#31 - The Economics of Ability

In this episode, Christine Brunsden shares her innovative approach to creating an integrated system she calls an Ability Ecosystem that connects policy, technology, finance, and social services to empower individuals with disabilities. Her platform called Benefits2 aims to transform fragmented systems into seamless, accessible support networks, ultimately fostering a society where ability diversity drives innovation and inclusion.

If today’s conversation resonated with you, Christine is building the infrastructure the disability community was never given. Join the waiting list here.

Takeaways:
🪴Personal and professional experiences shaping a vision for an ability ecosystem
🧬The fragmentation of disability support systems in healthcare, finance, and government
🪴Challenges families face navigating complex bureaucratic processes
🧬The importance of early data collection and medical record management
🪴How AI can revolutionize understanding and access to benefits
🧬The staggering $15 billion unclaimed Disability Tax Credit (DTC) annually
🪴Barriers created by misconceptions and gatekeeping within medical systems
🧬The potential of the Registered Disability Savings Plan (RDSP) for long-term financial stability
🪴The role of advocacy, community, and technology in closing gaps for disabled populations

Quotes:
“We all feel like we’re in a camouflage maze, hunting for hidden doors and keys.”
“Chance is not going to fix this. It’s not just inclusion. It’s system redesign.”
“Experience intelligence is lived experience plus professional experience plus contextual understanding.”
“Why are we leaving it up to chance to connect the dots?”
“We need to start taking agency over our own medical records from day one.”
“There are 200+ benefits, and no one is guiding people to them.”
“Fifteen billion dollars a year is left unclaimed - just from one credit.”
“Gatekeepers, often unintentionally, keep people away from the support they need.”
“I don’t feel like this is work I chose - I feel like it chose me.”

Chapters:
00:00 - Introducing the need to rethink system design for disability inclusion
02:16 - Christine’s background and motivation rooted in personal experience
03:04 - Signals indicating systems weren't designed for people with disabilities
04:31 - Navigating fragmentation: The maze of benefits, forms, and programs
10:40 - The challenge of uncoordinated EMR systems and need for early agency
12:26 - The transition from childhood to adulthood and medical record continuity
15:23 - How CRA’s medical record requests complicate benefit access
16:51 - The importance of medical record management from day one
19:13 - The enormous unclaimed benefits: $15 billion in DTC alone
20:23 - The gap in healthcare professional knowledge about disability benefits
21:17 - The negligible training hours on disability criteria for medical professionals
22:40 - The impact of barriers on everyday expenses and quality of life
23:50 - Economic multiplier effects of unlocking unclaimed benefits
24:34 - The societal benefits of enabling access and reducing gatekeeping
26:04 - Misconceptions among doctors about disability and eligibility
27:14 - The critical role of early diagnosis, records, advocacy in financial planning
30:48 - The untapped potential of AI in identifying eligibility through medical data
32:39 - Harnessing AI for clarity, access, and advocacy in medical records
34:48 - Addressing the wealth gap through increased RDSP adoption and funding
36:26 - A vision for a future where navigation and benefits are accessible and effortless
40:31

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

The Flourish Feed Podcast, a series of curiosity-driven deep dives into the nature of flourishing through wealth. I'm your host, Gillian Stovell Rivers, M A C F P C E A, Senior Wealth Advisor at CIA Zante Wealth Management.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

I thought maybe I was smarter than the average bear when it came to disability because, you know, I've been applying for deceased people for many, many years in my career, and I had I had actually had a hand in helping some of my family members also apply for various benefits. But I kind of got stymied when it came to my daughter and applying for her benefit. So what I thought I could access, I couldn't actually access. There was a rift. There was something happening that was preventing me from moving forward. Fragments again, right? So how do how do we navigate this fragmented system? Where are the tools? It's almost like, listen, I think when I talk to most people who are navigating in the disability space, we all feel like we're in the middle of some camouflaged maze hunting around for hidden doors and keys.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

