national labour market strategy for people with a disability—I'm sure that'll make you feel better. She agreed that she felt much better that when Cam had been finally taken out of her family, which she continues to fight against every day, ultimately, he would have access to a national labour market strategy.

Not to belittle good efforts in respect of labour markets, I think we need to have a very broad perspective about what the needs are of people from birth until they become seniors, both when they're a person with a disability themselves and when their family members are supporting them.

The Chair: Thank you, all, very much. The frustration is clear. As you know, we're trying to compress these hearings, so that we can actually get some answers and help you move the markers in whatever way we can.

Let's begin the questions with Madame Dalphond-Guiral.

[Translation]

Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral: Thank you, Madam Chair.

[English]

The Chair: By the way, cheese and crackers will arrive at 5 o'clock, just so we don't get too grumpy. We'll break when the food arrives.

[Translation]

Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral: I think that the word “anger” is not enough; maybe we should call it rage. These days we hear a lot about rage at the wheel, and to hear what Ms. Cole, you and the three other witnesses had to say certainly wakens a genuine feeling of rage.

When you see, on one side, what I would call harassment on the part of an agency called Revenue Canada where civil servants do the job they are asked to do without opposing it, even if it does not have any sense, and on the other side, absolutely enormous revenues in the EI fund, tens of billion dollars, when you see that, unfortunately, tax havens still exist but certainly not for the parents of disabled children, you have a good reason to be angry.

I would like to ask you a question. You mentioned it a little earlier when you said that there are some social costs coming from the chronic and serious health problems faced by a person which put a heavy burden on her. Could we consider giving her a salary in the case of a family or a close parent who takes care of her?

I think that the support a person receives from her close family is by far better than the support an organization, however well-intentioned. I consider that recognizing the responsibility taken by the parents or by the close family is a duty for our society.

• 1645

We are a wealthy society and I wonder if it would be possible to consider giving a salary in a case like this, since when people are in an institution, the cost is enormous. There are certainly figures on the average cost it represents. There is certainly a means of coming to a proposal that society as a whole would accept. I think we are rather generous in as much as it does not empty too much our pockets. But, I think that generally speaking, the Canadian society or the Quebec society is rather generous.

I would like to have your views on this. This is my good idea for the day. I will not have any other after that.

Ms. Connie Laurin-Bowie: May I answer?

The Chair: Yes.

Ms. Connie Laurin-Bowie: I am going to respond in English because it is easier for me to express my views this way.

[English]

For families who have members with a disability, and particularly where they have children, there have been lots of proposed arrangements. Some proposals are to remove the child, because there's a perception that this would be the best thing for the family. Some proposals allow for the mother to stay home. Other proposals are to create a special school or a special environment. What we've heard from families across the country, without exception, is that they want to be able to run their family life the way everyone else runs their family life. For some families that means having resources they control to purchase support that comes into the home, not simply being told by the local service providers, this is the box you fit in, and this is what we sell.

The joke in our neighbourhood is that what certain children in our neighbourhood need is running shoes, and the only place you can go for service is the van store—we don't need vans, we need running shoes. I think we need to find a way to give families the resources so that they can control the supports they have in the home, and so that they can remain in the home and be a family in the way others are families. I think that is a better cost arrangement.

It's very different for every family, but I have at least one example in my head where a family told us that if they just had a support person from the time school ends until bedtime every day, and then some time on the weekend, that would cost about $47,000 a year, but what they're being offered is a $120,000 residential care facility. This is no different from institutionalization and the way it was years ago.

I think, for women in particular, the option of creating salaries would create other problems. Salary for caregiving seems to be problematic for most parents—I'll let Audrey speak to this issue, if she'd like, as well—because I think what they would like is just a recognition of costs. They would then have the option, if they chose, to continue to work.

Ms. Audrey Cole: I couldn't agree more. It just so happens that I have been at home for 37 years without a salary. It's changed the way we would have normally developed. Had I been able to stay in work, we would have obviously been a two-salary family; we haven't been, we've been a one-salary family.

The option for me would not have been to be tied by having a wage. That puts some additional tie on the person, because you have an obligation you can't get out of if you're getting a wage for it. That would not be my solution. The solution for our family would be, as Connie suggests, some mechanism that enables us to have sufficient control over resources to purchase the needs as they're seen at any given time, because they change. You can't fill in a form to say what the needs are for the next 75 years, it doesn't work like that. As people grow, develop, learn different things, and have different experiences, so their needs change. It doesn't necessarily mean they become more independent, it just means you need that flexibility, and the only way to get that is to put some kind of control over how the resources are spent in the hands of the family, not in the hands of a service provider. That's a whole different issue as far as I'm concerned—I won't get into that.

• 1650

Mr. Harry Beatty: I would just like to respond briefly to another aspect of the member's remarks and, I think, some things Audrey said.

The tax system is very complex, it deals with a lot of aspects of our society. It really seems this particular claim has been, for some reason, singled out for audit review. I don't think we know everything CCRA does, but there are clearly many kinds of deductions, somewhat artificial corporate structures, and so on—it's called tax planning, not tax evasion. We see wealthy people who don't pay very much tax, yet CCRA seems, though not exclusively, to have singled out this particular claim from all the things it administers for a real in-depth review, even to sending out what is obviously a form letter. I don't think some of the folks Angelo was talking about would have got that letter if there was really much of a review, other than a perfunctory one, of individual files.

