Finance committee  Are you talking about a home environment, a residential—?

Finance committee  I think—

Finance committee  I think that some of the provincial legislation will make a big.... The real issue, certainly in residential situations, is that in various provinces you can get funding to retrofit your house, should you acquire a disability and need a ramp or a lift or whatever. The real thing is that for the private sector, particularly for small business, for example, legislation such as the AODA in Ontario and the new legislation in Manitoba, which is moving in the direction of the Americans with Disabilities Act but in a provincial context, will make a difference, because there will be certain standards with respect to both the built environment and customer service that businesses will have to adhere to.

Finance committee  Yes, and I think there are a lot of benefits on the tax side, in terms of the disability tax credit, the disability support deduction, and medical expenses. Students can, for example, claim a lot of their expenses related to their disability that are not supported by a grant, for example, through a tax credit.

Finance committee  Yes, definitely. You're talking about within the federal public service?

Finance committee  Well, of course.... As I mentioned earlier, I'm not sure if I got the statistic exactly right, the level of employment of persons with disabilities is very low in the federal public service. It's very low in a lot of very big private sector companies too. I think a lot of that has to do with....

Finance committee  What's that?

Finance committee  Yes, I'm not sure about....I don't have the exact...and I'm not actually sure about the figure with the federal government, either. That was the most recent one I read, which was probably a couple of years back in the employment equity report. But I know a number of other crown corporations and big private sector companies probably have similar percentages when it comes to people with disabilities.

Finance committee  Yes, well, I think I told you that we've had actually nearly 30 transition from school to work events right across Canada and we've had representatives from many private sector companies right across the spectrum of the employment market speak to students with disabilities and career counsellors who work on the campuses and all that.

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  I'm sorry. What can be...?

Finance committee  Yes. I think it's probably a larger question for the Council of Canadians with Disabilities, who are not here right now and probably know more about this than I do. But certainly the big issue is making sure that students.... In Ontario, for example, for a student who is on ODSP, if the student has a physical disability, needs attendant care, and has medical costs, transportation costs, and whatever related to their disability, then the incentive to work is limited if you think you're going to lose all of your ODSP support.

Finance committee  Yes. I guess the most recent SLID data suggests that in the last 10 years, the percentage of students with disabilities who are getting university degrees, for example, is I think twice what it was 10 years ago, so that's encouraging. The issue becomes, though, that many of these students need more education than students who don't have disabilities, so it's important for funding to be available for graduate study, for example.

Finance committee  I think there is a whole range of measures that could be undertaken. I wanted to jump in when we were talking about the experience that students get while they're in school that benefits their job search when they graduate. A lot of students who have disabilities, while they continue their academic programs, are unable to work.

Finance committee  I'm going to have to skip through a whole bunch of stuff here. Maybe I'll move on. It's fairly long, although we call it a brief. Let me go to the heart of the matter. The federal government has a variety of programs and supports for persons with disabilities: the labour market agreements with the provinces that provide about $500 million in transfer payments, the opportunities fund.