Human Resources Committee on Sept. 26th, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

I call the meeting to order.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we are studying employability in Canada.

I welcome the witnesses here today from the Department of Human Resources and Social Development.

I understand each of you has a seven-minute opening statement, so whoever wants to start, you have seven minutes.

[Caroline Weber, Director General, Office for Disability Issues, Department of Human Resources and Social Development]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, honourable members of the committee.

It's a pleasure to be here today to speak with you about employment and people with disabilities in Canada. As you know, the Office for Disability Issues within the Department of Human Resources and Social Development serves as the focal point for the work that the Government of Canada does to promote the full participation of people with disabilities in Canadian society.

I believe the background information in the form of decks is either being distributed to you or has been distributed to you. You should have a few decks, one entitled “People with Disabilities in the Labour Market”, which serves as an overview, a kind of diagnostique of some of the challenges that people with disabilities face in the labour market. The other decks look at some of the current federal government employment-related programs for people with disabilities, including one deck on CPP disability and one deck from Service Canada on service delivery to people with disabilities.

I'm not going to walk through all of the details in these decks. They are provided for your background information. However, I did want to highlight a few central points within the decks.

As you probably know, there were 3.6 million Canadians with disabilities in Canada in 2001. That was about 12.4% of the total population. Among them, about 1.9 million are working-age adults, so more than half of people with disabilities are of working age. With the exception of children, women are generally more likely to have a disability than men.

In addition, there is a great variation in the types of disabilities, and quite often, people have more than one type of disability. This makes it challenging to find solutions or programs that work for everyone.

On the education front there is some encouraging news. People with disabilities have made gains in post-secondary educational attainment. According to Statistics Canada's 2001 participation and activity living survey, or PALS, 40% of people with disabilities have some post-secondary education, compared with 48% of people without disabilities.

I should add that PALS is being conducted again this year and Statistics Canada is currently planning to repeat it a third time in 2011. Currently, we don't have good, comparable longitudinal data relating to people with disabilities. So this work being conducted by Statistics Canada in cooperation with the Office for Disability Issues would help us address some of those gaps.

Despite the improvements we've seen in terms of post-secondary education attainment, though, similar improvements in the employment rate for people with disabilities have not been observed. Only 49% of working-age adults with disabilities are employed, compared with 78% for those without disabilities. Moreover, 51% of working-age adults with disabilities are not even in the labour market, compared to only 16% of those without disabilities.

In addition, based on the 2001 PALS, the average income of people with disabilities was 28% lower than that of people without disabilities. According to Statistics Canada's 2002 survey of labour and income dynamics, or SLID, 19% of people with disabilities were living in low-income households, compared to only 10% of people without disabilities.

All of this means that 32% of people with disabilities rely on government programs for income, compared to 9% of people without disabilities. What are the factors that lead to these disparities in the labour market outcomes? That's a question that officials do spend some time looking at.

We know that a variety of factors, other than the disability itself, can lead to a person working less, or even leaving the labour market altogether. We also know that these other factors, and the perception by employers that mitigating them can cost a significant amount of money, often make it much more difficult for people with disabilities to find employment.

In fact, of those people with disabilities who were unemployed or out of the labour force in 2001, 32%, or about 210,000, indicated that their condition did not completely prevent them from working or from looking for work. This means that people with disabilities represent a significant untapped labour resource.

To bring these people into the labour market we will need to do more to address stigma and the physical barriers, like a lack of accessible transportation, that confront people with disabilities. There's a chart on page 7 in the diagnostique deck that shows that the federal government has primarily spent money supporting people with disabilities through income support in the form of pensions and tax credits, such as the disability tax credit and the medical expenses tax credit. The federal government also works, though, to improve the situation of people with disabilities through some direct programming.

The Opportunities Fund for People With Disabilities was created in 1997 and assists people with disabilities to prepare for and obtain employment or self-employment, as well as to develop the skills necessary to maintain that new employment. We achieve this through direct transfers to individuals, and by supporting organizations for people with disabilities that share that mandate.

The social development partnerships program, the disability component, or SDPPD, invests $11 million annually through grants and contributions to organizations working in the non-profit sector in activities aimed at promoting the full participation of people with disabilities in learning, work, and community life. It also promotes the generation, dissemination, and application of knowledge, innovative solutions, and best practices. In addition, the Canada pension plan disability vocational rehabilitation program is designed to help people who receive a Canada pension plan disability benefit to return to work whenever possible.