Ms. Connie Laurin-Bowie: One of the mechanisms in the tax system to address some of the issues I referred to and I think you were responding to is the child care amount, which we did get an enhancement of, and which many families have benefited from and are really pleased about. However, that is for families who are spending money on child care. We've not even touched the tip of the iceberg on families—and I apologize for being late, so I don't know if others addressed this issue—who are not even eligible to file tax claims.

If you'll permit me one other comment on this point, the reason I think it's important for us to be thinking about those three areas of federal involvement is that if we look at the DTC very specifically and imagine that we will eventually get to a place where we can talk about a refundable DTC—we like to dream—and if that discussion were to happen in a realistic way, we would need to ensure that there was no way for the provinces to claw that back out of social assistance. Why would the provinces agree to do that? They would agree to do that if they were at the table having a discussion with the federal government about other supports and services. They would agree to do that if they knew the feds were interested in investing in a broader system of supports and services. They wouldn't do that if the only discussion was a refundable DTC.

So I think we need to be looking at the entire picture, even when we're having a specific discussion about one or other mechanism. I know that was not along the lines of questioning, but I was thinking about it in terms of the impact of some of our comments.

The Chair: Wendy.

Ms. Wendy Lill: Thank you very much for your comments. I have a couple of questions.

I want to read a letter I received from somebody that I think says a lot of the same things you're saying, Audrey, but also something that's different, and it's poignant in another way. I'll just read a couple of paragraphs from this person's letter and then maybe say a couple of things. They have received this letter, and I've got a copy of it here. I've looked at it and have the same sense of rage you have. The letter has been sent to CCRA.

Laurel Ann is mentally challenged due to a medical condition, hyperthyroidism. She is able to dress, feed and bathe herself. She is not blind or deaf. She is able to work part time in a supported position in a Subway shop in Halifax. She cannot live alone, manage money, prepare meals, do laundry, shopping, pay her bills and all of the other things most of us take for granted. She lives in a small options group home setting with live in help and support.

• 1655

Laurel Ann finds letters such as yours most upsetting, she is not able to understand what is being asked of her. Letters such as the one you sent on October 9th cause her a great deal of unnecessary stress. In future would you please address any correspondence intended for Laurel Ann to me.

Put yourself in her parents' place...can you imagine anyone saying their child is mentally handicapped or intellectually handicapped (it is no longer correct to call people retarded) if it were not true? It is the most painful thing her father and I have had to deal with. People who work with the challenged adults of Canada may consider your letter a form of harassment.

I had a long talk with this mother. The fact is, there is real fear that if somehow the federal government is able to say that Laurel Ann is not disabled, then is it very far behind that the province would also be able to somehow wiggle out of a definition of disability? Parents are, as we all know, operating with a minuscule amount of support to begin with.

Connie, on your comments about what is needed, we need tax system assistance, that's one thing. We need EI assistance, we need CPP disability assistance, we need job assistance, we need community development assistance, home care, respite. Certainly, this woman, Viola Huntington—she's very glad to have her name used—and any parent I know, and I'm one of them, have no confidence that there will be jobs for our children, meaningful jobs. We have no confidence whatsoever that there's going to be community-based housing such as we know and want, or recreation, or any of those things we talk about in regard to citizenship. You commented, Connie, that we talk about a citizenship framework for persons with disabilities, but we're moving in absolutely the opposite direction and we're not getting anywhere closer to that. This is just the straw that breaks the camel's back.

So we're going backwards, and persons with disabilities are non-persons in every way. This is just one more example, and it's infuriating.

Now I will ask a question, because that's what this is all about. Bill Young has supplied us with some good nitty-gritty questions, and I'd like to put some of them to you, because they will increase the body of information we have at this hearing. Generally, we have a job ahead of us right here in this committee to fight this very regressive step.

I'd like to know whether you think this letter is discriminating against any particular group with disabilities—and I will mention persons with intellectual disabilities.

I'd like to know what is or should be the relationship between the disability tax credit and the Canada Pension Plan, and whether you believe people should continue to receive one and not the other.

I'd like to know to what extent the tax treatment of people with disabilities contradicts the letter and spirit of In Unison and the federal disability strategy.

Mr. Laurie Beachell: Maybe I can try the first part of the question: is there a sector within the community that is unfairly targeted? I don't believe that's so with the 75,000 to 90,000 letters that went out. I do believe there is a community that is not well served by the form that has to be filled out. The question “Can your patient perceive, think and remember?” is the one that will supposedly capture those individuals with mental handicaps, those individuals with psychiatric disabilities, those individuals with learning disabilities, etc. I don't believe it is sufficient to do that. There have been cases where individuals, particularly with psychiatric disability, have had to challenge the definition in order to become eligible.

• 1700

There are cases going to tax court, and there is a case soon to go to the Federal Court of Appeal. A favourable decision of the tax court related to mental health definition, which is being challenged by Revenue Canada. Revenue Canada is appealing the tax court decision to the Federal Court of Appeal, so we are looking at whether we might intervene in that initiative.

Think, remember, perceive—people do think, people do remember, people do perceive, people do understand, people with mental health problems, with psychiatric disabilities, etc. What a horrible tag to have hung on you in order for you to become eligible and for it to be recognized that you have some additional cost related to your disability.

And this is not the only regressive measure of the federal government in relation to disability. We have seen incremental improvements for 30 years, but I have to tell you, in the last five years we have not. In the last five years we are not seeing improvements. We have conducted battles in the 1990s for maintenance, and in the last few years we are seeing regressive measures. I will give you one particular example beyond this.