Flourishing is a word we use often in this podcast. We talk about investing wisely in our time, our energy, our attention, and our money so that life can expand rather than contract. But there's a question that doesn't get asked nearly enough. Who were those systems actually designed for in the first place? Today's episode invites us to widen the lens. My guest, Christine Brunsden, is working to build what she calls an ability ecosystem, an integrated system of technology, policy, and financial tools designed to ensure people living with disabilities can fully participate in the economic and social systems that shape our lives. Because a society that truly flourishes must be designed so everyone can belong. Her work aims to build an ecosystem that connects policy, financial planning, technology, and social services so that people living with disabilities can access resources, benefits, and opportunities that are currently fragmented or even altogether inaccessible. Besides being a Herculean undertaking, this is not simply about inclusion. It's about system redesign. And it's going to be very exciting to explore this intersection today. But first, let's get to know Christine a little bit better. Christine Brunston is a Canadian entrepreneur, a systems thinker, and an advocate working at the intersection of disability, financial access, and technology. She is the founder behind initiatives aimed at building what she calls the Ability Ecosystem, a coordinated network of tools, services, and technologies with policy frameworks designed to help people living with disabilities access the resources they need to thrive. She has been a leading voice in improving awareness and accessibility around programs such as the Registered Disability Savings Plan, otherwise known as the RDSP, and the Disability Tax Credit, working to simplify complex systems that often prevent eligible families from receiving the support that's available to them. Her work focuses on redesigning fragmented support structures so that individuals and families can spend less time navigating bureaucracy and more time building meaningful lives. Through collaboration across healthcare, finance, government, and technology sectors, she's helping advance a future where ability diversity becomes a recognized driver of innovation, inclusion, and economic participation. Christine Brunson, welcome to the Flourish Feed Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 3:28

Jillian Stubble Rivers, thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00 3:31

You and I go back such a long way through many iterations of ourselves. But I I bet you didn't know that I in my family had an uncle who was an adult with a disability. He's no longer with us, but I have a personal connection to what it is that you are innovating and bringing to the front in Canada. And it means a lot to me. So thank you so much for sharing the story and the journey of getting here with us today. Now, when you first took a look at the way systems like healthcare, finance, and education were operating, what signals were telling you that they were not originally designed for people with disabilities?

SPEAKER_01 4:07

I think, well, first of all, it's not just from a professional experience. I've got a lifetime of personal experience, and it all taps into something I call experience intelligence, which is lived experience plus professional experience and contextualized understanding, actually equal the full emotional or the full experience intelligence framework. So for me, it's it's having navigated people professionally, having navigated myself personally, and then looking at all of what was happening. Like I I thought maybe I was smarter than the average bear when it came to disability, because you know, I've been applying for deceased people for many, many years in my career. And I had I had actually had a hand in helping some of my family members also apply for various benefits. But I kind of got stymied when it came to my daughter and applying for her benefit. So what I thought I could access, I couldn't actually access. There was a rift. There was something happening that was preventing me from moving forward. Fragments again, right? So how do how do we navigate this fragmented system? Where are the tools? It's almost like, listen, I think when I talk to most people who are navigating in the disability space, we all feel like we're in the middle of some camouflaged maze hunting around for hidden doors and keys.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:36

That's what I that's what I liken it to.

SPEAKER_00 5:38

Yeah. And when I'm I mean just to put some context on it, I first knew you when you worked as a trustee, trustee for Scotia. Actually, so I'm gonna say the name. It's one of the major trust companies in Canada. And you're right, when you're doing it professionally, when you're working through the very clear doors that have keys, it's one set of steps. But it's it's pretty amazing that you have that awareness that it was when it became personal for you, all of a sudden the number of doors you have to find multiplies, obviously. But there's also probably a personal feeling that's happening that's different than when you're a professional. Is that accurate?

SPEAKER_01 6:18

Absolutely it is. I mean, I'm thinking this is a little bit selfish of me to be building what I'm building. And the reason I'm building it is because I have two little people. I'm guardian of these two little people. And how are they with complex disabilities? How are they gonna navigate this on their own when I'm not here anymore? And the the ripple effect of all that, as you know, when you fix something, even if it is close to home, the ripple effect is that it can actually fix problems for many other people. And that's what I realized was time and time again, I, you know, there's people in your journey that you're gonna meet that have gone through the fragmented system before you, and they're happy to say, hey, listen, I've navigated this before. Let me connect the dots for you. And then there's people you meet along the way, you connect the dots, there's professionals. So it's to me, it's like, well, why are we leaving it up to chance?

