Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on Nov. 21st, 2023

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

I have only a couple of minutes left.

Mr. Shriver, I'm the very proud member of Parliament for Dr. Frank Hayden. I also have the Dr. Frank J. Hayden Secondary School in my riding. Most Canadians don't realize that he did research on people living with intellectual disabilities and why they were excluded from sport. He came up with the idea in 1967 of the Canada Games and couldn't get the agencies that were looking after those living with a disability to participate. It was Eunice Kennedy Shriver who became aware of Dr. Frank's research, and it sparked the Special Olympics.

I'm very proud of Dr. Hayden. We don't recognize him, as Canadians, nearly as much as we should.

I have only a minute left, but I wonder if you could talk about the importance of sport for those living with an intellectual disability, because the Special Olympics take place around the world. All you have to do is throw in a soccer ball. It doesn't have to be expensive.

How does sport tie into the ability to get those people into education?

[Timothy Shriver]

Thank you for the question, and thank you for recognizing Dr. Hayden. I think I met him when I was four, so I've known him pretty much my whole life. His track record is extraordinary.

The short answer here is that developmentally, play, sport and games are a critical teaching tool. We teach social skills through sport and play. We teach cognitive skills, speech and language, relationship skills and emotional self-regulation. A lot of these things are not really taught scientifically through sport and play, but we know that teachers know how to do this, and we have found in our research, even with children we have [Technical difficulty—Editor].

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

We will pause. You won't lose any time. We'll wait for it to settle down.

Is your connection okay?

[Timothy Shriver]

I think so. Can you hear me?

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Yes.

[Timothy Shriver]

Let me just close. I'm sorry I got cut off.

I think the main point we found through our research is that children can learn extraordinary amounts. There is a huge amount of cognitive and even neurological development that comes from gross motor and fine motor sports, recreation, training and play. We see this throughout the life cycle, actually. As one doctor said to me, “The greatest drug never discovered is exercise.”

As a learning tool, as a teaching tool and, particularly, if I can emphasize this, as a social inclusion tool...we're talking about inclusion, but there is often a lot of emphasis in the inclusion space around physical proximity and putting children in the same room together. It's very important—I don't mean to underestimate it—but it does not achieve social inclusion. It doesn't create relationships. For that, you have to have children both with and without intellectual and developmental challenges learning how to interact. Sport is what does it.

We found...and this is not because we're so proud of ourselves. We found it to be the most effective tool for strengthening the social cohesion that children experience in school and, therefore, for contributing to the development overall of stronger relationships, a stronger sense of self-regulation, stronger problem-solving and decision-making tools and the like.

I hope that's helpful.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Thank you, Mr. Shriver.

Thank you, Ms. Damoff.

Now I would like to invite Mr. Lake to take the floor for five minutes, please.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll start by responding to my NDP colleague's political comments earlier by just pointing out that we are spending vastly more money than we've ever spent as a federal government, and we're achieving crisis-level results in this area, despite all of that spending. In the past, when we faced an economic crisis of this magnitude, the result down the road, in the mid-nineties to the early 2000s, was a 32% cut in programming and funding for health care, social services and education, and the lowest levels of international development spending in our history. I think it was about 0.21% of ODA at the time, because of the economic crisis a generation earlier.

We care about the sustainability of whatever programs we put in place.

Today, we're talking about a crisis. We're raising the alarm together and I think, as a Parliament, despite our political differences, we have agreed and voted unanimously that this is an area that we need to take action on. We've come together as a committee here because of that.

I want to direct my questions this round to Jennifer Rigg, and I want to talk about outcomes and action. I want to ask about a call to action from the Transforming Education Summit on disability and inclusive education.

Could you highlight some of the numbers to highlight what the situation is right now in that crisis situation? I believe it's 240 million children around the world living with a disability. What are the outcomes like for those children right now?

[Jennifer Rigg]

Thank you, Honourable MP Mike Lake. That's absolutely right. The estimate is 240 million. However, your colleague previously asked about the data. We're grateful to UNICEF, ECW and others on this call who are working night and day to improve that, but much more needs to be done, not just multilaterally but in each of the programs and communities. For example, how many times do we actually know how many kids with disabilities are being reached through a specific program and how many are not being reached? What are those barriers that are still leaving them out and leaving them behind?