The Government of Canada gave VIA Rail $130 million to buy new passenger rail cars, and VIA went to France and bought cars that are totally inaccessible. It was cheap, it was a good deal. We have companies here in Canada that are known internationally for their expertise in designing rail cars that are totally accessible, that are bought by Amtrak, and that are used in the United States because of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and we didn't even avail ourselves of the Canadian technology Bombardier has. We went and bought stock that was sitting on the sidelines for five years, was going to be scrap metal—the only other country bidding on them was Morocco. That was what the Government of Canada thought was good enough for what we needed here.

So there are regressive steps. There were regressive steps in 1998 with Canada Pension Plan disability benefits, requiring longer attachment to labour force, requiring individuals to jump through more hoops to become eligible.

I'm not advocating—I'll let Harry and others address this more—one definition of disability. It won't work. You have to relate disability not to physical diagnosis or to medical diagnosis, but to barriers within the environment, and those continue to evolve and change.

So on your first part, yes, we're moving backwards at this point in time. This is another indication of a backward step, when we had hoped to be putting forward new proposals. In fact, we were putting forward new proposals for broad new visions over a period of time that I think you're well aware of, the “Striking a New Balance” proposal.

Mr. Angelo Nikias: I think the In Unison report now runs the risk of becoming irrelevant, and if it does become irrelevant, it will be, frankly, the responsibility of its authors, of its sponsors, both levels of government. We struggled to improve it when it was being worked out. We supported it because we thought it was a good framework on which we could build, and it hasn't really resulted in any concrete benefits. Now it's really up to the governments—and frankly, I include you in that—whether the In Unison report remains relevant or collects dust in the parliamentary library, I guess, or somewhere else.

The Chair: Harry.

Mr. Harry Beatty: I think it would be good for the committee to review what has happened to this form over the past several years. Laurie mentioned in his introductory remarks that the statutory definition has not changed in about a decade. You could even argue, of course, that the statutory definition itself is too restrictive, in that it says homemaking or work are not activities of daily living. But aside from that, what we have had over the last several years is that the form has been redesigned so as, in many cases, to make it less likely that a doctor will be comfortable in signing to support her or his patient's claim, even though the legal test has not changed, because the physician does not read the statute or go behind it. The physician reads this.

• 1705

The clearest example of this is perhaps the question, “Can your patient walk?” It just says “50 metres on level ground”. I've used this joke a few times, if it is a joke, but it must be that CCRA believes the world still to be flat, as others would have to assume that walking around our world a bit means going uphill and downhill, stairs, and so on. A few years ago it used to say 100 metres, and they changed it to 50. I think there's a question whether, just by redesigning the form, they're making the claim more difficult to get. That's governing by stealth or whatever.

The other thing is that by having the form just broken down into these questions, even if you accept, which I think not all would, that the credit should be restricted to those defined as being severely disabled, someone can fail to meet any of these tests and still have a tremendously significant disability. “Can your patient perceive, think and remember?” People with very serious psychiatric diagnoses certainly perceive, think, and remember, often in a very rich, creative matter. I know mental health groups will be coming to speak to that.

There are some people, especially folks when they get older, but not always, where it's a range of disabilities. The person doesn't have just one health condition, they have four or five, it's a cumulative effect. On the form, the doctor used to be able to say, looking at everything, whether there was a severe and profound disability, in a sense making this global judgment on the whole person. This form has been redesigned to take it away.

So it's hard to avoid. I think the reason for sending out all these form letters requesting new information is really to make people go back and get a doctor to sign the new form. Many may not be able to get a doctor to do it at all.

Ms. Connie Laurin-Bowie: Can I just comment on your first question, and add to what Laurie and Harry were saying about the form?

I guess your question was about whether it isolates certain groups. I think it's important to also put the DTC beside the METC. If you ask people at Finance on the policy side, they'll tell you those two mechanisms are intended to go together. One is for things you spend money on and get reimbursed for; they're defined, clear expenditures. The DTC is intended to be the fallout position for things you can't define. For people with intellectual disabilities and their families, very often you can't find expenses that are disability-specific, or at least perceived by Revenue Canada to be disability-specific. You're at a disadvantage in the way the DTC is interpreted also, because of the way they see disability.

So there's a double bind for people with intellectual disabilities and their families. Many of the supports people with intellectual disabilities receive are very informal, family support, help doing your banking, and so on. You can't claim that under an METC. You still are fighting to keep your eligibility under the DTC. Some of our members are pushing to have a particular piece that says all people with intellectual disabilities should be eligible for the DTC. We have reserved, as an organization, putting that forward as a recommendation, because I don't think it necessarily serves all people very well. I don't think that's a way to go. We don't want a list of definitions under the DTC.

• 1710

The Chair: I have a question for Harry about of the evolution of the form. Bill's going to see if he can find the archival evidence, but I would like to be able to send to physicians coming before us the series of forms, so they could comment on the evolution and the likelihood of their ticking yes, no, yes, no, maybe. I think this is the kind of evidence we need. I know what it's like to fill these out, and you do feel that you're performing a quasi-judicial function—under oath could I say, no, they can't walk, if somebody actually decided to fight me about it.

In de-medicalizing the form, but also getting this right, would you be able to go away and think of the kinds of questions, if you have not already done that, that would be much more honest questions? If there is going to be a disability tax credit, what are the decent questions? If there were some suggestions that we could have beforehand, we could put those before the doctors as well. It's something we could do as part of that hearing: if you were asked this or this, would you feel it was more representative of the stuff? Obviously, the cystic fibrosis people have always thought that breathing should be there, and the mental health people the recurrent stuff. Next week we will have some of those cases you've referred come before us, people who have taken those next steps.

