Thank you.
Mr. Chair, ladies and gentlemen, members of the committee, thank your for receiving us this morning and allowing us to speak to you.
The corporation SPHERE-Québec (Soutien à la personne handicapée en route vers l'emploi au Québec) is a non-profit organization established by partners interested in job integration and training for persons with disabilities.
SPHERE-Québec's goal is to promote participation in economic and social life by a larger number of persons with disabilities isolated from the labour market. To achieve this objective, in 1997, the Department of Human Resources and Social Development Canada gave SPHERE-Québec's team a mandate to implement the individual measures of the Opportunities Fund for Persons with Disabilities.
SPHERE-Québec offers its services through four offices in the heart of the province's main regions. Its project officers take part at every stage of regional cooperation on employment and work in close cooperation with community partners. This cooperative effort with the partners is moreover apparent from the make-up of SPHERE-Québec's board of directors, which consists of representatives of employers, unions and the main organizations working with persons with disabilities in the province.
Here's a little background.
SPHERE-Québec is filing this brief with the committee to inform it of its experience with the employability of persons with disabilities. One of the first findings that we can make is that a large percentage of persons with disabilities are currently inactive but feel they are able to work. However, these people say they experience problems of all kinds, such as negative perceptions by employers, transportation problems and a lack of training and experience. And yet persons with disabilities constitute a skilled labour force and are part of the response to the major labour shortage problem we are facing.
Here's our first recommendation.
SPHERE-Québec recommends that the Opportunities Fund for Persons with Disabilities be made permanent.
In light of employability statistics for persons with disabilities, much clearly remains to be done. Since 1997, more than 4,000 persons with disabilities in Quebec have improved their employability by taking advantage of one of the program's measures. To date, approximately half have remained active, that is to say employed, self-employed or at an educational institution. Based on the decisive results of the Opportunities Fund in Quebec, SPHERE-Québec recommends that the program become permanent.
Here's our second recommendation.
SPHERE-Québec recommends that additional budgets be granted to the Opportunities Fund to introduce pre-employability pilot projects. Persons with disabilities who live far away from the labour market have numerous needs that create as many barriers to job entry. That's why the partners in the Quebec regions are inventing new job entry models and implementing them in the context of concrete projects.
SPHERE-Québec is already funding a number of pre-employability pilot projects and encouraging the spread of these models. These innovative projects, backed by the communities, are built not only on the basis of the employability needs of persons with disabilities, but also in accordance with the region's socio-economic structure. Persons with disabilities who have the opportunity to take part in a pre-employability pilot project enter the labour force better prepared, more skilled and thus more able to keep their jobs and develop.
Other models could be tested with young persons with disabilities to improve their employability levels.
Based on the suitability of these pre-employability projects for the clientele, SPHERE-Québec hopes to continue its cooperation on pilot projects and, consequently, recommends that additional funding be allocated to this kind of project in the Opportunities Fund.
I'm going to let Ms. Vincent give you a concrete example to illustrate how well cooperation among partners is working.