I'm sorry. Forgive me. I'm addressing persons with disabilities.
We're also talking about one in five Nova Scotians. I feel we're talking about quite a large sector of our population versus what might be perceived as something very small. We happen to have the largest population of people who self-identify with disability in the country.
We really feel we are certainly including issues around poverty and women, and so on. We can see where we link up across the board.
The opportunity fund has been static, as I mentioned, meaning if it had even grown, let alone shrunk, which it has done, by keeping anything static, we all know that inflation shrinks it. As a result, we have the only access fund, which is actually a very good one and it provides a lot of flexibility.
For instance, I have one young woman in my office who is going to go to school. She can't get a job in her field because she doesn't have the experience. Because she's unattached, we finally just got her to go to school. She has a rather serious disability that she's overcome, and she's back and ready to go to school. But because she's unattached, we can't even assist her in getting some experience before school or in providing a work experience that's limited, with any kind of support. It's very difficult to convince an employer, when someone has absolutely no experience, to take that on without any kind of support, both financial and agency support.
I don't think it's only about money. I also think it's about what agencies need to do to support that person as well. We all have a responsibility. We're not here to say you need to deal with it. We're here to say we all need to deal with this together, and we're here at the table saying we're willing to talk about it.
The opportunity fund is a great fund and it's a functional fund. The problem is that it doesn't grow and it doesn't represent the percentage of the population of persons with disabilities who want to work but can't get attached.