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House of Commons Debates House of Commons Debates VOLUME 148 Ï NUMBER 279 Ï 1st SESSION Ï 42nd PARLIAMENT OFFICIAL REPORT (HANSARD) Monday, April 16, 2018 Speaker: The Honourable Geoff Regan CONTENTS (Table of Contents appears at back of this issue.) 18281 HOUSE OF COMMONS Monday, April 16, 2018 The House met at 11 a.m. Mark Wafer, who hired 200 workers with disabilities at his Tim Hortons shops, once asked an official with the Ontario government, “What is the best way to get off disability assistance?” She replied, “Die”. Prayer That is not just the experience of an entrepreneur talking to PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS government; that is the insight of Canada's former chief statistician, Ï (1105) Dr. Munir Sheikh, who wrote: [English] OPPORTUNITY FOR WORKERS WITH DISABILITIES ... in Canada, many inappropriate tax-transfer policies have helped to condemn ACT people to being trapped behind low-income and poverty walls and, rather than improving social mobility, may have worsened it: we refer to it as the Zero Dollar Hon. Pierre Poilievre (Carleton, CPC) moved that Bill C-395, Linda model following the work of social policy expert John Stapleton, who An Act to amend the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act, be examined the incentives that caused a Toronto woman, Linda Chamberlain, to return read the second time and referred to a committee. to social assistance after a successful attempt to rejoin the workforce. He said: Mr. Speaker, work is a basic human need. Its wages feed, clothe, and shelter us. It offers the pride and purpose of doing something valuable for others. Work makes us a living. It also helps Chamberlain's story is a tragic one. “After three decades of us to make a life. That is why almost a million Canadians with battling schizophrenia and homelessness and poverty, Chamberlain disabilities work—including about 300,000 with severe disabilities, finally got a job”, wrote Toronto Star columnist Catherine Porter. As according to Statistics Canada—but the system effectively bans a reward, the government boosted Linda's rent almost 500% and cut many more from working. It is called the “welfare wall”, and here is her disability payment, making her $260 a month poorer because she how it works. worked. Therefore, she had no choice but to quit and remain in poverty on social assistance, ironically at greater cost to the system. When people with disabilities earn a paycheque, governments sharply claw back supports for income, housing, medications, and other help. These clawbacks, plus taxes, mean that often people are poorer when they work more. They are stuck behind the welfare Linda is not alone. Statistics Canada surveyed people with wall. disabilities who were not in the labour force even though they indicated they could work or had worked in the past. I quote For example, if a person with disabilities who is earning the Statistics Canada's findings: roughly 94,000 people reported that if minimum wage in Saskatchewan goes from working part time to they were employed, they felt they would lose additional support. working full time, he would see his take-home pay drop from About 82,000 people reported that they expected their income to $21,600 to $21,500 on an annual basis. That is right: he is working drop if they worked. double the hours and making less money at the end of the year. Just read the social assistance website in New Brunswick: For example, a single mother with one child may receive $861 each month. If she It is time to knock down this welfare wall. It is time to allow has no income at all, she would receive the full $861. If she has income of $300 a people to earn a living. It is time to pass Bill C-395, the opportunity month, then she would receive $561 in social assistance. for workers with disabilities act. Therefore, she makes $300 and immediately loses $300. It is like a tax rate of 100%, and that does not include other taxes, such as income taxes, payroll taxes, and gas taxes to drive to work, or This legislation would require governments to permit these clawbacks of non-cash benefits such as housing and medication. workers to keep more in wages than they lose in clawbacks and When all of these different work penalties are added together, many taxes. It would do this through measurement, action, and enforce- have a negative wage for working. ment. 18282 COMMONS DEBATES April 16, 2018 Private Members' Business First is measurement. The bill would require Finance Canada to working at all. Allow me to quote former British Medical Journal calculate how much governments take away in taxes and clawbacks editor Dr. Richard Smith, who said, “Unemployment raises the of income, housing, medication, and other help for each thousand chance that a man will die in the next decade by about a third. The dollars a worker with disabilities earns. This calculation would only men are most likely to die from suicide, cancer, and accidents and use publicly available tax and benefit rules, not personal financial violence. ... Separation, divorce, and family violence are also linked information. with unemployment.” Second is action. If the calculation shows people were losing more than they gained from work, within 30 days the finance minister would have to identify and report to Parliament changes to tax and Ï (1110) benefit programs that would fix the problem. He might adjust federal disability tax credits, the CPP disability plan, or any other federal measure to make work pay. Third is enforcement. Provinces must already meet numerous He went on, “But it is mental health that is most harmed by existing federal conditions in exchange for billions of dollars in unemployment. The unemployed experience anxiety, depression, federal transfer payments. This legislation would add one more neurotic disorders, poor self-esteem, and disturbed sleep patterns, condition that would require provincial taxes and benefits to always and they are more likely than the employed not only to kill allow people with disabilities to gain more than they lose from work. themselves but also to injure themselves deliberately.” To be clear, the federal government would not dictate how provincial policies work; rather, it would instill one simple principle: do not punish people with disabilities for working. Provinces would have total liberty in how they instill this principle. Dr. Diette, a Washington and Lee University economist, wanted For example, in British Columbia, people used to lose their drug to determine if unemployment causes bad mental health or if it is just coverage if they got a job and left welfare. That is not the case the other way around. He studied the mental health of people who anymore. Economist Kevin Milligan, who advised the governing had never before experienced serious psychological distress. Those party on its platform, wrote, B.C. “replaced an 'all or nothing' who went on to lose their jobs later became at least 125% more program for social assistance recipients with one that is income- likely to suffer such psychological distress than those who kept tested and more gently smoothed out as incomes rise. This had the working. effect of removing a very tall 'welfare wall' that provided a disincentive to work for people on benefits.” Similar solutions can allow other Canadians to get jobs without losing life-saving medications. Elsewhere, researchers tested 1,000 laid-off Danish shipyard Respecting the bill and allowing people with disabilities to work workers for psychiatric symptoms during a three-year follow-up could save taxpayers money. Data from the Ontario government period. He found these workers suffered worse mental health results showed that if one person on disability assistance gets a $17-an-hour than other workers who kept their jobs at a different shipyard. Here job, the government saves $14,000 in benefits and collects an extra we have a very large sample size of people in the same country and $1,000 in taxes. Imagine what we would save if we knocked down in the same industry. Those who were not working went on to suffer the welfare wall and freed tens of thousands of workers with far worse mental health than their counterparts who continued to disabilities to earn a living and escape poverty. have jobs. Speaking of poverty, the best anti-poverty plan is a job. If an individual is of working age but lives in a household where no one works, that person has a 50% likelihood of living in poverty today. Some would say, “Of course unemployment harms health and However, if an individual works full-time year-round, that person happiness. People without jobs are stressed about money”, but that is will only have a 3% chance of being poor. only part of the story. University of Zurich economist Dr. The same is true for people with disabilities, who generally have a Winkelmann found that life satisfaction for unemployed German higher poverty rate. However, people with disabilities who are men was significantly lower on a scale of 1 to 10 than for working employed are only 8% likely to be below the poverty line. Let me German men, even when their total incomes were the same. How can give the House a startling example. this be? We are always told that work is a necessary but miserable slog, and we would all be happier retiring at 30. Trendy TED talkers Let us put two people side by side, one who has a disability and a are always talking about this amazing future when robots will do all job and the other who has no disability and no job.
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