Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and committee members.
First, I want to welcome you to Victoria--stormy Victoria.
The Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians is a national not-for-profit charity organization whose goals and aims are to work toward that Canadian dream, the total inclusion of full access to all that this fabulous country has to offer. We've been in operation in Canada since 1992. You may have heard our name in the past, as the National Federation of the Blind: Advocates for Equality. Two years ago we changed our name because we wanted to become truly Canadian. We changed it to the Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians. Our goal today is to bring some awareness to three major issues facing blind, deaf-blind, and partially sighted Canadian citizens.
Employment among persons with disabilities in Canada is drastically low, and it seems a tragedy in this current environment and in an economy where businesses are closing early or shutting down altogether because of a lack of employees that we have a population here that enjoys about a 20% to 25% employment rate. We have many, many skilled individuals with disabilities, particularly those in the blindness field. Our education levels are equal or nearly equal to the able-bodied population, and yet we find ourselves very much unemployed.
We urge the Government of Canada to look again at its employment programs for persons with disabilities and look perhaps at a program of assisting, promoting, and perhaps giving concession to employers who will take a chance with a person who has phenomenal skills but perhaps lacks all the abilities. We desperately want a framework of employment programs that make more sense to today's economy, today's technology. And therein lies a great deal of the issue for persons who are blind, deaf-blind, and partially sighted, and that is, technology, which in some cases is a tremendous help and in other cases is a huge barrier to access.
The second issue is that of personal supports. The cost of disability is huge for a population that is 20% or 25% employed. In fact in Canada today, 48% of the people who are blind, vision-impaired, and deaf-blind live on a combined household income of $20,000 or less. About 25% of us have an income of less than $10,000 a year. For example, an ordinary bathroom scale to allow me to monitor my own health and fitness and weight will cost you about $19 at Canadian Tire; the cheapest one I can find is $60. Health issues are very much at the forefront of the whole personal supports program and the access to technology. The thermostat for my house is a $250 purchase. Only 20% of the people in my situation are employed, and they certainly can't afford to buy something as simple as a thermostat. Instead of a microwave being a $69 purchase at Wal-Mart, a microwave for me is $500.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are desperate for a program of assistive technology like the ones that exist in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, and Quebec. They need to be universal. We are all Canadians and we all have the same needs and wants and aspirations. We need a program of assistive devices that will be universal and will cross the boundaries from province to province and territory to territory.
The third item is the disability tax credit. It's a tremendous help in terms of leaving more funds in the pockets of those who live with a disability. But it needs to be higher. It needs to be indexed to the cost of living. It hasn't changed in several years and it doesn't change as often as the prices go up at your local grocery store. So the disability tax benefit that is there for persons with disabilities is a tremendous help, but it needs to be higher.
I guess the fourth item--and I didn't have it in the brief--is access to literature. Only 3% to 5% of printed material that's available to our fellow Canadians is available to the blind community. Alternate formats that we can read and enjoy and learn from are incredibly important. The $3 million that has recently been announced by the government to build a program where publishers would make available their work, so that charity can then transcribe it into a usable format for the blind and partially sighted...those $3 million could have produced a lot of books in an alternative format if it were granted to publishers for that express purpose.