Bill No. 131 - Powers of Attorney Act (amended) - 3rd Reading

CLAUDIA CHENDER « » : Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise and speak to this bill. I think all members would agree that more clarity around the responsibilities for powers of attorney are important. Abuse of that power is real, and this does take some steps to address it, and we're glad to see that.

However, we were told that the government is making these changes on the way to a more comprehensive set of amendments, and those amendments stem, in our understanding, from recommendations from a 2015 Law Commission report. That report came forward seven years ago in the Liberals' first mandate, and we're still really only picking away at the edges of what that report requests.

There's a lot more information on the table than is being acted on in this bill. If I step back a little bit, I find the legislation that's coming forward this session a bit strange, because there are some pieces that have a whole host of things that they're changing, we would say prematurely, but there's some rush to get it out the door. Then there are pieces of legislation like this that make some good changes but really don't go far enough in everyone's opinion - but there's a reluctance to act. I'm not sure why, but I do want to point to a couple of things.

In February, there were new recommendations from the Statutory Review of the Adult Capacity and Decision-making Act. I'll table that. The first of those reads, "Nova Scotia's capacity laws should be reviewed to ensure that they reflect modern concepts of capacity and a commitment to greater support for persons with cognitive disabilities to enable their equal right to decision-making autonomy as members of the community to the greatest extent possible."

We debated this at length, in fact, when the original Adult Capacity and Decision-making Act came in. We flagged that, we knew it was an issue, it continues to be an issue, and yet, where that could be dealt with in this piece of legislation, it isn't.

I will also point to the letter that Claire McNeil from Dalhousie Legal Aid wrote in her submission to Law Amendments Committee, which I'll table, although I'm sure everyone has it, around the government's failure to take those very rights into consideration when amending this bill. She found that, in her words, "this bill amounts to discrimination by exclusion."

What she said is that these amendments are regressive in the sense that they fail to fulfil the rights of persons with disabilities to meaningful access to supports and services to make their own decisions.

She called this bill a piecemeal approach to the issue of capacity and decision-making - again, a conversation we had years ago. This is not new information. The government has received these criticisms, understands the challenge, and has been informed of it for years, well before this government came in - but certainly when this government came in, would have been briefed on these issues, and find it at odds with the repeated calls for a comprehensive legislative review in order to address the discriminatory impacts of the current legislative framework.

Some of the amendments here are good, but, again, I think - especially today - we're dealing with a number of pieces of legislation that impact very vulnerable people. It feels like the people who work most directly with that legislation and who are in the best position to comment on it are saying that we're either not getting it right or we're not going far enough. In this case, I think that the recommendation is that we're not going far enough.

While I think the changes in the bill are good, what's not in the bill, what doesn't change in the bill is very challenging. I hope that the minister and the government were listening to Ms. McNeil's suggestions, including measures that provide persons with disabilities meaningful access to supports, and for consultation with a diverse group of stakeholders that will examine the option for making that reality, and that that those changes will come as soon as possible.