Human Resources Committee on Oct. 26th, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Albrecht, you have seven minutes, please.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the panel for appearing today.

I wanted to follow up briefly on the mandatory retirement question. I've had the opportunity to travel to a number of other countries and have observed, anecdotally, of course, that in many of the cultures around the world, age is revered and looked up to much more than it is here in North America. I've always had a concern that we have minimized the contribution that older people can make, so I am certainly supportive of your initiative.

I have a question. Could you just help me understand what kind of a process was involved in convincing the Ontario government to end that practice of mandatory retirement?

[Prof. David MacGregor]

I'm not sure I know the total answer to that. The first thing that happened in Ontario that was quite important was that in the year 2000 the Ontario Human Rights Commission, which is headed by Mr. Norton, made a very strong presentation and report against mandatory retirement. So that report and the human rights initiative were there from the year 2000. I think this was extremely important.

The other thing that happened, however, was that in 2003 the government of the day in Ontario was facing an election, and I think they thought they could win some votes by actually calling for the end of mandatory retirement. I think it was a fabulous thing for the government of that day to have done, and they actually said that they would end mandatory retirement just prior to the election. Unfortunately, they were voted out, but it was there on the table, and the succeeding government, the Liberals, under Mr. McGuinty, took up that issue about a year later. Although at first they didn't show any interest in it, they found it very interesting later on. I think it was, as I said, about a year later that the Liberal government decided to make the same kind of initiative the Tories had done.

My feeling is that it was, as I said, propelled by the Ontario Human Rights Commission, but I think it was also propelled by the growing recognition of governments, both on the Liberal side and the Conservative side, that there was a large number of people in Ontario who wanted to get rid of it.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Thank you. I just wish the Liberal government of Ontario would have been as wise on some other initiatives that the outgoing government had projected, but we won't go there.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Are you looking for a fight, Harold?

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

I have another comment and question to Ms. Barron and Ms. Ricker. The seventh point, or maybe it's the eighth, that you made in terms of recognizing the added value obtained by NGOs...I certainly concur with that. I'm just wondering if you have some examples where maybe this has already happened and how that could be expanded, used as a model. I'm convinced that we need to use the expertise of the people who have already done the work, instead of reinventing the wheel.

[Carole Barron]

Thank you very much for that very open-ended question. If we had the remainder of the day to respond in detail, I could certainly take it up.

However, to précis a response from the Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work's perspective, we are an organization that is thirty years old this year. We started as a result of a number of community-based organizations identifying employment as a key issue, back in the 1960s. Over the course of time, the CCRW continued to evolve. Now our mandate is completely to promote and support the meaningful and equitable employment of people with disabilities internationally, with Canada being our primary focus. Our employment program has been documented in the “In Unison 2001” and “In Unison 2002” reports as being a best practice model for the country.

A very well-documented program is our skills training partnership program, which came as a result of the Obstacles report and the work the CCRW did back in the 1990s.

Our first skills training partnership program was held in 1995, and my colleague sitting next to me is the queen of skills training partnership in Canada, as we like to refer to her in our office. Basically, over the course of a five-year period, over 400 people with disabilities went through our model program, and today the success rate remains 83%. All those who went through our program remain employed in Canada.

From that particular program...and because the Government of Canada went through a devolution of funding from the federal to the provincial forces over the course of time, “training” is no longer a word we are allowed to use when applying for government funding. Henceforth, the skilled training partnership program became the workplace essential skills partnership, which is the given agenda of the day for government, as you are aware.

We're very grateful for that because we have been very successful. The CCRW has mirrored its STP, as we refer to it, in the workplace essential skills partnership program. We have funding from Service Canada in Toronto, the GTA. We have acquired funding from Surrey Service Canada in B.C. We have worked with other community-based organizations to help them use our program, so that they can work specifically with their client bases in smaller areas in Canada.

As well we have worked with other community-based organizations to understand what elements are so strategic to ensuring that people with disabilities find appropriate employment. We have worked with a number of national groups and organizations, believing there is a purpose and methodology behind supporting the employment of people with disabilities in Canada. So it's not anecdotal. There is real evidence of the work supported by NGOs in Canada and the value they can bring to the table in working with governmental departments in the employment of people with disabilities.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Thank you.

Do I have any time, or am I done?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thirty seconds.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Mr. Wilson, I know your primary focus is to help people with disabilities find self-employment, so I don't want to put you out of a job. But do you think there is a role for the federal government to play, in terms of providing incentives for employers to hire persons with disabilities?

You could get yourself into trouble by....

[Bob Wilson]

I'm not so sure about the issue of incentives. I don't believe I understand enough to say anything around specific incentives.

