Human Resources committee  There are service agencies who meet up with employers or whoever to explain to them how, if they hire deaf people, they can do this, this, and this. But I prefer to tell employers to come and visit my office. The employer arrives at the door and they knock. Nothing. Then they s

Human Resources committee  We have very strong ties with youth groups across Canada. There's Deaf Youth Canada, and a deaf and hard of hearing association in the Atlantic area. Their executive director is on our board of directors. We collaborate with Deaf Youth Canada on what we call the Deaf Canada Confe

Human Resources committee  We live with this stuff. We live with our BlackBerrys or iPods. We do. We were the first to see the potential of these mobile devices. I can remember I went to the World Congress of the Deaf in Australia in 1997. We were all laughing in the airport, because you could always tell

Human Resources committee  I'm not clear on what the question is.

Human Resources committee  Well, we've had employment equity legislation for, what, 30 or 35 years now? What kind of a dent has it really made? Not much. Coercion doesn't work. Volunteerism doesn't work; we know that. I really don't have a simple answer to that. What we've tried up to now has not worke

Human Resources committee  You're very provocative.

Human Resources committee  My concern is that this is a government program; it's top down. As our example has proven, those who need the power and resources, those who need to manage the project, are the disabled people themselves—not government people, not bureaucracy. To put it crudely, give us the money

Human Resources committee  I don't think we're likely to ever go back to the kind of employment situation we had in the past, when we had long-term, permanent jobs for life. But this is one more reason why people are moving more and more toward self-employment: they can control their own fate that way. I

Human Resources committee  The partnerships we've had for employment were part of the national job strategies. It's really a three-way partnership: the federal government, us, and a few employers. There's one painting company that hired 10 people for us and kept them working. I believe there's a bank....

Human Resources committee  There is no credible statistic. Again, I'm sorry to repeat myself, but there's no credible statistic. What we have traditionally done is go by the one-to-ten rule in comparing with American numbers. By that rule of thumb, there are 350,000 profoundly deaf Canadians using sign lan

Human Resources committee  It's never been reliable, from our perspective. When I joined the Canadian Association of the Deaf in 1986, my very first battle was with Statistics Canada over what was then the health census, the health and activities limitation survey. That was the first disability census. I'

Human Resources committee  It has to be a targeted recruitment campaign. That can be done through certain service agencies that cater directly to us. Or you can always work with us, the Canadian Association of the Deaf, since we're the federal one. There are no national service agencies for the deaf. There

Human Resources committee  I will attempt to use my voice. If you can't hear me, welcome to my world. Thank you for the opportunity to talk about employment and people with disabilities. I am the executive director of the Canadian Association of the Deaf. We are the oldest national disability consumers