Greens respond on disability
Peter Bevan Baker, candidate for the Green Party, replied to our questions. I placed the pre-amble to his reply at the end to keep the resonses clear.
Q – Will you support an increase in the CPP up to the single person LICO (low income cut off)? The disabled living on CP Disability are living below 60% of the LICO.
Reply – See above in the section “our vision” where the Greens expressly endorse the basic income program. I can refer you to the appropriate portion of “Vision Green” for a full explanation of what the Greens are proposing regarding a GLI (or GAI as some call it). This would apply to ALL Canadians, not just those with disabilities.
Q – Will you support a national drug program with a co-pay for the disabled of less than $1,000 per year. The current suggestion of $5,000 does not consider that the disabled poor are often living on $12,000 per year.
Reply I’m having trouble finding specifics on this in the Green Party platform – the nearest I can come to a national drug program is attached below, but there are no specifics about maximum co-payments as you asked. Is the “Current suggestion” you quote of $5000 from a Green Party source, or some other document? Personally, I would support your proposal of a maximum co-pay of $1000.
Reduce the Costs of PharmaCare
1. Initiate a public inquiry into the rising costs and over-prescription of drugs.
2. Immediately embark on a commission to study and conduct a cost-benefit analysis on the feasibility of establishing, in cooperation with the provinces, a new crown corporation to bulk purchase and dispense generic drugs to pharmacies and the feasibility of establishing a national PharmaCare Program that ensures that effective pharmaceuticals are available to all Canadians who need them.
Q- Will you support a national program of disability supports to replace the current patchwork quilt of provincial supports? On PEI, only 11% of the disabled population is receiving supports.
Reply – Yes – our GLI would replace a whole host of current programs for all Canadians.
Q – Will you support a Canadians with Disabilities Act similar to the US ADA as amended? Canadians with disabilities need protection not a Charter. The attached article contains a recent post on the ADA.
Reply – Yes.
Hi Stephen,
It was good to meet you. Here are my answers to your questions:
Q- If you are elected, what will you and your party do for Islanders with disabilities?
Here is our policy on disabilities, taken from “Vision Green” – I’ll be referring to it in subsequent answers.
b) People with disabilities
Canadians with disabilities and their families live with disproportionate levels of poverty and exclusion. To better understand the underlying factors, the Council of Canadians with Disabilities (CCD) and the Canadian Association for Community Living (CACL) commissioned the Caledon Institute of Social Policy to study the situation and propose solutions. It concludes that:
1. Canadians with disabilities are more likely to live in poverty than other Canadians. Poverty is both a result of exclusion and lack of supports, and it contributes to further exclusion and vulnerability in a ‘vicious cycle’;
2. Children with disabilities are twice as likely as other children to live in households that rely on social assistance as a main source of income;
3. Poverty rates of Canadians with disabilities result in large part from the lack of needed disability supports, which enable access to education, training, employment, and community participation;
4. Canadians with disabilities are too often exiled to inadequate, stigmatizing and ineffective systems of income support that were never designed to address the real income needs of Canadians with disabilities; and,
5. The federal government has a key role to play in addressing the poverty and income security needs of Canadians – they have done this through Employment Insurance, CPP/QPP, Old Age Security and the Guaranteed Income Supplement, the National Child Benefit, and Child Disability Benefit, and various tax measures.
The Caledon Institute propose that the federal government invest in a new initiative, which they have called the Basic Income Programme to best provide the support that Canadians with disabilities desperately need.
Our Vision
The Green Party of Canada believes that it is time to treat Canadians with disabilities with dignity. We endorse the Basic Income Programme proposed by the Caledon Institute, which asserts, when all factors are taken into account, will actually save the government money. We urge the adoption of this income security programme for people with disabilities as soon as possible as an interim measure to a full poverty eradication federal-provincial program is established to provide for income security for all Canadians.
Green Solutions
Green Party MPs will:
Institute a basic income for people living with disabilities so that none of them live in poverty by:
• The conversion of the Disability Tax Credit (DTC) to a refundable credit as a first step in creating a national Basic Income program for working age adults with disabilities;
• Establish rigorous “needs based” eligibility standards for basic income to permit an affordable benefit system that provides adequate benefit levels; and,
• Use a redesigned Canada Pension Plan/Disability Benefit (CPP/D) test to incorporate the DTC definition of disability and permit employment, rather than the CPP/D definition that requires a ‘severe’ disability to be life-long and to be the cause of any incapacity to pursue ‘any gainful occupation.’ The revised definition allows individuals to work while retaining eligibility for basic income.
Thanks for this Stephen. Speak soon,Peter.
What about Canadians with disabilities that are on provincial supports?
Will there be any increased assistance from the federal government to redress the huge sum that Mike Harris took from us, not just those on welfare?
We already have a co-payment of $1 or $2 per prescription depending on which pharmacy we must use. A co-payment program of up to $1000 will be totally undermine our ability to receive medicine. I know for a fact that both my wife and I would end up as long term care in our local hospitals. Would the co-payment be a great savings to our health care then?
We’ve already had enough taken out of our disability supports that are so well hidden most support workers don’t even know that they are there and get just as confused as us when we try to find answers.
Thank-You for your time.
Kristofer Saseniuk
October 1, 2008 at 3:28 am