SPEAKER_00 7:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

Right? Chance is not gonna, is not gonna fix this, right? And why else would the universe throw all of these things in my path as I went through life? And I really started from the moment I was born, and I was born into a family with a sister who had, you know, very profound disabilities. So she was blind, she couldn't sit up on her own, she couldn't feed herself, she couldn't toilet herself, she really was strapped into a wheelchair every day. So seeing those things, that is what I look at and I say, okay, I've got to fix this.

SPEAKER_00 7:49

And who else but me? Yeah, and bravo for you for doing that because the alternatives that you've laid out there, one is you become the person who simply just learns how to contort themselves to deal with the fragmented system, or become the the decoder so that they can find things that are actually not organized, or you end up, which I think is the worst case scenario, worser is not a word, the worst case scenario, which is that you leave behind a disabled person after you're no longer here, and there isn't necessarily somebody to do that decrypting for them. So bravo to you for taking charge and taking the reins. Now, when families as you know them, because I know you're now connected to hundreds, if not thousands, of families that are in similar circumstances to you, when they first encounter the system the way it is, I mean, what surprises them the most about the level of complication? Is it the is it that it's so pervasive in every part of their life? Is it that the the systems still don't talk to each other? Tell me a little bit about what that shock is like when you first encounter the system.

SPEAKER_01 8:54

Yeah, I think for me, like the people I work with, I think they're just overwhelmed. They look at forms and they just think, I don't know how to do any of this. Uh nobody ever taught me how to do this. I don't, I don't know where I'm going with this paperwork. And so they're they call us generally saying, Listen, I don't know what I'm doing. Or they meet on the S. So I think we all have an assumption going in, and I've spoken to many wealth advisors who I've said to them, listen, you know, who do you think connects your clients to all the various benefits and credits that they might be eligible to? And they they inherently think, well, somebody, somebody, like the doctor or somebody is going to connect them, surely. But that is that's not the case.

SPEAKER_00 9:44

What happens? No, it's it's on the family. It's on the family to figure this out. And that's the part that kind of blows my mind a little bit because the family is already managing a lot, and there isn't really a concierge or a navigator or somebody who is helping them understand what all these layers are. And you're right, it is often delegated to the medical professional. But even they aren't necessarily you were telling me, taught how the DTC system works or or or how much time is spent on that. So before I come back to what it's like for the family, tell us a little bit about your ability ecosystem. Tell us about the architecture that you've been building, because I think a lot of our conversation can stem from there.

SPEAKER_01 10:28

So what I realized, and I, you know, I've kind of spent the lot of the last three years with my head down and really building out benefits too. But I feel like I needed to do that to really understand where all the bottlenecks and the broken pieces were before I could kind of pick up all the pieces and put them together into a framework. I think what a lot of people don't know is that it really starts with like they said about the medical piece and the medical records, like how many people in Canada today could confidently tell someone what exists in their medical records? They probably can't. They're expecting that, yeah. Well, I think I remember talking to my doctor about this issue or that issue, and you think that that made its way into the records. It doesn't always translate that way. And so when people come in, and we had done things a little bit backwards before, we were doing the applications first based on the individual's knowledge of their limitation, which I don't like calling the word disability because people have a bit of a prickly sense of that word. It makes them feel like they're less than. But if you talk about it in the way of limitations, yeah, I have a limitation that keeps me from doing activities of everyday living at the same pace as other people 90% of the time. So that hits the criteria. So I think when I when I talked about this and we we sat down, we had started doing all this, we were going about it that way. And then I realized on the back end I was creating this huge bottleneck in the business of saying, okay, we've done the application. Now we're gonna go get all the medical records, we go get all the medical records, and guess what? There's now a mismatch between those two things. But we've already spent significant time and effort in doing the application, but now I either have to revise or redo the application based on the medical records. And then I started thinking about the families, Jillian. So let's say you happen to be a parent of a child with a disability, and that child is gonna go through the first 18 years of excuse me, of life with you at the helm managing all of this for them. What happens at 18? What are you handing over the reins to?

SPEAKER_00 12:46

You'd like it to be a complete record. You'd like it to be something that could actually be taken over by a guardian or someone else who could help them. But if the records don't line up, there's nothing to take over. Is that kind of what you realized?

SPEAKER_01 12:58

It's partly that. It's also like, what did you apply for? Did you apply for the DTC? Did you set up an RDSP? Did you also have the child disability benefit? You know, I see a lot of this. Somebody is uh diagnosed with something early in life. The parents didn't think about at the time. I should really hang on to these records. This psyched assessment is put in a box somewhere, the parents don't really think about it. And then the child transitions into adulthood and has to take over. Well, maybe they find the box, maybe they don't.

