AODA Alliance
Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance Update
United for a Barrier-Free Ontario for All People with Disabilities
Website: www.aodaalliance.org
Email: aodafeedback@gmail.com
Twitter: @aodaalliance
Facebook: www.facebook.com/aodaalliance/
AODA Alliance Calls on Trudeau Government to Rapidly Proclaim in Force Bill C-22 Once Passed, and to Spearhead a Campaign to Get All Provinces and Territories to Pass Legislation Banning Private Insurance Companies from Clawing Back the Canada Disability Benefit
June 19, 2013
SUMMARY
Bill C-22, the Canada Disability Benefit Act, has almost finished its long journey through Parliament. We want the Senate to vote this week to ratify Bill C-22 before it rises for the summer. Once the Senate gives it this final vote, we want the Trudeau Government to take two important actions.
First, we want the Government to ensure that it gets immediate Royal Assent. After that, we want the Federal Cabinet to immediately proclaim Bill C-22 in force. It does not go into effect until that takes place.
Under Bill C-22, as amended, the Federal Cabinet has up to one year to proclaim Bill C-22 in force, after it receives the formality of Royal Assent. We don’t want the Federal Government to drag its feet. Cabinet can proclaim it in force immediately after it receives Royal Assent. That is what people with disabilities need!
Second, we need the Trudeau Government to immediately launch a nation-wide campaign to get every provincial and territorial government to pass legislation that bans private insurance companies from clawing back the new and forthcoming Canada Disability Benefit from people with disabilities who receive private long-term disability benefits. Unless each province and territory in Canada passes that legislation, there will be no law on the books that prevents such clawbacks.
A number of disability advocates, including the AODA Alliance, got the Senate to amend Bill C-22 last month, so that it would federally ban such clawbacks. Unfortunately, the Trudeau Government rejected that amendment on June 14, 2023. The June 16, 2023 AODA Alliance Update explains in detail why the Federal Government’s reasons for rejecting that Senate amendment were completely wrong, and hurt people with disabilities. However, we must cope with the reality that people with disabilities lost that round. We need the Federal Government to lead this effort, because it would be an undue hardship to leave it to people with disabilities across Canada to have to fight for that legislation.
Today, we wrote Disabilities Minister Carla Qualtrough, asking the Trudeau Government to take the two actions we just described, and explained why. You can read that letter below.
Today, we also wrote all members of Canada’s Senate. We urge senators to rapidly ratify Bill C-22. We also ask senators to attach two “Observations” to that ratification, recommending immediate proclamation of Bill C-22 in force and recommending a federal blitz to get provincial and territorial governments to pass legislation that bans private insurance companies from clawing back the Canada Disability Benefit. You can find that letter below as well.
Please email, phone, or tweet your Member of Parliament. Press the Trudeau Government to take the two actions we spell out in the AODA Alliance’s June 19, 2023 letter to Federal Disabilities Minister Carla Qualtrough.
Read about the AODA Alliance’s efforts to get Bill C-22 strengthened by visiting the AODA Alliance website’s Bill C-22 page.
Send us your feedback. Write us a aodafeedback@gmail.com
MORE DETAILS
June 19, 2023 Letter from the AODA Alliance to Federal Disabilities Minister Carla Qualtrough
Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance
United for a Barrier-Free Society for All People with Disabilities
Web: www.aodaalliance.org
Email: aodafeedback@gmail.com
Twitter: @aodaalliance
Facebook: www.facebook.com/aodaalliance/
June 19, 2022
To: The Hon. Carla Qualtrough, Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion of Canada
Via email: Carla.Qualtrough@parl.gc.ca
140 Promenade du Portage
Gatineau, QC
K1A 0J9
Dear Minister,
Re: Bill C-22 the Canada Disability Benefit Act
Congratulations on getting Bill C-22 (the Canada Disability Benefit Act) near the finish line. We hope the Senate swiftly ratifies this bill, and that it then rapidly receives Royal Assent.
We join the disability community’s unanimous call for the Canada Disability Benefit (CDB) to rapidly begin to be paid to people with disabilities living in poverty. To that end, we write to ask the Federal Government, in addition to the work now underway, to commit to two specific additional actions. We hope you will respond in the affirmative.