Mr. Laurie Beachell: There might be something in the form that begins, “The purpose of the disability tax credit is to offset additional costs of disability. Do you have additional costs related to your disability?”

The Chair: All right.

Mr. Laurie Beachell: There are also questions that the community was very involved in with the post-census survey, questions that are more enhancing than these questions are here. They get at people's definition, the barriers they face, the problems they encounter, the additional costs related to disability.

The Chair: So you're telling me, Laurie, the disability community wasn't consulted on this new form.

Mr. Laurie Beachell: The only consultation, I understand, that was conducted was with the Canadian Medical Association. That's what CCRA told me.

The Chair: Oh, well, we can't wait to have them.

Wendy, did you have another question or other comments? Then Tony.

Ms. Wendy Lill: There's the issue of additional costs. It seems clear that what happens is that people just absorb, so things don't show up. Audrey, you know, one could interpret your life as not having additional costs—your son lives with you. I shouldn't speak about that, because I'm not sure, but just having your son live with you doesn't necessarily mean having additional costs, except that you don't really want a 35-year-old son living with you, and you would have made very different choices, and you would have had two incomes.

All this stuff is pretty ephemeral to the tax people. As long as it doesn't show up, it's just fine. We see thousands and thousands of families that just keep absorbing, just taking these body blows all the time with housing, drugs, respite. As you say, if you can get two weekends a month, that would be a help.

Ms. Audrey Cole: Two a year, if you look at it. And think what it would cost us if we wanted to go away for two weeks. If my husband and I wanted to go away together without our son for two weeks, where would we find the money to do that? It's not part of our life. We don't have those kinds of holidays.

Ms. Wendy Lill: How do you think we can actually tackle this concept of additional cost, given the fact that the whole frame is being changed now, so that it's all going back to the families anyway? How does it look like additional costs? We're willing to accept so much more now, so the expectation is that there really isn't much onus on the part of federal government or provincial government to take any responsibility for persons with disabilities. So how do we do it?

• 1715

Ms. Connie Laurin-Bowie: What we're doing is forcing people out of the labour market. How can that be increasing our tax base? Many families tell us that one person stays home because they have to, not because they're in a full-time care position necessarily, but because they spend their entire life fighting every single system they come into contact with, and they just can't manage to stay in the labour market. That means we at least have cut off those who would have chosen to stay in the labour market.

For example, I know of one woman who just received a letter for her nine-year-old son—her story is in our brief. She's struggling to keep her job, and she gets this letter about the DTC. So her choices are, I can fight the DTC, or forget it, or just leave my job and spend my whole life fighting Revenue Canada or other organizations. So I think one of the ways to get at that issue of extra cost is to talk specifically about lost income.

The Chair: With the difference between a social policy objective and a tax policy objective, Connie, everything we fight for, opportunities, funding, assistive devices, everything is about creating taxpayers. So is there an economic argument we can make that we keep losing taxpayers with this particular policy, that these people are having to quit their jobs in order to do this important job?

Ms. Connie Laurin-Bowie: Is Sharon Hope Irwin going to be appearing before the committee?

The Chair: We thought she was. She sent us a letter about three cases today.

Ms. Connie Laurin-Bowie: Because I think that there is actually some work both by the Roeher Institute and by SpeciaLink—well, I'm not sure in what capacity she's done the work, but there are some numbers on that, and it would be very useful, probably, to put them together in a short brief that actually says, here's a logical argument why this is actually resulting in lost employment and therefore lost tax revenue.

The Chair: Audrey.

Ms. Audrey Cole: On an individual basis, I have two major problems. One of the things that's so upsetting to families is that we know our children, no matter what age they are, by their personality, by who they are, and yet we're only ever allowed to describe them by lists of deficits, and the most appalling deficit you can produce is the one that's likely to provide some response. That's a horrible way to have to publicly regard your son or daughter in order for them to have the little bits of support we manage in society to give them. There's something very wrong about that. While everybody else can talk in very glowing terms about, and even exaggerate, the prowess of their kids, we're only ever allowed to describe our sons and daughters in the most negative terms if we want to get any support. There's something fundamentally wrong about that.

The Chair: Whereas, with Laurie's kind of question on the form, that would change in the same way lots of special needs change.

Ms. Audrey Cole: But it's also one of the most difficult things to put down. I know there's been a cost to our family for the last 37 years that we would not have had, but I can't put it down.

Mr. Laurie Beachell: That's why there are two pieces within the tax system presently. The disability tax credit is for those additional costs for which we cannot produce receipts, that are unidentifiable in many ways, because they are the difference between my parking three blocks away from work at the cheap lot and the person having to park next door at the expensive lot. That's just the simple stuff; there are many other costs.

There are then bodies of costs specific to disability that produce receipts. They are technical aids, appliances, equipment, respite, attending care, interpretation services, homemaker services, and all those kinds of things. We do battle at Revenue Canada and Finance in expanding that list continually as well.

• 1720

It gets bizarre with an individual with MS, where we know heat causes additional problems, so that putting in air conditioning is a wise idea if you have advanced MS in hot summer months. Then the tax system says, how much of a benefit is that air conditioner to the other four members of the family, and therefore what proportion of the air conditioner should be a refundable benefit to the individual with the disability? The family probably wouldn't have put in air conditioning had not this individual needed it. We start proportioning costs to individuals, rather than looking at the situation that makes the most sense. If the individual doesn't get an air conditioner, the individual becomes ill, the individual ends up in a hospital bed that costs ten times more than living at home.