Then, from a funding standpoint, how much funding are we really making sure is going to a particular program or for disability-inclusive education? We do know that what gets funded is indeed what gets prioritized and accomplished. As a community, we've done research through the call to action to identify the need for, at a very minimum, 5% of funding to be going to this important area, but that twin-track approach that we talked about earlier really indicates that it should be more—at least as a starting point. From an accountability standpoint, Canada and others have been an active part of the Global Disability Summit as well as what you just wonderfully mentioned with the UN Transforming Education Summit. These are opportunities to self-report, and we also encourage everyone to increase and really make sure that all of our work is fully accountable.

We have a relatively new disability marker in the OECD DAC system. Let's make sure that it is indeed being used in conjunction with education, starting for kids right from birth onward. Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Mr. Lake, go ahead, please.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, AB]

The report is only two pages long, and then there are a whole bunch of pictures of logos of supporters, so it's great to see so much support signing on to the report.

This is shocking to me. It says that compared to children without disabilities, children with disabilities were 49% more likely to have never attended school, and 42% were less likely to have foundational reading and numeracy skills.

Mr. Jenkins, with the minute that I have left in my time for this round, I'm wondering what commitment UNICEF can make to taking action today, in the short term, to help resolve that problem.

[Robert Jenkins]

Mike, thanks for your continued leadership on this and thanks for continuing to engage so directly with UNICEF and advocating with us. The bottom line is that we need to leverage our existing 144 offices. We spend about $1.6 billion or so in education a year. We need to leverage that to maximize its impact on inclusive education, and that comes back to our earlier discussions around ensuring that all of UNICEF's programs adhere to that standard. Again, we can punch above our weight by crowding in others to work in a similar way. We look forward to continuing to work with you on that journey.

[Le président, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Thank you, Mr. Lake.

I now invite Mr. Trudel to take the floor for five minutes.

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Ms. Sherif, I know that you have programs in many countries, including Madagascar, Ethiopia, Nigeria, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Have you noticed a difference between the services provided to children with disabilities—francophones and anglophones, for example—and those provided to other ethnic groups in those countries?

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Go ahead, please.

[A voice]

I think she's not here.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Yes, but Ms. Khochen should take the place of Ms. Sherif.

Ms. Khochen, the floor is yours. If you want the member to repeat the question, we won't cut your time.

[Dr. Maha Khochen]

The member is asking about the experiences that we encountered in different countries, in terms of francophones, and how the language is taught in different countries, if I've understood correctly.

We know that in each country we go to and in each country we work in, we find examples of successful inclusive practices. We do see those successful practices. We see some children getting an education who have never been in an educational environment before. Up until now, the examples we have are scattered. There are examples of successes. First, we really need to understand what would make these experiences successful, and also what would help us to build and capitalize on these successes.

We strongly believe that inclusion is not only about bringing children into the environment and not only providing them with support in languages. We really need to be looking at the holistic needs of the child. We need to be looking at what the individual child will need and tailor the support based on their individual needs.

There was talk about the majority of the support going to those with visible disabilities, but we know that only 5% of children with disabilities in emergency and protracted crises receive an education. We can speculate that even those with visible disabilities are not all included in education.

The way forward for us is to be thinking about the systemic barriers, because discrimination still happens. Stigma is widespread. We need to be thinking about the systematic changes that we need to bring about to the educational environment, so it can become a welcoming environment for all, regardless of differences, types of difficulties, severity or the differences that may exist among the children.

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Thank you.

I want to look at this issue holistically. The question is for everyone.

I would invite Mr. Jenkins to answer first on the situation of children with disabilities, particularly in war-torn countries. Let's talk about Ukraine, about Afghanistan, where it has been difficult. We could even talk about Gaza, where the situation is extremely difficult for children. We see it and it is intolerable.

Do we know anything about access to education for children with intellectual or other disabilities? We already know that access in Gaza is complicated.

If you have any data on those specific situations, Mr. Jenkins or another witness, I would like to know what it is.

[Robert Jenkins]

UNICEF allocates about 60% of its education resources to children living in humanitarian settings, in a humanitarian context. That's come up in the four years I've been in this job. It's mainly because there are increasing humanitarian situations, unfortunately. We're now at about 60% of our global education resources.

To answer your question, it depends on each context, but the reality is that the challenges children face are compounded or become exponential. If I am living in a poor area, if I get affected by a flood, if I am disabled, if I'm a girl of adolescent age and if I live in a poor household, those challenges exponentially interplay. It goes from not only being challenging... It's not 50% of children. It goes to a 1% chance that those children can attend school or continue their learning.