In the past many people receiving benefits because of a severe and prolonged disability believed they were permanently out of the workforce. Today new technology, medical treatments, and skills training make it possible for some people with severe disabilities to become part of and remain in the workforce. That is why the Canada Pension Plan is making vocational rehabilitation available to those who can benefit from it the most and why the CPP legislation was amended to permit automatic reinstatement of benefits.

This change provides CPP disability recipients who return to regular employment and have their benefits ceased with an important safety net for two years following their return to work. If their disability recurs in that period and they cannot continue working, they can make a simple request to have their CPP disability benefits immediately reinstated as well as benefits for eligible children.

When considering the employability potential of CPPD recipients, it is important to remember that the CPP definition of disability is stringent. The vast majority of recipients will not be able to return to regular employment. Nevertheless, a small but significant number of CPP disability recipients do return to work and leave benefits each year. They numbered about 1,810 in fiscal year 2005-06. Of those people who returned to work from CPPD in that year, 161 individuals used the automatic reinstatement provision.

We are currently conducting a client satisfaction survey with some of these people, and the preliminary feedback is very positive. Early indications are that CPPD recipients are attempting to return to work and this is likely due to the automatic reinstatement provision, but more time will be needed to track the full impact.

In addition to these targeted programs, a large number of people with disabilities receive support through general employment programming, and particularly Employment Benefit and Support Measures, which are funded through Part II of the Employment Insurance Act.

Even when they do not have EI eligibility, people with disabilities can access Employment Assistance Services delivered through third parties.

Service Canada delivers employment programming across the country and is working to improve its services to people with disabilities. Cathy Drummond is here to speak to those issues. We know that these clients often find the mix of programs and services across levels of government confusing. Service Canada has recently developed a three-year service improvement strategy for people with disabilities that focuses on improved accessibility, simplified application of processes, and better coordination across employment programming, including working with employers.

Provinces are largely responsible for the delivery of these supports. The federal government is supporting the programs and services of the provinces through the Canada social transfer and through targeted measures such as the labour market agreements for people with disabilities.

Mr. Chair, honourable members of the committee, I hope that this brief presentation has provided you with some additional insights to the work that is ongoing at HRSDC and to some of the challenges that Canadians with disabilities face. My colleagues and I would be happy to take your questions.

Nancy Lawand, who is the director general of the directorate of services for people with disabilities for CPP, is also with us and she will take any questions you might have on CPPD.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Everyone should have five decks. If they don't have five decks, let us know and we'll make sure we get them to you.

Ms. Ellis, are you going to present for the Public Service Human Resources Management Agency?

[Karen Ellis, Vice-President, Public Service Renewal and Diversity, Public Service Human Resources Management Agency of Canada]

I will, Mr. Chair, thank you.

I will take the committee through the deck. This is the deck that has shades of teal, green, and white.

I have seven minutes. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, good morning. First of all, I want to thank you for giving me this opportunity to appear before your Committee on behalf of the Public Service Human Resources Management Agency of Canada. The Agency is part of the Treasury Board's portfolio. I want you to know that we are not from the same department. We are dedicated to handling the government's internal affairs.

Our emphasis is on the federal government's own performance with regard to duty to accommodate. I'm going to be focusing on that.

I have with me Kami Ramcharan, our director general of diversity in the branch.

Could I ask you to please turn to slide number two? The Public Service Human Resources Management Agency of Canada was created in 2003. It's a relatively new agency, and it brings together a number of units from Treasury Board and from the Public Service Commission.

Our mission is to modernize the management of human resources in the public service of Canada.

We work in partnership with departments, agencies, and unions to ensure that Canada has a modern and first-class public service that delivers high-quality services to Canadians while upholding values of integrity, transparency, and accountability. While that is a very high-level strategic goal, our role really is to work with all the other departments and agencies in accomplishing that; it's not anything we can do by ourselves as a central agency.

We have five distinct business lines. They are laid out on the slide. Our work relates to a number of important statutes, including the Public Service Modernization Act. The Employment Equity Act and the official bilingualism act are also key areas in the agency. As you can see, there are five lines listed; the one I represent is the second one, public service renewal and diversity.

Let us go on to slide number three. Today I would like to leave with you, I hope, three key messages from the agency's perspective.