I certainly know that from talking and working with a number of organizations specializing in working with people with disabilities that there is a tremendous amount of information and education available to employers, which they may not be aware of. If more employers were aware of the information and the assistance—which can be everything from design assistance through to knowledge of different types of software applications that can be brought into the workplace—this would be an extremely important first step.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

I was speaking more in terms of physical barriers to people, such as accessing buildings or workstations. Are there any incentives for that? I don't know.

[Bob Wilson]

I believe there are some tax incentives that are available in Ontario, which is the area that I might know best. Here in Ontario the introduction of the new Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act is going to start to set pretty stringent standards that all businesses will have to meet, and certainly from the point of view of the business community, there's going to be an incredible demand for some incentive and some assistance to meet the accessibility, and customer service, and communication standards.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

MPs know how to take thirty seconds and turn it into two or three minutes.

Probably Ms. Barron would like a chance to answer that question next time around.

Mr. D'Amours, for five minutes, next round.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Barron, I would like to ask you a few short questions. I understand that one of your organization’s goals is to provide training. You will forgive me, I am from New Brunswick, where sometimes we use English words because we can’t find the right word in French. Training is important for your organization, as far as persons with disabilities are concerned. Am I right?

[Carole Barron]

That's part of what we do, yes.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

If it is important, do you think that offering training to people in reading and writing is also important so that they can get ahead in their working environment?

[Carole Barron]

Everything the CCRW embodies is part of the skills development agenda. The nine essential skills, as identified by the Government of Canada, are the nine essential skills that are built into all of our training programs for persons with disabilities. We have a very aggressive case management program, whereby if you are a person with a disability and you come into our program, we do what is called an intake. As part of that intake process we get to understand what your requirements are so that we can then place you as part of a continuum, so that you're not working in isolation, you're not doing training in isolation, you are part of a bigger picture. So it's about a case management plan whereby it's your plan as to what you want to do as part of your vocational development. We refer to this as an individualized vocational plan.

As part of this vocational plan, it could be that computer skills may be the piece set lacking for you because you want to be a computer technician. You can't be a computer technician if you don't have computer skills.

Literacy as part of the bigger picture is one component of many of the pieces in terms of people with disabilities.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

I am glad to hear you use the word “literacy training.” Ultimately you are saying that the federal government should provide more assistance to persons with disabilities for training. I do not wish to put words in your mouth, but I also gather that, without wishing to get into politics, if there are cuts to literacy programs, this will actually limit access to training for people who may need it. For some, this training is even essential. In the end, it is as though they were being left by the wayside. On top of being in special situations because of their disabilities, these people are told that someone wants to be sure that they remain deeply ignorant. But, at the end of the day, this is not how to help the population to advance. This is not how to protect the most vulnerable people in our society.

Am I right?

[Carole Barron]

Those are very important comments you've made, Monsieur D'Amours. I would be reckless to suggest that they are not important to all Canadians with disabilities and to Canadians in general. It would be very important, when working with persons with disabilities particularly, to recognize the component we bring to the table based on the numbers of persons with disabilities through our programs, and I will use this example.

The partners for workplace inclusion program has five sites in Canada, Saint John, New Brunswick, being one of the sites. My colleague is a New Brunswicker; as one of the sites we have in Canada, we'll use New Brunswick as an example. We have found, in looking at our statistics of all the persons with disabilities whom we were able to support in finding employment in Saint John, New Brunswick, that the majority of those people had less than grade 6 education, had been unemployed for seven or more years, and had not been in the workforce, if at all, since graduating from high school. “Graduating” from high school did not often mean they had a certificate that said they had matriculated from high school or actually had a high school education, but because they were in a special needs class they actually graduated from high school.

Right across the country we have documented these statistics and have presented them to the Opportunities Fund funders for our partners for workplace inclusion program.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Madame Bonsant is next, for five minutes.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Ms. Barron, I am going to ask you all my questions first. Then I will give you a chance to answer them.

You made a comment concerning literacy training. Does the government think that only senior citizens have disabilities, and not young people?

I would also like to know whether you have a transportation problem because of some disabilities?

Do all your people have access to the Internet? You know that there is lots of training available on the Internet.

[Carole Barron]

Thank you very much.

The CCRW, which is our acronym, actually has a virtual employment resource centre that's called WORKink. Our WORKink site is set up so that it transcends every province in Canada. We have connectivity with people out in the field in every province such that they feed into the aboriginal site and the entrepreneur site with disabilities. This is all about and for people with disabilities, as well as employers.

As far as we can understand from those people with disabilities—and we have over 4.5 million hits on our WORKink site from people with disabilities every year—we believe they do have access to technology. It may not be in their own home environment, but from a community perspective.... If we recall, some years ago there was an initiative whereby computers were placed in libraries across the country to make them accessible for all Canadians. So we understand that there is that connectivity.