The Chair: So you're saying we should just relax about it, because people aren't—

Mr. Laurie Beachell: People aren't looking to abuse it.

The Chair: Right.

Mr. Laurie Beachell: People do not want to identify themselves as having a disability and a deficit and all those kinds of things. People are not wanting labels attached to them or to have to visit their doctor and go through a process of getting the seal of approval. It is not a system that people will line up to abuse.

Ms. Connie Laurin-Bowie: Another example, Laurie—I think this came from one of your members, and I can't remember from where—was snow removal in the winter in Montreal. If you're a wheelchair user, you need someone to come and remove the snow, and you have to pay for that. Whereas someone else might shovel their own walk, if you need to get to work and you use a wheelchair, likely you're going to pay for that service. So it is something particular as an added expense that's related to your disability. There's no way they'd allow that under the current rules.

The Chair: Harry Beatty.

Mr. Harry Beatty: I wish I had spoken to the individual I was going to mention, because I can only talk about her in a very general way. It's a person I met with a very significant disability, one everyone would recognize, a major disability. On leaving social assistance for full-time employment, she discovered the upshot was that certain health and disability supports were taken away, and she couldn't afford it, so she took a second job. Thinking back to Audrey's comments, it's not just families having to describe their family members in these negative terms. Now, presumably, this person who is holding down two jobs has to go to these various programs and describe herself as incapable.

Many people are extremely motivated within this community to work, as we all know. I have talked to some people who have received this letter, who are working, and to whom the credit is an important support. Here are all these obstacles, and they feel the same sort of anger Audrey is expressing on behalf of her family and her son—this is the help I get from the federal government, a letter alleging that I don't have a disability at all. Usually it's people who have spent a lot of their lives being told they can't have a job because they're disabled. They finally get one, and now here's this letter from the Government of Canada. It has a symbolic meaning. That kind of outrage goes beyond the money, I think, for those people as well.

The Chair: Tony.

Mr. Tony Tirabassi: Thank you, Madam Chair.

First, I'd like to thank the witnesses for appearing here today, and the other members of the committee, who, after all this time, have asked very pertinent questions that I was going to lead into, but that's fine.

• 1725

As one of the new members of Parliament, I chose to be on this committee. As further introduction, my family has been fortunate not to have had directly anyone who has had a disability. But we do have a very good friend of the family who worked in a paper mill, until one day back in 1961 he went to work, and lo and behold, a metal chip flew up behind the eye, and he has been legally blind since. But he pulled himself up by the boot straps and went to the CNIB for some help and all the training and the reading. He's still a very good friend of the family. We broke bread together as recently as last week. Also, in my former career I had an opportunity to work with a gentlemen with two healthy children, and the third one was autistic, Evan, and he's eight years old right now.

That starts to hit close to home. Another friend of mine who's a single parent was working, raising a young child, and one day coming home from work was slammed into a tree, rear-ended in a car accident. All the financial settlement's been taken care of, but she's suffering a very severe head injury that she will live with for the rest of her life, trying to raise the infant.

So I've had an association with people, and I still have that association, so I kind of take the input from them. I thought, boy, if I ever was in a position to assist, I would want to.

When you refer to this letter, this is strictly coincidental, but I had a gentlemen with whom I took an appointment in my office last week who marched in with this letter. I can tell you there were physical ailments, and by his own admission, he had certain mental illnesses, and seeing something like this.... He'd been kicked out of one doctor's office already. He put his head in his hands, and I didn't know what I was going to be confronted with. He was very frustrated. I took a look at the letter, and I was handed a copy here today. It's absolutely correct, this letter has a lot of negativity to it. He certainly felt threatened that things were going to change. We were able to deal with it, but his doctor quoted him $150 to fill out that form. When I hear $50, that's what I thought it was, but in this case it was $150. Not that it's something we can do on a consistent basis, but I'm hoping my staff can plead with this particular doctor to take a look at this one more time.

So it's given me a fairly rounded background now, first hand, as to what people are putting up with. In my former municipal career—also having worked in volunteer organizations—if somebody came before the local council and there was a certain suffering in their life, tomorrow you could quickly call your staff, even though we come from a municipality where there was nobody with any medical expertise, and ask them to call this person and hold their hand for a couple of days and look after this situation. We were able to react like that. In a volunteer organization, if we had a camp and we knew there were certain people who couldn't afford it, we could probably go to the head of this organization and say, I'm one director, pull the other directors if you have to, write off this submission, we need to get these children to camp.

You come here and you think you can still reach, and it just doesn't work. That's the frustration I'm feeling. I want you to know that. I felt it was important that you have an understanding of the contacts I've had in the background where I've certainly tried to assist.

So the first thing is, I'm not pleased to sit here and see the way this letter was drafted. I'm certainly hoping we can address that. If you were to put yourself in my role, in what form would you see the greatest assistance coming? What is probably the biggest thing we could do, or the smallest thing? It's a loaded question, I know.

• 1730

Mr. Laurie Beachell: In our collective experience, there are a few things that move the issue forward. Frankly, and this is the importance of this committee, we require champions within the government to stand up in their caucus meetings and in their committee meetings and say, how does this policy affect people with disabilities? When you are working on the children's agenda and looking at a national child benefit, have you considered in that children with disabilities and been inclusive in your discussions, to make sure the new policy initiatives address the needs of those with disabilities? We require members of Parliament to champion the cause, and this committee has done significant work in the past, and we know many of you have done that individually in the past. Frankly, it has worked for as long as Walter Dinsdale, Neil Young, Dr. Halliday, Lloyd Axworthy, and other people stood up and said, I want to make a difference with disability. It had impact. So we want to be sure that when the Minister of Transport says, we're going to buy new passenger rails cars, somebody says to him, not just from the community, but from the party, will the cars be accessible, Mr. Minister? He makes his commitment there, so that we aren't having to lodge complaints and litigation after the fact. Those are the things that help us move matters forward.