The first of these is that we do have a good foundation in place on duty to accommodate persons with disabilities.

We possess the necessary infrastructure to enhance employability, learning and the professional development of people with disabilities in the public service of Canada.

The second message is that statistically speaking--and I will show you some statistics in a couple of minutes--we do have a greater representation of persons with disabilities than the work force availability, and later on I'll explain a little more.

Toutefois, the third message is that il faut faire plus. We must continue to foster awareness, action, and a workplace culture that is welcoming to persons with disabilities. From both physical and cultural perspectives, we need a workplace that makes people feel comfortable to be able to identify their needs, and to accommodate them we all need to have greater sensitivity and willingness as well as accommodation practices.

We will move on to slide four, please. What is our role in a central agency? We are talking about the whole of government and the work we do to help others accomplish these goals. We interpret policy and we provide direction to departments on how to work with a policy. A policy is just words; it's a tool, but only if people know how to work with that tool.

We work with every other federal department and agency to that end. We also have other tools, complementary educational and information products that we share with our colleagues in other federal agencies.

The other important point is we help them; we give them other information, best practices and ideas, and we learn from each other in the federal government about how to work with these issues.

The third thing we do in the agency is review other people's policies. When another agency, department, or central agency is working on a policy or an approach on a related topic, we take a look at it to make sure we don't end up with policies that are contradicting each other or may not be complementary or supportive of one another. Policy coherence is another way of describing it, and that's a role we play.

Finally, we report on progress. We produce an annual report on employment equity for the Government of Canada, and that is tabled annually. It basically talks about how departments across the system are doing.

Let's move on to slide five, please.

What is meant by the expression “the duty to accommodate”?

We're talking about accommodating people in two phases. First, if they're interested in coming in to work for the public service, how do we accommodate them through the process, through a competition or the staffing process? Second, once they're in the public service, how do we work with them to make sure they are accommodated and can be the most productive possible in our workplace?

This is how the Canadian Human Rights Commission defines the duty to accommodate in its publication “A Place for All”:

An employer, service provider, or union has a duty to take steps to eliminate disadvantage to employees, prospective employees or clients resulting from a rule, practice, or physical barrier that has or may have an adverse impact on individuals or groups protected under the Canadian Human Rights Act, or identified as a designated group under the Employment Equity Act.

That's kind of a brief definition, but really, there is a very strong obligation in law here in terms of duty to accommodate.

In terms of our framework, we have legislation, judicial and tribunal decisions, and a policy, which is laid out on slide 6, where we are really trying to make sure that departments and agencies identify problems, find solutions, and fund those solutions.

In slide seven, we basically lay out what agencies must do, and as I said, we do monitor compliance. This is an issue of legal compliance but also cultural change.

In slide eight, we have the statistics. Over five years, the representation of persons with disabilities in the federal public service has increased from 5.1% to 5.8%, and we continue to surpass the workforce availability of 3.6%. So within the federal government we are actually at 160% of the target.

On the policy in practice, again, as I said, there are a number of very interesting, innovative projects that have been taken by departments to try to ease the accommodation of people with disabilities. A few are listed in slide nine, and if I have time later and you're interested, I can certainly explain those projects in more detail, but what's good about those is that they can be shared as best practices with other departments, who might not yet have worked at those situations. The final point is important, that we are constantly talking to partners and stakeholders, trying to learn how to make this policy better as we go.

Finally, in slide ten, I do want to flag the major challenges. We have the foundation, the law, the policy. We have projects. We have people working with the policy, but there's always more to do. The really big challenges are building the awareness, the commitment, and the ownership of such an important policy that's really about people; building that across the system, among all public servants, helping departments work with the policy in practical ways so that it's not just a theory on a piece of paper but something they can understand and apply; and as a broad initiative, ensuring that the Canadian federal public service continues to be a place where people with disabilities are able to be productive and contribute.

In conclusion, my last slide has a wonderful quote from Winston Churchill that I thought was quite applicable to this whole initiative. I find it quite relevant to this and many other issues where we're talking about change that takes time.

Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.

While of course he was talking about wartime and major national initiatives, I think the essence and spirit of what he says very much applies to this policy within the federal government, and more broadly, to the inclusion of Canadians with disabilities in our society.

Thank you very much.

I am now available to take your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Ms. Ellis.

We're now going to go to the first round. We'll start with Ms. Brown, for seven minutes.