SPEAKER_00 13:34

Those boxes are hard to find. I mean, I don't have a limitation with the medical record, and I have a hard time keeping track of boxes from when I was a kid. So I can only imagine.

SPEAKER_01 13:44

And and you know what? Like, parents don't often think about like how important is that record that they had. So then they maybe don't think about it. But there's oftentimes people have to reapply for this credit every five years or you know, once they turn 18. So again, I think there's a lot of problems with the whole medical records, the storage of medical records, the access to medical records. And I see so many situations now where I'm actually I feel bad for this family because they didn't hold on to those things. The child is now 10 years past the age of 18 when they're starting to realize my child's probably not gonna launch very well. I I anticipated from the time they graduated until the time they were, you know, 30 or whatever, that they would get everything together and they would launch in life, but something happened and they didn't. Now I need to go back and I need to re-establish, you know, make sure their DTC is in place and make sure all these things are in place. And now we're gonna make this application. And I don't know if you and many of the other listeners would know, but CRA now is asking for medical records. When someone applies, they send a request back to the doctor asking the doctor to provide medical records so they can adjudicate with medical records.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

Because sadly, as much as we all want to help, the government has limited resources, so they have to be as careful as they can be, which means now they're being more judicious.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

That's right. And what happens if those medical records, like a doctor only legally has to store them for 10 years post your last visit or 10 years post you turning 18, and now all the records are gone. Well, you could you could be losing out on a lot of a lot of benefits, a lot of retro benefits. So my real goal is to make sure that people start managing their own medical records early on, that we start taking agency over our own medical records from day one.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

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SPEAKER_01 17:29

So not at this time. And that's the problem, is that again, we talk about the fragmentation. You know, there are so many different EMR systems out there, and then they don't talk to each other. And many provinces have tried to kind of put all of the frameworks together so the systems do talk to each other. Some of those provinces stopped doing what they were doing and said, listen, it's too complex. We can't make this happen. So what I'm saying is start early, take agency over your own medical records, collect your medical records, put them in a storage, a secure storage facility where you control that, you can invite people in. You know, there's a lot of reasons why. We talked about the child and the losing of records there. What happens, and this is a real situation for you know many of the trust companies, often many of the people who are gonna step in, anybody who's a fiduciary, if you're stepping in as a power attorney, you're stepping in as a trustee, you're stepping in as a guardian, if you let's say even my parents, I know who my dad's doctor is, you know, but what about when you're stepping into someone's shoes and they don't remember all the doctors they went to? And how are you gonna go get those records? And I will tell you, I've this has happened now in a couple of different cases where I realized that the person, the executor, was going to apply for the person posthumously because you can't apply after someone's passed away for this credit. So they went and they were gonna apply. They were struggling with getting the records. Where were all the records? You know, how far back, or maybe the doctor did the application, but they fixated on one specific limitation and they went back to a certain year and they didn't look at the other things. And then the reason is think about it, if I'm a doctor practicing in Canada and there are 200 plus benefits, credits, grants, whatever they are out there, how can I competently, and these things change over time, how can I competently remember the criteria for all of these things to be able to bring them up to you when I think, oh, well, you're probably eligible for this. Let's get you applying for this thing. Usually it's the pay- That requires a whole other specialty.

SPEAKER_00 19:43

Yeah, that's a whole other how they can't do their job and also be that person. That's remarkable. 200 plus credits, I had no idea.

SPEAKER_01 19:52

Yeah, and if we look at just how much money is left on the table just from the DTC credit on an annual basis, it's one take a while to guess what that number might be.

SPEAKER_00 20:00

Wow. Oh my goodness. But you by the by the whole country or per capita?

SPEAKER_01 20:05

Yeah. So how many people are are eligible, but never apply and leave the benefits on the table?

SPEAKER_00 20:12

I'm gonna go with 50%. 50% of people don't apply. I don't know what that is in dollar terms.

SPEAKER_01 20:17

Okay. So amongst the working population, 40% of them have the credit, 60% don't.

