HANSARD

February 25, 2010

RESPONSE TO PRIVATE MEMBER’S RESOLUTION
ACCESSIBILITY FOR THE DISABLED

Mr. Ernie Hardeman: I'm pleased to rise and speak to this resolution to ensure that blind and partially sighted Canadians have access to library services, books and essential information. I think all members of this House would agree that providing that access is the right thing to do.

I would just like to put on the record the resolution that we're debating, and I just want to refer to it a little bit in that context. The resolution is that, in the opinion of this House, all levels of government have a collective responsibility to strengthen accessibility across Canada by ensuring necessary funding for library services, books and essential information is provided for accessible formats so that blind and partially sighted Canadians have the same opportunity as fully sighted people to read. I think this is a very important resolution, and I thank the member for putting it forward. But it isn't just good enough to have a resolution that we agree with doing that. I think we need to do something more. In fact, I think the resolution is such that the honourable member who brought the resolution forward would expect that no one in this House would disagree with this resolution-because I think, as he said in his presentation, that it should be a right of every Canadian to have the same access.

This isn't just about books for entertainment. This is about ensuring that vision challenges do not prevent people from reading and learning. It's about textbooks, instructional guides, newspapers and magazines. This is about giving visually impaired people the tools to participate fully in society and in our workforce.

However, I do have some concerns with the way this resolution is written, and that's why I read it into the record. It doesn't offer a strategic plan for how to ensure that accessibility. A vague phrase such as "all levels of government have to do something" won't achieve much if there are no specific responsibilities assigned to anyone. I think everyone will agree that someone else is doing it and no one will get it done. It's absolutely impossible to disagree with the member from Brampton West, but it's also hard to understand what needs to be done by this resolution.

This resolution sounds great, but it doesn't help us reach any solutions. It doesn't tell us what we need to do to put this information in the hands of blind and partially sighted Canadians.

Today, over 800,000 visually impaired Canadians are in urgent need of basic resource information; 3.4 million more have sight-threatening eye disease that might limit their ability to read, and these numbers are growing rapidly every day. I do agree that the federal, provincial and territorial governments must all work together in order to provide full accessibility across the country. We have a problem here. We need a clear solution, not empty talk. We need a plan, not a vague commitment to throw money at the problem.

As the member said in his introduction to the bill, the CNIB, or the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, has been providing services for the visually impaired for over 90 years. I want to commend them for their commitment and their excellent work. As part of the service, CNIB has successfully operated Canada's largest library of Braille and accessible audio, funded entirely through donations at a cost of about $10 million a year. They recently announced that the charity can no longer provide that library service without getting ongoing government support. Today, Canada is the only G8 country that does not have public funding for any library service for visually impaired people.

I want to commend the many provinces that have already made the commitment to assist the CNIB. We do have a responsibility to ensure that services like this continue to be provided to the people who need them. But at the same time, I hope that instead of simply writing a cheque, we will stop and look at the situation and whether anything can be done to once again make it viable for the non-profit sector to deliver the services they've been delivering for so many years. We should remember that fully accessible libraries are only part of the solution for visually impaired Canadians.

We also want to recognize that other important organizations are also doing their part to ensure that visually impaired Canadians have access to information, organizations like The Accessible Channel, known as TACtv, which broadcasts descriptive programming for people who are blind, visually impaired, deaf or hard of hearing; and VoicePrint, which for many years has broadcast readings of full newspaper articles from more than 600 of Canada's newspapers and magazines into Canadian homes. As technology improves, there are many more options to guarantee that visually impaired Ontarians have access to all the information they need. Until that time, we need to ensure that there is a plan and then ensure that it has been appropriately funded.

We know that the Liberal government likes to spend the taxpayers' dollars first and ask questions later-that's why I brought this thing up about a plan. They are funding some of this spending with their massive HST. I think we want to bring that into this discussion. I find it a little ironic that this resolution came forward from a member of the Liberal Party when only a few months ago, they were scaring visually impaired Canadians with the news that the cost of audio books was going to increase by 8%-ironically one of the very items addressed in this resolution.

When the McGuinty government first announced the HST tax grab, it was obvious they hadn't considered the impact on Ontarians. They hadn't considered the fact that many Ontario families are already struggling to make ends meet; they hadn't considered the impact of taking the point-of-sale exemption away from our farmers; they hadn't considered the impact of increasing the cost of audio books for the visually impaired; and they hadn't considered how angry the people of Ontario would be that Dalton McGuinty was trying to tax their morning cup of Tim Hortons coffee.

It took almost eight months of questioning by the opposition before the McGuinty government finally admitted a little bit of their mistake and exempted a few more items, like that morning cup of coffee. At the same time, they finally clarified that they wouldn't be taxing audio books. I do not understand why it took so long for the member opposite and his party to realize that 800,000 blind and partially blind Ontarians shouldn't be the ones to be burdened with this giant tax grab.

A study by the Canadian Association of Optometrists revealed that by the age of 75, "one in four Canadians will experience vision loss, defined as being no longer able to drive, read, watch TV ... or see the faces of loved ones." Access to library resources and television for the visually impaired becomes more and more essential. That is why I am pleased to see this issue being debated here today and why I hope that the government will develop a plan to ensure that this information and these resources are available to everyone in need. It's also why I will be supporting this resolution to carry this issue forward.