[Bonnie Brown, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair; and thank you to the visitors for bringing us their papers--quite a lot of papers, I might say.

Since the election, this is the first meeting of this committee on disabilities, so all this is quite overwhelming: the number of programs, the number of categories, disabled who can work, disabled who can't work, disabled applying for CPP, etc.

Let me just review what I think I heard: that there are two million people who are disabled within the usual age group that you would consider working age, and of those two million, about 41.5% are employed. Then I read that we have, on the other side, people who aren't employed; we have 291,000 beneficiaries of CPPD.

[Caroline Weber]

Well, I think the 290...is that correct? It's the CPPD.

[Bonnie Brown, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Yes, that's what the deck says.

[Caroline Weber]

You have it right. There you go.

[Bonnie Brown, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

So fewer than 300,000 people are actually getting CPP. If you took 41% of two million, you'd get a number. I didn't do that math, but I'm sure we're going to have a big gap between the number who are working and the number who are getting CPP. What's happening to the people in the middle?

[Caroline Weber]

That's your question?

[Bonnie Brown, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Yes.

[Caroline Weber]

Yes, okay.

People who are getting CPPD are no longer participating in the labour market, so when we are talking about these labour market numbers we have to be careful, because labour-force participation is the number that tells us how many people are participating, how many people are employed, carving it up that way.

What happens to the people in the middle?

[Bonnie Brown, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Who aren't getting CPP and don't have a job, but are working age.

[Caroline Weber]

They tend to be on social assistance. Provinces have remarked over the last number of years they think that about half the people on their social assistance rolls are people with disabilities.

The reason I got a little confused is that we also estimate the number of people with disabilities currently on social assistance who tell us through surveys they would be able to work but there are things that get in the way, like transportation or employers not being able to provide accommodation, or even what we call the “welfare wall”, where people get disability supports while they're on social assistance, and then in some jurisdictions lose them as they earn income. That creates a disincentive for them to participate in the labour market.

So we get a number of people--I think it's around 210,000 or 290,000--who say “Yes, I have a disability. I could work, but there are a whole bunch of other things that get in my way and prevent me from working.”

[Bonnie Brown, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Probably they wouldn't have access to all these programs to get them back to work because they didn't get CPP in the first place. While I congratulate you on the programs that are getting people off CPP and back to work, my feeling is that your market is pretty narrow because there are only the people who got CPP in the first place.

You just have to look at the numbers. Currently, we have 291,000 beneficiaries of CPP, and last year we had 64,000 more applicants. If that happens every year—and we say yes to most of them—we'd be paying disability benefits to millions of people. But if we don't pay them, if we don't get them onto CPP disability, then we don't have a methodology for getting them back to work. Or are people on social assistance able to access those “get back to work” programs for the disabled?

[Caroline Weber]

If I try to recast this in the way we've been thinking about this—

[Bonnie Brown, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

No, I want you to recast it the way I'm thinking about it.

[Caroline Weber]

Okay, I'll try that.

[Bonnie Brown, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Yes, we get mixed up with all the bureaucratic lingo. You're far more familiar with the program, so I'm trying to cast my questions the way an average Canadian might look at it.

[Caroline Weber]

In the materials you have, two programs are referred to that are available to people who don't have a strong prior labour-force attachment. One of them is called the Opportunities Fund for Persons with Disabilities. There's $30 million in that. It serves about 5,500 clients every year. Between 30% and 35% of the people using that fund get a job, and another 40% increase what we call their employability through continuing training, moving into other education that will prepare them for the labour market. Many people with disabilities require longer interventions or training to get them back into the labour market.

There are also the labour market agreements for persons with disabilities. This is a.... I'm sorry.

[Bonnie Brown, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Enough detail.

[Caroline Weber]

Okay.

[Bonnie Brown, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

One of my basic questions is this: if we only have 291,000 beneficiaries, we only have 291,000 who met the criteria or the definition of “disabled” according to CPP, and yet you say there are 2.2 million working-age Canadians. What definition does Statistics Canada use to get those two million working-age Canadians who are disabled? We have two completely different definitions at work here.

[Caroline Webber]

That's true. StatsCan's data is self-reported, so people indicate whether they've had any limitation that causes them difficulty in terms of participating in the community or in the labour market, whereas the CPPD uses a much more stringent and medically certified definition of “disability” whereby a person has to say that they are completely incapable of working, and that has to be documented.