SPEAKER_00 20:23

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 20:23

Right? From a dollar figure, I can tell you what that number is. Just with the DTC alone, it's not including the child disability benefit, it's not including the Canada disability benefit, it's not including the Canada carrier, it's just the DTC. That number is$15 billion a year.

SPEAKER_00 20:38

Really?$15 billion a year in unclaimed DTC. That's remarkable. I mean, think of the power that that money would have in the hands of people who require a little bit more help to do their day because of a limitation. And the system is one of the reasons, obviously, but all of a sudden the confusion about how to access that system has to be a big part. I mean, it is upon the taxpayer to make the application for the credit, but if it were clearer about how to do it, if it was easy as buying a lottery ticket, people would be claiming that$15 billion. Right.

SPEAKER_01 21:15

That's remarkable. Maybe they do, maybe they do go to the doctor. But again, if the how is the doctor like, okay, here's that. I'm gonna do that. Well, there's the other that's another juggernaut right there. This question is take a wild guess, Jillian, how many hours of instruction a doctor, a nurse practitioner, an occupational therapist, a speech language pathologist, take a wild guess at how many hours of instruction any of these professionals receive during their schooling on the disability tax credit and how to identify like what the criteria are, who qualifies, who doesn't. Take a wild guess at how many hours of instruction they get on that.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

I'm gonna estimate, just based on the the nature of the conversation, that it's like it's a workshop. It's a seminar. Maybe it's three hours. I don't know. It's not much. I don't know how much it is, but it should be more given that zero. Zero. It's zero. Oh my gosh. It's worse than three hours. Holy smokes. And there they are basically holding the keys to someone's ability. I'm going to come back to GDP in a second because I think there is a huge, massive multiplier effect of this, of this in the system. But there they are being the person who is holding the keys to the system for that person with the limitation to be able to access the care that allows them to operate at a level that the DTC was designed to give them, right? Because that's kind of what that number doesn't come out of thin air. It's designed to be a number that tries to level the playing field.

SPEAKER_01 22:45

It really just tries to put money back into the hands of the individual with the disability and their family. Because listen, if you have a disability, you're very likely spending more than someone who does not have a limitation. You know, think about incontinence alone, okay? How many incontinence products are you spending your money on in the course of a year, right?

SPEAKER_00 23:10

The same as the number of hours spent educating someone about the DTC. Like currently it's zero, right? But for someone who has that as a limitation, that's going to be a huge number.

SPEAKER_01 23:21

Think about this. Like if you're spending money on incontinence supplies, how much are you spending during the year? You're probably spending a fair amount. If you're using NYX, if you're using, you know, any of the numbers of products that are out there, it depends on all the rest of them that are out there. If someone has incontinence, they're spending money to be able to manage that limitation.

SPEAKER_00 23:41

That's right. No, you're absolutely right. That's mind-blowing. So I think I want to stay on the topic of economic multiplier, because it sounds like you maybe have done a little bit of thinking in this space. And as somebody who's inventing something to make the world a better place, you would have to. Tell me a little bit more facts, thoughts, data points on what happens if we start to move the needle on that 15 billion being in the hands of the people it's meant to be in. What does that mean for society? What does that mean for the people? Let's start with the people, and then what does that mean for society?

SPEAKER_01 24:15

Yeah. So it means that the person struggling with a mental health event can maybe now afford to go and get the therapy they couldn't have afforded without the benefit. It means the person with incontinence can go and buy more incontinence supplies.

SPEAKER_00 24:34

It means And maybe they can have a job that they can't otherwise have without those supplies. Mm-hmm. And contribute in a way, I would think.

SPEAKER_01 24:43

Yeah, there's lot, there's lots of. I mean, you start thinking and start pulling apart. It's like an onion. Start peeling back all the layers of the onion and realizing that, you know, doctors, I don't I don't want to paint everybody the same brush, but there are some doctors, just like there are some other people in this industry, that almost become like gatekeepers, keeping people away because of their own perceptions and misconceptions. I had an 88-year-old lady who applied wanted to apply for the credit. And when I talked when she talked to her doctor and asked him if he would sign the application for her, he said, quote unquote, you're 88 years old, people lose mobility and start peeing their pants. I'm not signing anything. Wow. Right? Quote unquote. Right. And that is that's a story, Jillian, that I hear nearly every single day sitting in the chair that I'm sitting in. Where people come and say, Yeah, my doctor said I'm not disabled enough. I feel like I'm gaslit when I'm in there. I don't feel comfortable enough to bring up the conversation. Or maybe go back to the incontinence thing, because this is one that like blows me away all the time. Oh, my doctor's really good looking. I can't bring this up to him. I'm too embarrassed. Or, you know, I just thought this was part of aging or part of having kids. Or and it happens more to women than to other genders, and and it's the leading cause of institutionalization among women. Really? One of yeah, one of the leading causes. And if you think about it, someone who is experiencing incontinence, what do they stop doing? They stop hydrating, they stop advertising.

