PURPOSE

This report will identify how Human Resources Development Canada (HRDC) and the Pension Appeals Board (PAB) use the Canada Pension Plan Act to circumvent the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and subsequently the Canadian Human Rights Act. Class action may become a result if remedy is not mitigated in a timely and appropriate way.

The purpose of this work is to limit liability of all parties and thereby serve the interests of government, bureaucracy, and disabled Canadians by applying law for the benefit of all concerned.

Recommendations arising from this report will affirm that law can be applied to benefit disabled Canadians without unfair discrimination, be cost effective in its application, and avoid grounds for class action.

BACKGROUND

RAINET represents persons with disabilities. The cases selected contain material evidence of complaints arising from the systemic treatment of persons with disabilities that include Chronic Pain and Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, who have applied for Canada Pension Disability Benefits, have been denied benefits and appropriate protection of the law.

In the process of representing such cases, RAINET has discovered a pattern of denial and exclusion that unfairly discriminates and treats persons with CP and MCS differently. The fact that a pattern of denial continues to emerge indicates a systemic problem.

Although legal direction from a Federal Court of Appeal is present and explains how to apply the proper test of disability as defined in the CPP Act, in each case the direction is either ignored or dismissed without appropriate explanation. The summary exclusion of one particular legal direction for another that is used to deny a benefit becomes an indicator of extreme prejudice and collusion to deliberately circumvent and obscure one part of the CPP Act in favour of another.

Furthermore, Applicants rely on the fact that the treating physician(s) diagnosis and prescriptions are appropriate and genuine because they are licensed to practice in Canada. However, in each case HRDC and PAB appear to improperly weight and use independent or irrelevant abstractions from medical reports to ignore, dismiss, or disqualify entitlement to benefit under the Act. The apparent contradiction of medical advice and treatment that fails to recognize the extent of disability becomes another indicator of unnecessary and extreme prejudice.

Regardless of the merit of any point-by-point argument contained in any decision, it does not change the irrevocable fact of physical disability in the cases cited, the pattern that characterizes a systemic problem, the overt and covert prevarication of law, the disingenuous use of medical reports, and all in combination, a pattern of what appears to be collusion between HRDC and PAB to improperly discriminate against certain groups of persons with disabilities that, in effect, injure, assault, batter, and impose cruel and unusual treatment, and harm.

[click here for a summary] Case #1