First, please proclaim Bill C-22 in force immediately upon its receiving Royal Assent. Some may not appreciate that Bill C-22 does not automatically come into force when it receives Royal Assent. The mere act of Royal Assent does not empower the Government to make any regulations under the bill, nor does it trigger any of the bill’s important timelines and public accountability requirements. Those powers only kick in when the bill is proclaimed in force.
Under a recent Senate amendment to Section 14 of the bill, the Federal Cabinet has up to one year to proclaim the bill in force. If it does not do so within that year, the bill automatically comes into force one year after Royal Assent.
There is no reason for the Federal Government to delay the bill coming into force. It should be proclaimed in force immediately upon Royal Assent. The decision to do this lies totally with the Federal Cabinet. It requires no debate or vote in the House of Commons or Senate, nor any consensus or agreement with opposition parties or with provincial or territorial governments. Its timing is entirely up to you.
Your Government has repeatedly stated over the past year that it is important to quickly get this bill up and running, so that the Canada Disability Benefit can start being paid out to eligible impoverished people with disabilities as soon as possible. You dedicated so much effort over the past three years to help people with disabilities who are chronically languishing in poverty. They now depend upon your leadership and dedication to ensure that there is no delay in the bill coming into force. Any delay in proclaiming Bill C-22 in force hurts impoverished people with disabilities.
It is great that your Government agreed to the time lines and public accountability that were added to the bill during public hearings in the House of Commons and later in the Senate. Any delay in proclaiming Bill C-22 in force will delay and frustrate those timelines and public accountability safeguards.
For example, you have said that the formal process of negotiating “no clawbacks” agreements with the provincial and territorial governments could not begin until after this law is in place. We emphasize that that in turn requires the bill to be proclaimed in force.
Second, we ask you to lead a concerted campaign, starting immediately, to get every provincial and territorial government to enact legislation that bans any private insurance company or private long-term disability (LTD) plan from clawing back the CDB from any people with disabilities who receive private LTD benefits. People with disabilities now need your leadership and the leadership of the Federal Government to achieve this.
As you know, two Toronto lawyers, Steven Muller and Hart Schwartz, acting as volunteers, first identified this major loophole in Bill C-22 late last year. They spearheaded an effort to get Parliament to amend Bill C-22 to ban private insurance companies from clawing back the CDB from recipients of LTD benefits. Their call for this amendment was endorsed by every provincial Trial Lawyers Association in Canada, speaking for a formidable number of experienced lawyers. It was also endorsed by a number of disability organizations, including the AODA Alliance.
Those efforts led to the Senate passing an amendment to Bill C-22 last month to ban private insurance companies from clawing back the CDB from recipients of private LTD benefits. On June 14, 2023, the Government rejected that amendment to Bill C-22, primarily because you expressed the opinion that the Senate’s amendment encroached on provincial jurisdiction over private insurance. As a result, the House of Commons did not ratify that Senate amendment. We anticipate that the Senate will approve Bill C-22 without that amendment, hopefully as early as this week.
Without that Senate amendment, no law stops a private insurance company from clawing back the CDB from a recipient of private LTD benefits, if the terms of the LTD plan permit such clawbacks. Steven Muller told the Senate that the terms of several major LTD plans authorize such clawbacks. The harmful result will be that public money that the Federal Government pays to people with disabilities on LTD benefits, and which the Government intends to lift them out of poverty, will instead end up in the bank accounts of rich insurance companies.
We respectfully disagree with the Federal Government’s claim that federal legislation in this area is unconstitutional. However, there is no point for us to now debate that constitutional issue with your Government. We wish instead to focus attention on what people with disabilities now need to happen, as a result of the House of Commons rejecting that Senate amendment to Bill C-22.
It is commendable that on March 22, 2023, you told the Senate’s Standing Committee on Social Affairs the following (among other things), referring to the risk of provincial or territorial governments clawing back the Canada Disability Benefit:
“I also note your concern that similar circumstances could arise with private insurance. I share these concerns, which I have conveyed to my provincial and territorial counterparts…”
The Federal Government cannot now solve this problem by passing regulations under Bill C-22 to ban private insurance companies from clawing back the CDB. Bill C-22 gives the Federal Cabinet no power to pass such regulations. Moreover, assuming the Federal Government was correct in its view that Parliament cannot pass legislation that bans such clawbacks, then the Federal Cabinet is equally unable to enact regulations that ban such clawbacks.
