Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I guess, for the record, I would like to back up maybe a page or two into the overall income security area and state again, for the record, one area of difficulty that our overall income security problem has caused and this is for people with disabilities who are recognized as having long-term disabilities and warrant this kind of support. It's the right thing to do, of course. However, Mr. Chairman, our policies have not progressed to those points where they really seemed to recognize that people with disabilities very often cannot work or are quite restricted in their ability to go out and work. Yet, they are regarded, they are administered, they are monitored as if they were able-bodied people who, once they overcome this certain difficulty in their life, will be able to return to work and either decrease their dependency on the income security system or get off of it altogether. The difficulty this causes for people is they come under an unwarranted degree of scrutiny in their monthly/yearly activities.
One area, for instance, is any income that they may earn is checked against them. If the idea of income security is
to provide a top-up so that they can at least survive, that's fine. I think people with long-term disabilities should be afforded a different set of circumstances. I will use the word less intrusive kind of treatment. So perhaps the Minister can advise whether we are looking at any kind of change in that policy. I have outlined this concern before. For the record, I wanted to make it again to say that we do have a deficiency in our policy and we tend to regard people with disabilities the same way that we regard able-bodied people, and this does cause them unneeded stress and difficulties in their normal course of life.
So I will put that on the record. I know that's an area we have pledged to work on in our overall review of income security programs and I do hope that we get there. Thank you.