SPEAKER_00 26:28

Which makes it worse.

SPEAKER_01 26:29

Right. And all the things that would help them live a longer, better life, not being dehydrated. Sure. All of these things would help you, but they're so afraid of the leaks that all like they're trying to manage and doing it.

SPEAKER_00 26:46

It's definitely going to keep you away from socialization and purpose as well, which is uh, you know, soulfully and and humanly, we need those things as much as we need hydration. We need that connection to other people, and that's a huge limiter.

SPEAKER_01 26:59

You know, I have to say to just bring that back. So what I what what you were saying is correct, that there are already a lot of limitations in finding these benefits, and then you've got other gatekeeper people that are trying to, you know, gatekeep somebody from these benefits. And it really means that the the person then has a lack of resources to be able to fully manage their best and to live their best life.

SPEAKER_00 27:25

That is quite the puzzle you've laid out, and it it lines up with my experience as a wealth advisor when a client appears to qualify for a DTC and we recommend and we say, hey, this is something that you might want to consider, take this to your doctor. And you're right, it does feel like we're going in front of a tribunal. And it's a it's a tribunal of people who definitely have the medical knowledge, but they're not necessarily looking at the value of that benefit in terms of what it is that it's going to give that person back. I don't understand. I guess that's where my gap is, is I don't understand why they're gatekeeping necessarily in a negative way if there isn't really training that says, oh, by the way, guys, don't give this thing away too easily. Like I don't understand why we wouldn't give people access. It's a bit of a mind blow.

SPEAKER_01 28:14

I think, you know, I'll give you another example. If I sign this credit for you, I am bound to be audited by CRA. Mm-hmm. That's gonna happen to me. So that's a misconception they have, is that they think that by signing this, because it's gonna flag them. Yeah, that they're gonna somehow have to go through some sort of audit as CRA, or they're worried that if they sign off on this because there's a little line that says it's you know it's an offense to make a uh false statement on this thing, and they're like, Well, what's false? What's true? Like they just don't understand what it is. And and some doctors think, well, you have to not be able to walk, or or you have to not be able to toilet yourself. So again, all these misconceptions about the criteria hold people away from getting these benefits. And then that's not even like if that weren't enough being the first barrier, that then prevents you from getting the disabil the registered disability savings plan for someone.

SPEAKER_00 29:13

Right. Which is the tell us what that is, because I know what that is, but a lot of our listeners know might not know what that is.

SPEAKER_01 29:19

Right. So I call it Canada's best kept secret, but it's a savings plan that's available for people who have a limitation, uh, a disability that is eligible for the disability tax credit. And it allows them to put money into this savings account to save for their future in a much more beneficial way. I mean, you can talk about, I'm not the wealth advisor here, you can talk about all of the um matching bonds and grants and what's available from that perspective. And I'm sure you're you're very apt at running uh projections and take a look at it one day and see if we started funding this when the child was was diagnosed, or what usually it's the school who sees this, by the way. Yes, yeah. But if we actually listen to the school people and we said, oh, okay, um, this child has learning disabilities, they have this, they have that. Let's get the credit. Now let's set them on the path of the DTC and let's start funding this DTC. Maybe they use the child disability.

SPEAKER_00 30:23

They're funding the RDSP, funding the RDSP.

SPEAKER_01 30:25

Yes, funding the RDP. So let's let's take the money that we're now getting from maybe it's the child disability benefit you've tapped into that you're eligible for that to take some of that and put that in. So what is the growth trajectory of someone who starts at age five or whatever, putting them into this, right? Yeah, and maybe maximizing it, maybe not, but the government, there are government bonds that actually will go in here, even if you don't contribute anything, the government puts some money in there. And what is the power of compounding?