Therefore, people with disabilities now need every provincial and territorial government to pass comprehensive legislation to ban private insurance companies from clawing back the CDB from recipients of private LTD benefits. Since the Federal Government believes that it is not constitutional for Parliament to pass such a ban, then it follows that each provincial and territorial legislature must pass that ban.
Nothing short of provincial or territorial legislation will do. A person with disabilities on LTD benefits cannot stop their insurance company from invoking a term of their contract that permits clawbacks by stating that the insurance industry’s lobbyists told the Federal Government that they don’t want to engage in such clawbacks. Moreover, as expert LTD lawyer Steven Muller explained to the Senate Standing Committee on Social Affairs on April 27, 2023, those clawbacks cannot be prevented by a federal Cabinet Minister calling the CDB a “social benefit”, in cases where a private insurance contract authorizes such clawbacks of any benefit, including social benefits.
It would be an enormous and undue hardship for impoverished people with disabilities in each province and territory to have to mount their own campaign to get their legislature to pass the needed legislation. We need you and the Federal Government to lead the campaign to get each provincial and territorial legislature to pass this ban. You are in a unique position to be able to bring together the disability community, the insurance industry with whom you have been consulting, and the provincial Trial Lawyers Associations, and together with them, to bring their message to each provincial legislature.
This should be an open and accountable process. It is not sufficient to leave it to private and closed federal-provincial discussions between officials or politicians. In the spirit of the disability rights movement’s maxim “Nothing about us without us” which you have commendably echoed, disability advocates and the broad disability community should be integral to and front and centre in this process.
We need your campaign for this to begin immediately. Any uncertainty about whether private insurance companies will clawback the CDB from LTD recipients threatens the needs of impoverished people with disabilities.
We look forward to your response and would be delighted to discuss these issues with you at your convenience.
Thank you again for your commitment to deliver the CDB to impoverished people with disabilities.
Sincerely,
David Lepofsky CM, O. Ont
Chair Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance
Twitter: @davidlepofsky
June 19, 2023 Letter from the AODA Alliance to the Senate of Canada
Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance
United for a Barrier-Free Society for All People with Disabilities
Web: www.aodaalliance.org
Email: aodafeedback@gmail.com
Twitter: @aodaalliance
Facebook: www.facebook.com/aodaalliance/
June 19, 2022
Via Email
To: The Senate of Canada
Dear Senators,
Re: Bill C-22 the Canada Disability Benefit Act
We thank the Senate of Canada very, very much for passing a series of helpful amendments last month to Bill C-22, the proposed Canada Disability Benefit Act. Because the House of Commons did not ratify one of the Senate’s amendments (which we discuss further below), Bill C-22 is once again coming back to the Senate. We urge the Senate to schedule a vote on Bill C-22 as quickly as possible this week, and to ratify the bill as varied by the House of Commons.
In cases where the House of Commons did not accept some or all Senate amendments to a bill, we appreciate that it is the Senate’s long tradition to approve the bill “as is”, in the terms that the House of Commons returned to the Senate. We seek no departure from that practice.
We ask the Senate to attach two Observations to the bill, if it is possible to do so at this stage. These echo the two requests we have made of federal Disabilities Minister Carla Qualtrough in our letter to her of today’s date, which we enclose at the end of this letter.
First, we ask the Senate to attach an Observation that recommends that the Government proclaim Bill C-22 in force immediately upon its receiving Royal Assent. People with disabilities should not have to wait for up to a year for this bill to be proclaimed in force. Any delay in proclaiming it in force pushes back and correspondingly frustrates the new timelines and public accountability features that were added to the original bill during debates in the House of Commons and Senate.
The Federal Government has repeatedly urged the urgency of passing this bill, because of the dire plight of those people with disabilities who live in poverty. Until the Government proclaims Bill C-22 in force, it has no practical force or effect in law, even if it has received Royal Assent.
Second, we ask the Senate to attach an Observation that calls on the Federal Government to immediately lead a campaign, publicly undertaken together with the disability community, the insurance industry and all provincial Trial Lawyers Associations, to get every provincial and territorial legislature to swiftly enact legislation that comprehensively bans private insurance companies from clawing back the Canada Disability Benefit from people with disabilities who receive long-term disability (LTD) benefits. We enthusiastically commend the Senate for passing an amendment to Bill C-22 that would have federally banned such clawbacks by private insurance companies. We were deeply saddened by the Federal Government’s refusal to ratify that Senate amendment to Bill C-22. We profoundly disagree with the Federal Government’s erroneous claim that Parliament had no constitutional authority to enact such a provision. However, we do not here seek to debate that constitutional question.