The bottom line is that children with disabilities living in humanitarian crises are exponentially disadvantaged, because not only is living in a crisis a challenge, but they are disabled. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts as a humanitarian community, we continue to collectively fail those children in the vast majority of contexts. This comes back to my strong recommendation. When responding to a crisis, start with the children most affected, the most marginalized, and work backwards. That will benefit all children.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Thank you, Mr. Jenkins and Monsieur Trudel.

I now invite Ms. McPherson to take the floor for five minutes, please.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you very much for the testimony.

Mr. Jenkins, I'm going to ask this one of you, because you were just answering my colleague with regard to that intersectionality of impacts and how they compound.

Working from those who are most impacted, I agree with Mr. Trudel. We are seeing a situation in the world right now where the conflicts in Gaza are disproportionately hurting children. We know that the population in Palestine is over 50% children. Afghanistan has that particular complexity of the impacts on women and girls. I can only imagine the impacts on women and girls who are trying to access inclusive education in Ukraine, a situation where we are also looking at conflict.

I wanted to give you another moment to talk a little bit about the compoundedness of the impacts and perhaps layer on how we have not recovered from some of those impacts with what has happened with COVID over the last several years. Could you talk about that a little bit for me, Mr. Jenkins?

[Robert Jenkins]

I thought I was off the hook for a second, but I appreciate the question. Thank you so much.

I really appreciate the committee's interest in reaching the most marginalized, your commitment to reaching children with disabilities and also recognizing that children with disabilities in humanitarian settings are particularly marginalized. I greatly appreciate it. It's refreshing.

Often with children living in humanitarian settings, conflicts, etc., their learning needs are lower in the priority, as I mentioned. I think it's a great role for Canada to play, and I really appreciate the interest.

As a bit of a scary statistic, for 10-year olds living in low- and middle-income countries, 70% of those 10-year olds cannot read, and many have been in school for years. We have a global learning crisis, full stop. Disabled children are particularly marginalized, as we've recognized. We come back to all the points that have been made by all of the committee members here in the discussion about the importance of inclusive systems being better for all children, and more efficient and more effective.

Then we come to a fragile context or humanitarian context. There are the ones you mentioned: Ukraine, currently in Gaza, Afghanistan etc. Indeed, you'll see, basically, education paused or children dropping out of the system and never coming back. That is what we're seeing in Afghanistan now.

It is incredibly expensive to enable children to catch up and return back.... It's the same in Canada—the dropout program, etc. It's absolutely critical that we all do our best to continue to enable the child to learn despite the challenging situations they're in.

We saw that in COVID, as you mentioned, with school closures. Obviously, the longer the school was closed, the greater the impact it had on all children, but particularly on marginalized children around the world. The disparities increased dramatically during that very challenging global time, and that's the case now where the crises have hit. Many of the countries I've worked in were often in humanitarian settings. It's the marginalized children who are disproportionately affected by crises. Disparities increase significantly, making it very challenging to bridge those kids who are already facing barriers back into school to continue on their learning journey.

That's absolutely a key message on the children with disabilities.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you.

A further question to that is this: How do we balance that need to provide fast response in humanitarian crises? Some of these things happen very quickly. We want to get support to the places it's needed. How do we balance that with the long-term development contributions that make the likelihood of conflict and adverse humanitarian issues less likely? How do we balance the development with the humanitarian when we're looking at inclusion for children? As you said, speed is the issue here.

Again, I'll ask that to Mr. Jenkins.

[Robert Jenkins]

It's not a balance actually, it's a win-win. It's how we intervene.

When kids are coming across into Jordan from Syria—I was responding as the head of UNICEF there—the way we intervene and enable children to continue their learning can be inclusive, and that's a win for all children. It can be done in a way also that improves the quality of education for all children. It's something we do in many humanitarian settings. When refugee children and inclusive children come to a school, by supporting the school as a whole, improving all infrastructure, improving the teaching practices of all teachers—it's an overall inclusive environment—everyone wins.

It's leveraging that humanitarian assistance to be transformative. That's even just things straight in the classroom. If a teacher is able to reach children with disabilities, they're able to reach children of all abilities and all learning is better. It's an easy example of how you can leverage the short-term humanitarian systems in ways that transform the education system for all.