Thank you, Mr. Chair, honourable members of the committee.
It's a pleasure to be here today to speak with you about employment and people with disabilities in Canada. As you know, the Office for Disability Issues within the Department of Human Resources and Social Development serves as the focal point for the work that the Government of Canada does to promote the full participation of people with disabilities in Canadian society.
I believe the background information in the form of decks is either being distributed to you or has been distributed to you. You should have a few decks, one entitled “People with Disabilities in the Labour Market”, which serves as an overview, a kind of diagnostique of some of the challenges that people with disabilities face in the labour market. The other decks look at some of the current federal government employment-related programs for people with disabilities, including one deck on CPP disability and one deck from Service Canada on service delivery to people with disabilities.
I'm not going to walk through all of the details in these decks. They are provided for your background information. However, I did want to highlight a few central points within the decks.
As you probably know, there were 3.6 million Canadians with disabilities in Canada in 2001. That was about 12.4% of the total population. Among them, about 1.9 million are working-age adults, so more than half of people with disabilities are of working age. With the exception of children, women are generally more likely to have a disability than men.
In addition, there is a great variation in the types of disabilities, and quite often, people have more than one type of disability. This makes it challenging to find solutions or programs that work for everyone.
On the education front there is some encouraging news. People with disabilities have made gains in post-secondary educational attainment. According to Statistics Canada's 2001 participation and activity living survey, or PALS, 40% of people with disabilities have some post-secondary education, compared with 48% of people without disabilities.
I should add that PALS is being conducted again this year and Statistics Canada is currently planning to repeat it a third time in 2011. Currently, we don't have good, comparable longitudinal data relating to people with disabilities. So this work being conducted by Statistics Canada in cooperation with the Office for Disability Issues would help us address some of those gaps.
Despite the improvements we've seen in terms of post-secondary education attainment, though, similar improvements in the employment rate for people with disabilities have not been observed. Only 49% of working-age adults with disabilities are employed, compared with 78% for those without disabilities. Moreover, 51% of working-age adults with disabilities are not even in the labour market, compared to only 16% of those without disabilities.
In addition, based on the 2001 PALS, the average income of people with disabilities was 28% lower than that of people without disabilities. According to Statistics Canada's 2002 survey of labour and income dynamics, or SLID, 19% of people with disabilities were living in low-income households, compared to only 10% of people without disabilities.
All of this means that 32% of people with disabilities rely on government programs for income, compared to 9% of people without disabilities. What are the factors that lead to these disparities in the labour market outcomes? That's a question that officials do spend some time looking at.
We know that a variety of factors, other than the disability itself, can lead to a person working less, or even leaving the labour market altogether. We also know that these other factors, and the perception by employers that mitigating them can cost a significant amount of money, often make it much more difficult for people with disabilities to find employment.
In fact, of those people with disabilities who were unemployed or out of the labour force in 2001, 32%, or about 210,000, indicated that their condition did not completely prevent them from working or from looking for work. This means that people with disabilities represent a significant untapped labour resource.
To bring these people into the labour market we will need to do more to address stigma and the physical barriers, like a lack of accessible transportation, that confront people with disabilities. There's a chart on page 7 in the diagnostique deck that shows that the federal government has primarily spent money supporting people with disabilities through income support in the form of pensions and tax credits, such as the disability tax credit and the medical expenses tax credit. The federal government also works, though, to improve the situation of people with disabilities through some direct programming.
The Opportunities Fund for People With Disabilities was created in 1997 and assists people with disabilities to prepare for and obtain employment or self-employment, as well as to develop the skills necessary to maintain that new employment. We achieve this through direct transfers to individuals, and by supporting organizations for people with disabilities that share that mandate.
The social development partnerships program, the disability component, or SDPPD, invests $11 million annually through grants and contributions to organizations working in the non-profit sector in activities aimed at promoting the full participation of people with disabilities in learning, work, and community life. It also promotes the generation, dissemination, and application of knowledge, innovative solutions, and best practices. In addition, the Canada pension plan disability vocational rehabilitation program is designed to help people who receive a Canada pension plan disability benefit to return to work whenever possible.
In the past many people receiving benefits because of a severe and prolonged disability believed they were permanently out of the workforce. Today new technology, medical treatments, and skills training make it possible for some people with severe disabilities to become part of and remain in the workforce. That is why the Canada Pension Plan is making vocational rehabilitation available to those who can benefit from it the most and why the CPP legislation was amended to permit automatic reinstatement of benefits.
This change provides CPP disability recipients who return to regular employment and have their benefits ceased with an important safety net for two years following their return to work. If their disability recurs in that period and they cannot continue working, they can make a simple request to have their CPP disability benefits immediately reinstated as well as benefits for eligible children.
When considering the employability potential of CPPD recipients, it is important to remember that the CPP definition of disability is stringent. The vast majority of recipients will not be able to return to regular employment. Nevertheless, a small but significant number of CPP disability recipients do return to work and leave benefits each year. They numbered about 1,810 in fiscal year 2005-06. Of those people who returned to work from CPPD in that year, 161 individuals used the automatic reinstatement provision.
We are currently conducting a client satisfaction survey with some of these people, and the preliminary feedback is very positive. Early indications are that CPPD recipients are attempting to return to work and this is likely due to the automatic reinstatement provision, but more time will be needed to track the full impact.
In addition to these targeted programs, a large number of people with disabilities receive support through general employment programming, and particularly Employment Benefit and Support Measures, which are funded through Part II of the Employment Insurance Act.
Even when they do not have EI eligibility, people with disabilities can access Employment Assistance Services delivered through third parties.
Service Canada delivers employment programming across the country and is working to improve its services to people with disabilities. Cathy Drummond is here to speak to those issues. We know that these clients often find the mix of programs and services across levels of government confusing. Service Canada has recently developed a three-year service improvement strategy for people with disabilities that focuses on improved accessibility, simplified application of processes, and better coordination across employment programming, including working with employers.
Provinces are largely responsible for the delivery of these supports. The federal government is supporting the programs and services of the provinces through the Canada social transfer and through targeted measures such as the labour market agreements for people with disabilities.
Mr. Chair, honourable members of the committee, I hope that this brief presentation has provided you with some additional insights to the work that is ongoing at HRSDC and to some of the challenges that Canadians with disabilities face. My colleagues and I would be happy to take your questions.
Nancy Lawand, who is the director general of the directorate of services for people with disabilities for CPP, is also with us and she will take any questions you might have on CPPD.
Thank you.