Status of Women committee  Yes, definitely I do, but in my document I noted that there are many activities currently funded by the federal government that could be expanded upon to fit into a model like that. I think that could work very well. I would caution, however, that we stay away from work experience and wage subsidies and those kinds of things for transitioning people into real jobs.

Status of Women committee  Yes.

Status of Women committee  You may want to engage in Ontario here with the Ontario Disability Employment Network. They are definitely a leader in the country in dealing with that issue. People such as Mark Wafer and Mayor Mike Bradley and others are champions who are part of that group. Many of them were on the partnership council and have done a lot of great work in promoting to the business sector the value and the return on investment from hiring people with disabilities.

Status of Women committee  We do, absolutely, through the federal opportunities fund. As part of our model in Sarnia, we have a pre-employment workshop called jobPath. It assists people with a disability to.... Because many people who have a disability have never worked, there's a certain amount of trying to figure out what they're good at, career exploration and those sorts of things.

Status of Women committee  Randy Lewis, who was the senior vice-president of Walgreens until a couple of years ago, has a son who is on the ASD spectrum and has autism. In this role within the corporation, Lewis tried to look for way to see how they could include people with disabilities. As the senior vice-president of logistics, he started with one distribution centre.

Status of Women committee  Thank you for the question. In fact, incentives have been around forever. I've been in the field almost 25 years, and wage subsidies and training incentives, whatever you want to call them, have been around as long as I've been around and much longer. When we're looking at incentivizing businesses to hire people with a disability, one of the things that we've learned in Ontario....

Status of Women committee  I talked about moving away from wage or training subsidies and moving to accommodation supports. I think that definitely would be one. I also think that to address another barrier in particular for women who have a disability, we should look at more support for child care needs as well as transportation.

Status of Women committee  Thank you. Good morning. First of all I'd like to thank Marilyn Gladu for her wonderful introduction this morning. It's great seeing you. I've worked in the disability field for 24 years, spending that time assisting people with a broad range of disabilities, some with varying degrees of disability.