SPEAKER_00 30:59

It's the compounding, like you can't replace the value of time in that scenario with anything else. And you're right, I now I'm seeing the clear layers of hurdles. If we don't get the DTC qualified early enough, then we can't open the RDSP. We can't gather the bonds, which are part of the support system. They're in the intended support system for people with limitations. And then we can't contribute and compound on that to create this vehicle that allows that person to have some security later in life. There's so many hurdles there. And it really comes down to if I can try to gather it, it comes down to clearly accepting and assessing as early as possible what is happening. Having an advocate from the medical profession on your side to be able to back you and say, you know what, I stand before this assessment and I don't mind being audited, and then getting these financial tools in place, that makes so much sense. And so I think it could then comes back, as you said, to having that access to your medical information and being clear about what it means. Now, we live in a really interesting age of AI. I'm gonna go on a tangent here for a second and say that when my father got a report about my mother's health sometime last year and he didn't understand it, he put it through perplexity and said, explain it to me like I'm 12, right? Like tell it to me in terms that I can understand. And it worked. Is this something that you're excited about that maybe we can start getting more clarity about what our medical records mean, assuming that we have them?

SPEAKER_01 32:32

Absolutely. And it goes and I take it a step further than that, beyond you understanding what is in your medical records and what those things really mean. We have a massive opportunity to use AI to comb through medical records and identify where, you know what, you may be eligible for this benefit, right? I may need to ask you a few additional qualifying questions to determine whether or not you might be eligible and ask you if you want to proceed to look into that particular benefit, credit, grant, whatever it is. But we really have that ability. That's what AI is is opening the doors to is so many things that we didn't even think about. And that's what I realized when I was going through this, and and what we established that benefits to was not just the framework of doing the application itself and helping people word the applications the right way and help doctors word it the right way. We established a whole repository of doctors who were willing to advocate for people who didn't have a doctor, or for the person who felt gaslit and couldn't talk to their doctor about this, or whose doctor said, no, you, you know, you're 88, you're gonna lose mobility. You know, they said, that's wrong. That's wrong. And and we're gonna change that.

SPEAKER_00 33:50

You're building a field of allies to work with you on this basis, which has got to be part of it, because you can have all the tech in the world, but if you don't have the people delivering it, it's gonna be tough. That's brilliant. That's really smart. Now, you talked about the$15 billion gap earlier from the DTC. I do want to talk about one more money point if you've got it, throwing it out there. The wealth gap for families living with a disability among them when it comes to the RDSP. Do we have any sense of what the size of unfunded RDSP is based on that$15 billion DTC gap? Have you ever done any math there? Or should we do some before I release this podcast?

SPEAKER_01 34:27

Yeah, you should do some. I I have I know that about 35% of people who are eligible actually open one.

SPEAKER_00 34:37

Really?

unknown 34:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:38

And that's not even the people who haven't yet got the DTC, the disability tax credit.

SPEAKER_01 34:43

This is people who literally the number of people that could that could open it and haven't opened it. I'll give you an I'll give you this stat. In February of 2021, the government sent out letters to everyone who was eligible who had not yet opened one. That number was 352,200 and something, I think was the number. It was over 350,000.

SPEAKER_00 35:10

That's the number of people who could open an RDSP. Yes. And haven't. Correct. Wow. Amazing. All right. There's a lot of power here that I'm very excited about what your machine is going to be able to put into the hands. So tell me a little bit about how you envision the future, how you envision this really working. You've talked to me about what all the hurdles are. Now tell me, as a another guest of mine would call it, the red thread. What is the what is the beginning to end trajectory that is your blue ocean, that is your perfect day for somebody living with a limitation?

unknown 35:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:47

Like that they don't have to try and navigate anymore, that the navigation is done using tools that we have, and they're not searching for those keys anymore, the missed benefits, all of those things. That we actually use what we can to identify and put the tools in their hands to make their life better and easier. And I don't know any parent of a child with a disability whose greatest fear is not what happens when I'm not here anymore. Right. And so, and that kind of is a little bit about the genesis of what I'm doing too, is because I do have these two little humans that I am looking after. And I'm thinking, if I don't fix this, you know, it's gonna be a struggle. Anybody who, you know, steps into shoes and starts to help help them as they grow older, man, this would be so much easier if we could make sure that they get connected to everything they need to get connected to, and that they they have all the resources to be able to build for their a better future for them. And then it's a lot less stress for everyone involved as we all get older. And listen, I'm gonna tell you another stat that is not widely talked about out there, is that stress is a leading indicator for a lot of other medical conditions, predominantly autoimmune type diseases.