If there is a priority within the community, it is increasing the kinds of supports Audrey and her family require. It is in the whole area of disability support. The opportunity to do that is out of In Unison, in the federal-provincial discussions, and hopefully, some new initiatives.

You have the opportunity—and this is somewhat removed from the direct influence on individuals—to in some form to review SUFA and to look at how SUFA, the social union framework agreement between the federal and provincial governments, is working to advance concerns for children, for people with disabilities, for people who are poor, etc. It is the vehicle many of us have hung our hats on, because it is where governments unanimously said, including the Government of Quebec, the priorities are children living in poverty and people with disabilities. You have the chance to say, three years after we committed that, have we done anything, have we achieved something here, or do we have to do more?

Your frustration is our frustration with the federal government, not necessarily the organizational view here. So much has been given away from the federal government—no standards, block funding only, labour market now provincial jurisdiction totally, you're not in the game. How do you have impact upon local citizenship when you no longer have the levers? If the lever is greater collaboration between the federal and provincial governments, citizens of this country don't care who does it, we care that it gets done. We don't care if it's the Government of Alberta or the Government of Canada, but somebody needs to step up to the plate and improve the situation. Frankly, it is all our tax dollars that one collects and the other spends. So let's find a way of being collaborative about some vision and some objectives. That's what is required of government particularly. The Government of Canada is required to have some vision about where we want to move this social agenda.

I just spent two days in Mont Tremblant with 60 other leaders in the voluntary sector discussing a new social development agenda in Canada, and I have to tell you that the ultimate frustration was the game playing between levels of government as to who is responsible. We, as citizens, don't care who is responsible. We do care that we have some citizenship rights.

Ms. Connie Laurin-Bowie: Can I give you three suggestions—I like to do things in threes?

• 1735

The first point is what we've all been working on and Laurie has referred to for a number of years, which is that we need a policy framework in which to move forward, we need something to hang our hats on. It would be really beneficial to have something appear in the next budget that said this federal government is working in a forward manner in cooperation with the provinces on a disability agenda. Whether there's money attached to that in two years or three years, to have the words in the budget would be a huge benefit for us, enabling us to move along. That's the first suggestion, and I think the policy work has been done across the community on what would be contained in that strategy.

The second thing, I think, is some language. I think for a national organization and for an MP at a federal government level, we have the same challenges: how do you translate the work we do into policy, whether it's on EI or transportation or tax policy, into language that's going to be relevant to a person in their life in your community, who is a constituent? For us that is a challenge we've only begun to realize the enormity of. It's not only important to know what your policy objectives are, it's really important to find some language, so that people in their communities see the federal government, and you as an MP, as relevant to that discussion. I don't have the particular language, but I think citizenship is a language we've used as a community. I'm not sure how to translate that into something that is more meaningful to people in their communities on a day-to-day basis, but that's what we're working on. I think language is really critical.

I think it would be easier for you to develop that language if there were some directions in things like the Speech from the Throne, the budget, and other things that say the national government of this country is committed to advancing, in the following areas, the issues affecting people who have a disability in their families.

Finally, at a really local level, one of the things particularly young families we've been working with have said is that they have absolutely no place to come together to have town hall, round table kinds of meetings where they put their issues together. They go to one set of systems; they go to their recreation centre or they go to the camp you're referring to, and they're one-offs. They're always fighting one-offs. They're fighting against the DTC, against their local or their provincial governments for some service, or their school board—you name it—but they're always by themselves.

For an MP to take some leadership and bring some of those people together is enormously helpful at the local level. It helps people to actually articulate more clearly what the issues are in the community. It provides a place for them to exchange information about what is available. It often gets initiated by families themselves, but in many instances they're so overwhelmed individually with their fights that to actually initiate something like that is very difficult. Some MPs have taken on the role of actually providing those forums, and they are tremendously valuable. So that's a really concrete, particular thing that we've only begun to see evidence of benefits from.

The Chair: Angelo, and then Harry.

Mr. Angelo Nikias: This discussion is not new. It is interesting. I would start by saying, on the issue at hand here, perhaps you can fight to reverse the decision CCRA has made.

Let's not lose focus, but your question does create some pessimism in me, because you're a member of Parliament, I'm not. I appreciate your honesty, but if you are not sure how you can make some difference, I think we are in trouble as a country. I will look to you members of Parliament, and to the members of the governing party, honestly, to show the political leadership to hold the government accountable for all the reports we have produced together. That's really the problem. We produce a lot of reports, but we don't see a lot of specific action.

I'm not cynical, but if I were—

Voices: Oh, oh!

Mr. Angelo Nikias: I'm not. The reason I'm here is that I'm not cynical. But what we have today in Canada is a lack of general policy on disability. We have fragmentary measures here and there, and not all of them positive, as this one today demonstrates. We have a lack of general policy, but we have an abundance of generalities. That's really the problem, we always talk generally, we don't do enough specific things to put into practice the generalities we articulate.

• 1740

But then, we don't really have an overall framework. The In Unison we mentioned earlier could be the framework, but now it's basically been put on the back burner anyway, and the federal government certainly doesn't have an overall strategy on disability issues. So we talk generally, we act in a fragmentary manner, not specifically enough with concrete measures, and I think we need to reverse that. We need to stop talking generally. We should have a vision, and then put forward, in the context of that vision, some specific things that are achievable within a year or two, three to five years, whatever the economy of the country enables us to do.

