Human Resources committee  It was a provincial program. It's funded throughout other provinces in Canada. There are still several operating, including in Quebec.

Human Resources committee  No.

Human Resources committee  It's a really valuable concept. When they decided not to fund, we had to close our doors.

Human Resources committee  They are so valuable especially for our clients who don't have those hard skills. It gave them an opportunity.

Human Resources committee  There are also a lot of stigmas around disabilities where communication is affected, and people with communication that's affected are often thought of as less intelligent than people who are not affected that way. I think we need to change our way of thinking and our philosoph

Human Resources committee  I think the most important aspect is to open up communication with individual employers. We work with large and small employers, but I think we also provide some training around accommodation in the AODA, the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, and what they have t

Human Resources committee  On the funding template, we had three staff through Employment Ontario. We had an IT person who would help those who had a background in graphic design, marketing, and IT. We had somebody to help with customer service. We had accounting positions. It was a virtual banking situati

Human Resources committee  I think the simplest solution is multi-year contracts. We used to get three-year contracts, which were great. They allowed us stability and we were able to set up the systems. They also allowed us to have a little flexibility around participants, the number of groups that you cou

Human Resources committee  I think one of the major things is the essential skills component. Then you have to have a long enough period so that there can be time to identify accommodations that are going to be needed in the workplace. Then there's having effective job development. Most of our clients don'

Human Resources committee  I could start. For our service we do offer wage subsidies, but we also offer post-hiring support. We do have somebody who goes in to the employers and deals with whatever issues arise around accommodations as the employment moves forward. I think without having that post-hiring s

Human Resources committee  We have seen that. At that point we will no longer use that employer because we see him as just trying to benefit from the wage subsidy and not having a sincere interest. Most employers are pretty good. We do end up with a lot of clients being retained further on. The problem wh

Human Resources committee  Employers for the most part still work under a certain stigma. We need to continue to hold events like the one we did, the inspiring partnerships event, where we had 289 employers attend. Since then we've gotten marvellous feedback. They want us to help them to change their hirin

Human Resources committee  I would like to thank you for the opportunity to speak today and address this important topic. There are three areas I hope to cover. First, I'm going to give you a short background on the Coalition for Persons with Disabilities and our experience in assisting persons with disab