Thank you, Chair.

Thank you for inviting March of Dimes Canada to speak to this committee today.

My name is Amanda MacKenzie. I'm the national director of external affairs at March of Dimes Canada, or MODC, a leading national charity and service provider for people with disabilities. I'm a white woman in her forties with glasses and brown hair, wearing a blue blouse, a black jacket and a silver necklace.

It's a pleasure to be here today, and I'd like to thank MP Falk for the motion to conduct this study.

Achieving full inclusion and accessibility is, to be sure, a great challenge, and we must be successful. We're just three months away from when Ontario, according to the AODA, is required to be a fully accessible and inclusive jurisdiction. There was a 20-year runway, and as Thea just noted, Ontario is far from achieving that goal. Canada cannot make the same mistakes and has to learn from the Ontario experience of making few improvements while waiting years for standards.

Today, I'll discuss two priorities in the road map to 2040: the built environment from a homes perspective, and the design and delivery of accessible programs and services.

MODC's central concern with the built environment is regarding accessible homes. We have successfully administered Ontario's provincially funded home and vehicle modification program for over 20 years, and we recently began administering Manitoba's new safe and healthy home for seniors program. They're incredibly successful programs because they provide direct grants, not tax credits, to people with disabilities with lower incomes to modify their homes, ensuring accessibility and independence in their own communities.

The federal government has a substantial role to play in increasing the supply of accessible homes through standards and policy, such as ensuring that all homes in the upcoming housing design catalogue are universally designed. It can also provide direct and targeted grants for home modifications to help people with disabilities remain in their homes, reducing pressures in other housing categories ahead of national standards being finalized, which could be years away.

The second priority I want to speak to is the design and delivery of accessible programs and services.

The best example of how government ensures that programs and services are inaccessible for those they're meant to serve is the use of the disability tax credit for people with disabilities to access financial security programs like the RDSP, the disability supplement for the Canada workers benefit and the incoming Canada disability benefit. Simply put, the goals of these programs are not going to be reached if they're not accessible for the people they're designed for.

With the CDB, the Canada disability benefit, we have a tremendous opportunity to build in fully accessible program design and delivery from the start, and we don't have to guess how to do it. The CRA's disability advisory committee, MODC and Prosper Canada's “A Benefit without Barriers” report, and the experience of other jurisdictions and people with disabilities have provided advice and guidance, yet here we are again.

National standards are important and can guide decision-making about future program and service design and delivery. While the national standard now in development may present an improvement down the road, it doesn't mean we stop the car and turn it off until that road appears. We know enough now—and people with disabilities have been teaching government for years—about how to make public programs accessible. It's time the government really listens and begins co-designing accessible programs and services with people with disabilities—now.

The final lesson to learn is that in order to be compliant with the Accessible Canada Act, companies and federally regulated industries are really coming to organizations like mine to review their accessibility plans and progress reports for free. We no longer live in a world where people with disabilities and organizations like mine are grateful just to be included and consulted. At MODC, we're asked at least once a week, but we don't have the capacity to do this without compensation. People with disabilities and their organizations must be compensated for review of accessibility plans and progress reports. This is one way to make “nothing about us without us” real for federally regulated sectors. Ideally, the ACA will be amended to require compensation, placing the responsibility on the companies to pay, as it's their job to become accessible and inclusive as participants in our economy.

Finally, I want to thank Canada's chief accessibility officer, Stephanie Cadieux; MP Chabot; and MP Zarrillo for opening the conversation in this study last week about the continuing culture shift and the end to ableism that are truly needed in order to be an inclusive and accessible society.

The questions we should be asking ourselves here—and everywhere—are about “How can we?”. How can we reach and teach people who don't have an experience of disability? How can we be allies in our personal and professional lives? Lastly, how can government act as a true ally, using all levers at its disposal to make progress on this shift?

I'll leave you with those questions and I'm happy to answer yours.

Thank you.

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