Mr. Speaker, to most of the people in my community, and I am sure this is true for most Canadians, government is government. That is to say that in our daily lives, we do not distinguish between municipal, provincial, and federal levels of government. We know that research has actually borne this out, that when someone has had a bad experience or struggles to get a service to which they are entitled, that frustrating, confusing experience translates to “government is not helpful”.

What this means is people do not say “the provincial government and that department of” fill in the blank “is not helpful”, or “the federal government and Service Canada is not helpful”. What happens to citizens is that their negative experience gets attributed to all governments. That makes sense because people's lives are not divided into compartments or neat boxes along jurisdictional lines or departmental lines. Jurisdictions and departments are there to help governments deliver services, to meet mandates, as vehicles to implement policies and laws.

We also know that when someone is accessing service from the government, they do not distinguish between distinct points along a process and say things like, “my phone call was answered right away; that was good service”, and then say, “but the application process was horrific and complicated.” What they say is that the entire journey of the process was not good or was difficult or was confusing, regardless of whether along the way there was good and helpful service.

This is what the research and evidence tells us, which brings me to the topic we are discussing today, and that is, improving the journey for people living with a disability when accessing services and benefits provided by their government.

Currently, if someone went to the government website to apply for CPP disability, the person would be confronted with eight documents totalling 45 pages. Seventeen of those pages are a guide, so 28 pages need to be filled in to apply for Canada pension plan disability. That sounds like a pretty intense and thorough process. Putting aside the difficulties associated with understanding the questions on the application form, and that could be for another bill on another day on plain language in applications, the application sounds like the gold standard to me for determining someone's eligibility for disability benefits.

Bill C-348 would eliminate the onerous burden of multiple forms and duplication for Canadians with disabilities. Once an individual has completed an application and is determined to be eligible for disability benefits, we should not put them through a government application process over and over again to prove they have a disability.

Through this bill, my colleague from Windsor—Tecumseh is trying to ensure that people with a disability get the benefits they are entitled to without the demoralizing, disrespectful, costly, time-consuming process of having to prove over and over again that they have a disability. This bill is brilliant in its simplicity and brilliant in the actual positive impact it would have on people's lives. Sometimes it really is the smallest of gestures that can make the biggest change in people's lives.

I do not want anyone to get me wrong. Parliamentarians and our government have a lot of work to do to address the high level of poverty among people living with disabilities. My hon. colleague reminded us of just that in her introductory speech on the bill. Some 5.3 million Canadians are living with some form of disability, and the poverty rate for persons living with a disability is high, much higher than that of the general population.

According to the DisAbled Women's Network, DAWN, 58% of women with disabilities are living on $10,000 or less a year. My colleague from New Westminster—Burnaby shared with this House what those high rates of poverty look like on the ground in our communities. Half of Canadians who are homeless have a disability, and half of those accessing food banks in Canada are also living with a disability.

That member dared us to imagine what if Canadians living with disabilities were accessing benefits they were eligible for, benefits that, as we have heard, often go unclaimed because the government process itself is a barrier. It is costly, complicated, confusing, and demoralizing, and a process as I have described that asks people to prove over and over again their disability and their worthiness for benefits.

My constituency office in Saskatoon West is a busy place, and as an opposition MP, people would assume we would be busy with town halls, consultations, and meeting with community members to change, improve, get rid of, or introduce new laws and policies to make lives better for people living in my community. They would be partly right. We are busy with those activities, but we are equally busy helping people in my community access benefits which they are eligible for. Daily we help people navigate the system for disability benefits because it is complicated and it does not work for the people the system is intended to help.

A common refrain of mine when hearing people's stories about trying to apply for disability benefits, and I am sure my staff are sick of hearing it, is, “but that does not make any sense”, and that is exactly how I say it: that does not make any sense. One community member came to my office for help because although she was deemed eligible for Canada pension plan disability benefits and was eligible for her long-term disability plan at work, she could not access the disability tax credit. That does not make any sense. People in my community should not have to go to their MP's office to gain access to benefits they are eligible for, and for sure, people should not have to resort to paying private consultants to help them complete a form. That really does not make any sense. This bill would ensure that individuals living with a disability would not have to incur the expense of their time and, most important, their money to prove their disability over and over again to different government departments.

During an earlier debate on this bill, the Parliamentary Secretary for Sport and Persons with Disabilities mentioned the current initiatives the government is undertaking to improve the lives of Canadians living with disabilities, including the much-anticipated accessibility legislation. To that I say, that is awesome. The parliamentary secretary also stated that the government supports the spirit of the bill but will not be supporting Bill C-348. The Liberals' main reason for not supporting this bill, as I understand it and from my perspective, is that there is a misunderstanding of what the bill would do, so I thought I would use an illustration in the hopes that members opposite could find a way to support the bill and ultimately help those in their ridings who are living with disabilities access the disability benefits they are entitled to.

Filing income tax is, in a way, a one-stop application for a variety of government benefits. People provide the required information and, using a checkbox and their signature, they give various government programs an ability to assess which benefits they are eligible for. Their privacy is protected and it helps public servants with assessing their eligibility. This is exactly what Bill C-348 would do. It would cut through the government red tape and make the process more efficient. Having one application that includes the information needed to assess eligibility and a consent mechanism that allows various government programs to process the appropriate benefits I think makes a lot of sense.

In my constituency office we are doing that almost every day. In Saskatchewan, when persons are receiving the Canada pension plan disability benefits, they are also eligible for the equivalent provincial government program. Every now and then we need to remind our provincial counterparts of this policy, but generally it works well. It is often simply a matter of one government or one department speaking directly to another department to improve service for Canadians. This bill is not an either-or proposition. I believe the government can pursue the work to implement important accessibility legislation and support my colleague's bill. Both would have a positive impact and improve the lives of Canadians living with a disability.

By streamlining the process by having only one application, various government departments would be able to speak to other government departments and assess eligibility for benefits. This is both efficient and effective, which should be one of the big outcomes we strive for when administering government programs and benefits. I believe when it comes right down to it, all of us can agree that individuals living with disabilities should not have to prove or demonstrate their disability to the government more than once. Not only is that more compassionate and respectful, it just makes sense.

I want the people in my community to see their government, their Parliament, as helpful and fulfilling the mandate of making life better for all Canadians. Bill C-348 as tabled by the member for Windsor—Tecumseh would do just that.

Sheri Benson

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