Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you again today. A special thanks go to MP Tracy Gray for helping make it possible to come back and speak to you.

My names is James Janeiro, and I'm with the Canadian Centre for Caregiving Excellence.

Our mandate includes caregivers, care providers and care recipients of all sorts. As such, disability is central to our mission and informs all of our funding priorities and convening opportunities, as well as our policy and advocacy work.

One in four Canadians is a caregiver today, and half of all Canadians will be a caregiver at some point in their lives. Half of all Canadian women already today are caregivers in 2024. Our recent survey report, called “Caring in Canada”, from May of this year, showed that about one-fifth of all caregivers support someone with a physical or intellectual disability, including parents and loved ones supporting children and adults with lifelong disabilities.

The passage of the Accessible Canada Act was a watershed moment for disability inclusion in Canada. In the months since, Canadians with disabilities have seen movement on implementation and standards development. Some excellent progress has been made. We now have a chief accessibility officer and an accessibility commissioner, millions of dollars have been allocated towards coverage of medical costs for the disability tax credit, and the employment strategy is well under way.

Perhaps most importantly, the federal government has allocated millions of dollars to the Canada disability benefit, with the promise of more to come. This is farther than we were, but not as far as we could or should be.

Millions of people with disabilities and the caregivers involved in their lives are crying out for help paying the bills—plain and simple. In 2021, Disability Without Poverty published a report card showing that 16.5% of people with disabilities live in poverty—more than 1.5 million people. In contrast, 8.5% of people without disabilities across the country live in poverty. Inclusion Canada reports that the problem is particularly acute for people with intellectual disabilities, who face a poverty rate of some 75%.

What does this have to do with caregivers? One-fifth of the caregivers in our survey reported supporting someone financially. Much of this can be traced to caregivers providing financial support to their loved ones with disabilities due to pervasive and deep poverty rates. Every dollar spent supporting someone they love means fewer dollars to pay the rent or purchase groceries for their families. One in five caregivers earns less than $20,000 a year. For caregivers who earn around or less than the median household income of $68,000 a year, nearly half report experiencing financial distress as a result of their care responsibilities.

Much needs to be done to get more financial supports into the pockets of people with disabilities and their caregivers. A Canada disability benefit is the future, and one that I hope will become a reality very soon.

In the meantime, the immediate next logical step within the context of this report is to focus on making existing programs and services properly accessible. Too many people with disabilities and too many caregivers are still unaware of the benefits to which they may be entitled and how to apply for them. Only 12% of caregivers said the person they support receives financial supports, and a mere 8% of caregivers receive the Canada caregiver credit. Those who have tried almost universally report finding the process arbitrary, opaque and even Kafkaesque.

I hope that the Accessibility Standards Canada technical committee that is developing standards in this regard will consider the views of people with disabilities and their caregivers and strive very hard to make the Canada disability benefit, Canada caregiver credit and of course the Canada disability benefit as accessible as possible. In the meantime, let's take a massive hammer to the disability tax credit and make it as simple as possible to access for everyone.

People with disabilities and caregivers need help today. The framework and early steps under the Accessible Canada Act set the stage for making present and future support more accessible for all Canadians.

Thank you for the opportunity, and I look forward to your questions.

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