The Rights Of People With Disabilities
More than six million Canadians, one in five of us, live with a disability. For far too many of us, the systems meant to guarantee independence and equal participation instead deliver a maze: an accessibility law with no deadlines, an appeals process that can take years to correct a wrong decision.
We deserve the right to live independently, with dignity and decency. No one should have to fight a bureaucracy for it. Canadians with disabilities need a voice. People in Mission—Matsqui living with a disability need a voice. That's why we're fighting to get it.
A Real Canadians
With Disabilities Act
The Accessible Canada Act passed in 2019 promised a barrier-free country by 2040. In 2024, when Parliament conducted the review the Act itself requires, disability advocates told the House of Commons plainly that progress had been "painfully and glacially slow." That's because the Act says the government "may" act on accessibility, not that it "must," and because it sets no binding timelines forcing anything to happen by 2040 or any other date. Enforcement is scattered across so many different agencies that most Canadians with disabilities have no idea who's actually supposed to be holding anyone accountable, and Canadians struggling with disabilities today shouldn't have to wait another decade and a half just to have a country that's accessible. That's why New Democrats are demanding a comprehensive Canadians with Disabilities Act, developed with people living with disabilities and their families, replacing "may" with "must," and setting binding national timelines through a single body accountable to Canadians with disabilities.
Fix The CPP Disability Appeal Process
Getting turned down for CPP Disability benefits is often just the beginning of a much longer fight. Appeals go to the Social Security Tribunal, where the process stacks delay on delay. In the years after the Tribunal was created in 2013, the average wait for a decision stretched past 800 days, and when officials went back and reviewed some of the files still sitting in that backlog, they found roughly a third of the people waiting were eligible for benefits all along. The process punishes people who can't afford help most of all: appellants without a representative win their case roughly half as often as those who have one. That's why New Democrats are fighting to fix the CPP Disability appeal process: a hearing within a reasonable, guaranteed timeframe, a fair and accessible format, and the right to bring a representative of your choosing.
A National
Children's Advocate
Disabled children are among the Canadians least likely to have anyone in Ottawa answering for how they're treated. Nearly eight million children live in Canada, and federally, none of them has anyone whose job is to answer to Parliament on their behalf. Every other order of government has decided otherwise: most provinces and territories already have their own children's advocate or commissioner. At the federal level, however, bills to create the office have been introduced and died on the order paper again and again since a 2007 Senate report first recommended it, sponsored at various points by Liberal, NDP, and Conservative MPs alike, reintroduced by the same senator three times over, without ever getting a final vote. The cost of that inaction is clear: rates of self-harm among young people have risen on average by 3.5 per cent each year from 2000 to 2024, one in three young Canadians report facing discrimination, half of First Nations children living on-reserve live in poverty, and one in four children with a disability lives in poverty too. That's why New Democrats will fight to establish a National Children's Advocate, appointed by Parliament and independent of government, to promote and protect the rights of children under federal jurisdiction, including Indigenous, immigrant, refugee, and disabled children.