What confronts us all now is that there is now no legal bar to private insurance companies clawing back the Canada Disability Benefit from LTD recipients, in cases where their contract authorizes them to claw it back. We need provincial and territorial legislation to fill the void. Federal payments intended to lift people with disabilities out of poverty should never instead lift the profits of rich insurance companies.
Impoverished and vulnerable people with disabilities, such as those from whom the Senate Standing Committee on Social Affairs heard during its public hearings on this bill, should not have to bear the burden of mounting a campaign for this legislation in one jurisdiction after the next from coast to coast to coast. We need the leadership megaphone, the ample resources and the commitment of the Federal Government. No one is better positioned to effectively lead this public charge than federal Disabilities Minister Carla Qualtrough, who has impressed her passion for this bill upon parliamentarians of all political stripes.
Moreover, as we today wrote Minister Qualtrough, this should not be left to closed door meetings between federal and provincial officials and politicians. “Nothing about us without us” requires the broad disability community to be a full participant in this process, fully aware of its progress.
In conclusion, may we offer all honourable senators our own observation about the Senate’s commendable work on Bill C-22. It is impressive that the Senate thoroughly debated and studied this bill, held extensive public hearings, conducted thoughtful clause-by-clause debates over the bill, and passed a very helpful series of amendments, all in perhaps one third of the time that the House of Commons had this bill before it.
It is regrettable that the Senate was the target of an extraordinary effort by and on behalf of the Federal Government to try to get the Senate to make no amendments whatsoever to the bill, regardless of the compelling need for the bill to be strengthened, and the lack of any disagreement on the policy goals of the amendments that we and a good number of other disability advocates sought. We regret that some were caused to fear that any improvements to this bill, no matter how meritorious, could lead to the bill being delayed for years or even killed. This fear was stoked by unfounded claims that any amendments to this bill would in effect take money out of the pockets of impoverished people with disabilities. We applaud the Senate for seeing beyond that campaign, identifying the pressing need to strengthen this bill, and having the courage to act.
In the AODA Alliance’s April 27, 2023 deputation to the Senate’s Standing Committee on Social Affairs, I responded to the Federal Government’s efforts in opposition to any amendments to this bill. I reminded the Senate that the same scenario unfolded four years ago, when the Senate was considering Bill C-81, the proposed Accessible Canada Act. Then, as now, the Senate was pressed to fear that any amendments to that bill could endanger the bill’s ever passing. In 2019, the Senate had the courage to see past that fear campaign. It wisely made important amendments to Bill C-81. Four years later, speaking for the Federal Government, Minister Qualtrough (who had also sponsored Bill C-81) told the Senate’s Standing Committee on Social Affairs that the Standing Committee had four years earlier done “a fabulous job of improving the Accessible Canada Act”.
In the AODA Alliance’s April 27, 2023 evidence before the same Standing Committee, we predicted that if the Senate amended Bill C-22, the disability community would collectively rally to get the House of Commons to ratify those amendments. That is what happened over the past weeks since the Senate returned this bill to the House of Commons. On June 14, 2023, Minister Qualtrough accepted all those amendments except the one dealing with private insurance. She complimented the amendments to Bill C-22 that the Government had accepted as strengthening the bill. With that one regrettable exception, this is a case of déjà vu all over again.
A powerful message to the Senate and to the broad disability community emerges from these strikingly similar events in 2019, and again in 2023. Achieving equal rights for people with disabilities, including our full participation in Canadian society, cries out for an unwavering and courageous commitment to disability rights. Tenacious advocacy for disability rights will encounter all manner of short-term obstacles and barriers, including all manner of arguments against our efforts. In the face of this, it is vital to always remain dedicated to and tenacious about disability rights. In the long run if not always in the short run, that steely determination will bring about the greatest progress.
With much appreciation for so many senators who helped advance the cause of disability rights, we remain eternally grateful.
Sincerely,
David Lepofsky CM, O. Ont
Chair Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance
Twitter: @davidlepofsky