SPEAKER_00 37:16

You're a hundred percent spot on, and it that has a spiral effect on the caregiver if that stress is not handled. You're a hundred percent right.

SPEAKER_01 37:25

So if I could somehow have a handle and have a play a meaningful part in making this system better for everyone who comes after me, that's my blue ocean. That's my my why. I don't feel like it's work that I chose, I feel like it's work that chose me over and over again. And it just took me a long time to pick up on the little uh tidbits of information that were coming at me and and to really say, okay, uh now it's time. I I just gotta kind of pick up the pieces and and start to do something. Like I don't know where I don't know where it's going. I don't know what I'm gonna do, but I know that I need to play a role in this. And then as you said at the beginning of this when we first started talking, now that I openly talk about a lot of these things, all of the people, all of the resources, the things that I need to know, because I'm putting that energy out into the world, it's now coming back to me. And I'm hearing from a lot of people, I live my life by one pretty much general motto, which is I just want to positively impact one life every day for the rest of my life. And because I speak that truth out into the universe, people are really apt to tell you when you actually hit the mark. Yep. So it's great because then I learn every day that I'm actually fulfilling having what to do.

SPEAKER_00 38:49

And that impact is so compounding, Christine. I can't tell you. It's such a beautifully articulated goal is to impact one life every single day. Think of those days one after the next. That's how you're gonna make a dent in that 15 billion and those 352,000 odd plus people who need to have a little bit more of that access in their hands. It's brilliant. Thank you so much. Conversations like this, they remind me that like flourishing is a great idea. And we like to talk about that when we have all the right things in order to be able to do it. But it's just as, if not more, relevant to bring it to a level and to a place where there's some fragmentation that really needs to be solved. And God bless you for putting it out there and solving that fragmentation. I can't wait to share how you carry this out with our listeners.

SPEAKER_01 39:39

And I hope that everybody listening realizes that that experience intelligence is if you're 50 older and you've got a lot of experience in solving a problem, these are the people that are actually the ones who are better suited to build these AI solutions because they've spent time, they've lived the experience, they've got lots of. And it's not necessarily everybody thinks about it's oh, it's all these people coming into the marketplace with all this tech knowledge. No. If you've got large amounts of knowledge around something and a problem, and it's stuff that's not widely available on the internet, you're probably really well suited to build some sort of AI solution. And now the way things are going, you're gonna be able to do a lot more of that.

SPEAKER_00 40:23

That is so brilliant. That was my last question, and you answered it, which is how do you imagine or what do you prescribe or how are you using AI? And that's a question that I've been asking every guest on this season. And what I love about what you just did is you packaged it as a call to action because you're right. This window of time between when we are 50 and when we leave this earth, we have gathered all the game pieces. We have so much knowledge, and we have an awareness, if we've been paying attention, of where the human still needs help. And I love that what you're doing is harnessing all of that capacity and that knowledge that you have. And you're building something using these tools to solve a really important human problem. Christine Brunson, thank you so much for this today. It's been a brilliant episode.

SPEAKER_01 41:08

I want to thank you so much for having me, Jillian. I appreciate you so much. And I think that what you're building with this Flourish Feed podcast is exactly the kinds of conversations that Canada and the really the world needs, right? Amazing. Wealth and human flourishing is it belongs to to everyone.

SPEAKER_00 41:26

Everyone.

SPEAKER_01 41:27

It does.

SPEAKER_00 41:28

Amen. Thank you. You're welcome. Have an awesome day.

SPEAKER_01 41:31

You too. Take care.

SPEAKER_00 41:33

Join me next week on the Flourish Feed Podcast to keep exploring the infinite game. In the meantime, remember to stay curious, turn your passions into purpose, and play hard. I'm rooting for you. This program was prepared by Gillian Stovell Rivers, who was a senior wealth advisor with CI Asante Wealth Management. This is not an official program of CI Asante Wealth Management, and the statements and opinions expressed during this podcast do not necessarily reflect those of CI Asante Wealth Management. This show is intended for general information only and may not apply to all listeners or investors. Please obtain professional financial advice or contact Gillian to discuss your particular circumstances prior to acting on the information presented.