Mr. Harry Beatty: I'll come back to my earlier comments about the form and so on. I think it is important to compare how this is working with how a range of people think about disability. I would say not just lawyers and health professionals, but many individuals with disabilities and families have given many years of consideration, have lived with this for a long time, and have a lot to contribute.

Specifically with the DTC, I remember back in the eighties there was a green booklet for doctors. It wasn't perfect, maybe it did draw a line in the wrong place for some disabilities, but I think there was more of an attempt to capture what might be a significant or severe disability. Where the doctor is actually the legal gatekeeper, as opposed to just providing information about the person's disabilities, I certainly have heard, as I imagine others have, of cases where the relationship between patient and doctor has broken down over conflict on this. People tell me fairly regularly that basically, they think they should be eligible or their child should be eligible, but the doctor doesn't want to do the form, doesn't agree. They need that doctor, the doctor's services are important, so they'll just let it go. Having it depend legally on the judgment of an individual doctor I think is just asking for unfairness and a lot of bad dynamics in the professional client relationship.

The Chair: I think, Harry, we've figured that out in other areas, like the driver's licence. There are other people who go and do that, and it was viewed as a very bad idea that I, as the family doctor, would be the person taking away somebody's licence. When it comes to our interpersonal relationship, sometimes it can be done easily and well, it being in your best interest, but sometimes, as you say, there is a serious confrontational trigger that is about people really not getting good care thereafter, and there's a real breakdown.

I think this gatekeeper role of physicians is a very interesting one, because if there were a set of more comprehensive tools that actually did this aggregated thing, which you say is now missing.... A little of this and a little of that can add up to two and two makes five, or one and one and one makes twelve, because this person now really isn't able to look after themselves. It's not this linear function that this form represents. The more I look at this form, the more it really does annoy me. I think we'll hear next week from the mental health people that they feel the doctors are almost asked to contradict themselves in various places in order to fill out the form, and it's some sort of big trick.

• 1745

I think Laurie's suggestion was very good. As you know, government doesn't deal very well with problems. They deal much better with solutions. So if there's any language, anything that we can put forward from this committee as a solution to this, we will be.... We assume you'll follow what happens next week and the week after when we're talking to the doctors, and if it triggers more information you would like to share with us, I know you would call Bill, send us a letter, do whatever it takes to try to get this right in the short time we've got.

Mr. Laurie Beachell: If Finance and Revenue Canada had talked to the community about this before sending the letters and revising the form, not just going to the medical association, if they had sat down.... Angelo has been able to negotiate something with them over the last few days, but that's after the fact. They could have come to CNIB three months ago and said, we think we need more information, here's what we have in our files, and CNIB could have provided them with a viewpoint. So could we. So could CACL. We're willing to do that.

When I asked what happened to the advisory committee to CCRA—there was one, and it did die in about 1996-1997—the response I got from the department was that the community chose for it to end because they felt they were being consulted to death. That was about the time of the Scott task force, and we were getting a lot of consultations, and maybe that is true. I don't remember that, and I've been around a long time. We can quickly, for these kinds of things, bring together three or four people with expertise from the community who could provide advice to CCRA or to Finance on doing this in a better way. We do not object to audits of programs and we do not object to accountability mechanisms to ensure that the program is serving its purpose, but I guess we're suspicious of this.

The Chair: I have two questions.

First, Angelo, from your experience over the last couple of days, are you aware that HRDC was involved at all in the decision to send out the letters, in the consultation about the DTC form, or anything like that?

Mr. Angelo Nikias: I have to be careful here, but none of the HRDC officials I have spoken to indicated that they knew about this before we raised it. That is probably an indication of the lack of integrated approach, the lack of an integrated strategy, on the part of the federal government as a whole. They might have been and I don't know about it, but to my knowledge they were not. I think I did more than they did in some cases.

Mr. Laurie Beachell: When I talked to the head of policy for ODI, they were not aware of it. When I talked to the staff in Minister Stewart's office, they were not aware of it. When I talked to the social policy people in the Prime Minister's Office, they were not aware of it.

The Chair: I have two questions for Harry.

Does the Income Tax Act allow CCRA to seek the advice of HRDC on criteria eligibility or anything like that from the people who supposedly know these things or the policy advice people?

The second thing is something I've just been dying to ask through the whole hearing. If somebody sends you a letter saying they don't have the information on you, when indeed the information is sitting in your file, is that harassment, if indeed we can prove the information was sitting in the file and this is on 90,000 pieces of paper with stamps and all of that? What actually is the is the status of somebody sending out a letter that's lying?

• 1750

Mr. Harry Beatty: One answer, of course, is that civil servants always have nice broad clauses exempting them from any liability. I suppose they would say it's just a review. They'll defend it by saying some people may not be eligible any more. As I said before, I think the real purpose is to require people to get their physician or other health professional to submit the more restrictive new form. So I think that language is misleading. Is it harassment? Well—

The Chair: The act didn't change at all. The rules are the same.

Mr. Harry Beatty: Yes.

The Chair: It's just the form that changed. Right? So the person who qualified under the act still qualifies under the act. That's the part that bugs us.

Mr. Harry Beatty: I don't know if I would say the intent was to harass. I think the intent is to reduce the number of claims. But it's experienced by people as harassment if they are clearly eligible.

