Thank you very much for the opportunity to appear before the committee today to discuss youth employment. This is an issue of fundamental importance to our work as a national organization.
Today I'll focus on the employment of youth with disabilities from our perspective as a group that represents post-secondary students and graduates with disabilities.
Since its founding in 1986, the National Educational Association of Disabled Students has had the mandate to support full access to education and employment for post-secondary students and graduates with disabilities across Canada. We represent over 100,000 persons with disabilities studying in Canadian public colleges and universities. Most of our constituents are youth.
NEADS is a consumer-controlled, cross-disability organization that is governed by a national board of directors representative of all of the provinces and territories. We are an autonomous organization, but also a member group of the Council of Canadians with Disabilities.
Our work has focused on three strategic program areas: student debt reduction, student experience in class and on campus, and student and graduate employment. With our mandate, the organization functions collaboratively with post-secondary stakeholders, other national disability organizations, and many student groups, including national groups like the Canadian Federation of Students. We also provide ongoing, expert advice to Employment and Social Development Canada.
The association's primary activities include maintaining a comprehensive website and a financial aid portal—disabilityawards.ca—and holding events and conducting research that benefits our membership.
Since 2005, we've held 25 transition from school to work forums in cities right across Canada to consult with youth with disabilities. These interactive conferences have included the participation of some 2,000 college and university students and graduates with disabilities who are mostly youth, private sector employers, career professionals in the post-secondary community, employment agencies, and other NGOs. We also have created a national scholarship program that has given out 57 scholarships worth $3,000 to outstanding college and university students with disabilities across Canada.
In the last two years we have been engaged in a project to consult with career and employment centres on college and university campuses right across the country to determine how effectively they're serving disabled students. Youth with disabilities clearly need to be better supported and served by their on-campus career centres to ensure that they have opportunities for summer employment and part-time work during the school year to build their skill sets.
The 2013 federal report “Rethinking DisAbility in the Private Sector” from the panel of labour market opportunities for persons with disabilities identified an alarming statistic:
...of the 795 000 people with disabilities who could be—but aren’t—contributing to our economy, almost half (340,000) have post-secondary education.... These qualified, capable people can play an important role in filling the forecasted two-thirds of all jobs requiring higher education.
At the same time, the overall labour force participation rate for working-age adults with disabilities is around 60%, compared to around 80% of those without disabilities. The 2011 Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics has shown that the employment rate of youth with disabilities aged 16 to 24 was 45.7% and for the same age cohort among those without disabilities it was 56%. That's a large disparity.
According to the 2006 Participation and Activity Limitation Survey, persons with disabilities are better educated than in the past and their educational profile is generally similar to those without disabilities. However, their participation in university programs, for example, is substantially lower than it is for the non-disabled population.