As for the first part of your question, I don't think there's any restriction on one branch of government consulting with another. It was my understanding that with the medical health professionals who administer this, there's a big overlap with the HRDC officials, but I don't know any details for CPP. Certainly, it seems to be the same attitude, even if it isn't literally the same people. It does seem to reflect a lack of understanding of how disability is thought of now.

The Chair: It does say in the Duff report that the tax authorities can obtain the advice of the human resources department. I guess our concern has still been this lack of coherence of definition that is so difficult.

Audrey, and then Connie.

Ms. Audrey Cole: Although the information to be filled in was sparse, it was very much to the point, in our case, for my son in 1987. If indeed that is no longer in the files, why were we assured six or seven months ago, when we were filing our tax forms, that there was no need to reapply? Why were we assured six months ago that they had the necessary information, if suddenly, six months later, they don't have it? That's what I don't understand.

As to what an MP could do, together with a lot of other MPs, I would certainly like to see some recognition on the part of this government that what has happened here is offensive to people. It's almost irrelevant to the issue—in fact, I would say it is irrelevant. If there's to be any other way of dealing with this, find some ways to do it. I think people need an apology for this, quite frankly.

The Chair: Mado.

[Translation]

Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral: Could the committee write to Revenue Canada about this letter to tell them what we heard today? They will be forced to answer. We brought out some very clear questions which could be included in the letter.

I don't know what you think about this, Madam Chair. I think this is one good thing to do.

The Chair: Absolutely.

[English]

They are coming to this hearing, but I think the eloquent testimony of Audrey Cole and all the witnesses is something that maybe we should tell them of in a letter, hoping they will read the Hansard and prepare themselves. I'm sure they will. I would hope it would get into other hands in the meantime too.

• 1755

Mr. Laurie Beachell: In this letter I'd like to bring your attention to one other sentence, which makes us question the intent.

Please note that this review does not affect any DTC claims we approved for you in 2000 and earlier years.

In 1996 and 1997 the review that was undertaken was actually retroactive, and individuals were not only disqualified for the next year, but they said to individuals they should repay for previous years. About 10,000 people in 1996-1997 were made ineligible, and there was a retroactive portion of that. This appears to be a cleverer political strategy, where you just have to provide more information to remain eligible, and you get assured that if you're found not to be eligible, they won't come after you for retroactive payment. They learned in 1996 they couldn't. That created a horrendous burden on people, when they made you ineligible and then went after you retroactively. So they learned a political lesson, and this letter reflects that. It makes people think, okay, well, they think I'm ineligible, they're not coming after me for past tax years, but I don't get anything next year.

The Chair: For all the work this letter and all of that must mean administratively, from the community point of view, are there people getting the disability tax credit who shouldn't?

Mr. Laurie Beachell: No. There is no evidence of that.

The Chair: So you don't see that there's any evidence? On certain little things we have people whispering in our ear saying, put together CPP disability and certain other things, teachers tattle on one another, various other people tattle on one another, and they say, isn't it awful? So there's this undercurrent of things. I personally have never heard anything on the DTC, and so I'm asking you, are there some people whose case you would like to see tightened up, who you don't think really should be getting it, and it's causing you problems?

Mr. Laurie Beachell: Absolutely not.

The Chair: Okay.

Mr. Laurie Beachell: It's the opposite. We would want to expand this, because we don't believe this captures those who have disability, are experiencing disability-related costs, and are not having them offset in any way. I think if you look at Harry's numbers on the increase from 1993 to 1999, there are not a lot of new claimants here.

The people who have called me in the last few weeks are people with long-term disability, with significant disability, who have adapted, function in many creative ways, and contribute greatly. This is one way of realizing some of the additional costs. I would say to you, however, that one individual who got this letter and had a CNIB number phoned the toll-free number here on this letter and asked the intent of this review, and was told that the intent was to reduce by 50% the number of individuals who were eligible for the DTC.

The Chair: Does that person still have their job?

Mr. Laurie Beachell: I don't know. We didn't get the individual's name. I have phoned the director of the program.

I also had three individuals who phoned this 1-800 number and started to ask questions and raise concerns. I don't know if they were abusive or not—they were angry—but those three report that individuals would not answer their questions and actually hung up on them.

The Chair: I have just one more question, looking at this form. It says:

When do we need form T2201? You must tell us if your circumstances change. For example, if we advised you in 1999 that your claim would need to be re-evaluated for the 2001 tax year, you will need to file a new form T2201 with your 2001 return.

Are you aware that a whole bunch of people were told in 1999 that this was going to happen?

• 1800

Mr. Laurie Beachell: No.

The Chair: The first time filers on this form?

Mr. Laurie Beachell: No.

Mr. Angelo Nikias: If people had filed in 1999, they would have had recent information anyway.

The Chair: Yes.

Mr. Angelo Nikias: What they have claimed is that the reason for all this is that they don't have sufficient information, but as I said, we've tested that.

The Chair: Okay.

Wendy, did you have another question?

Ms. Wendy Lill: No, I don't have any more questions. I think we should eat.

The Chair: Okay.

Ms. Wendy Lill: I don't know.

The Chair: I think we've heard enough.

Ms. Wendy Lill: I feel we've heard enough, but I don't mean to be—

Mr. Laurie Beachell: This one is pretty clear.

Ms. Wendy Lill: We could eat, and then come back.

The Chair: Or we can chat amongst ourselves.

Ms. Wendy Lill: We could chat amongst ourselves.

The Chair: We could conspire amongst ourselves. Let's just stop the meeting, eat, and conspire.

The meeting is ajournded.