Evidence of meeting #30 for Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was employment.
11:10 a.m.
NDP
Peggy Nash NDP Parkdale—High Park, ON
I want to make a brief comment and then give you time to speak.
I know that in my own community people with disabilities are among the most desperate, especially those with intellectual disabilities. We went through the whole deinstitutionalization process, and I see the results on the streets in our area. What's clear is the lack of support for people who want to get back into the workforce, which everyone I talk to wants to do, and the lack of support for housing, which is so critical.
The troubling thing about these cuts that were announced a month ago is their ingenuity. In some cases, the services are left intact—the women's shelters, the literacy programs. What's being carved out is the resources, the training for people to deliver the programs, the advocacy. This will lead to the silencing of democratic voices and the ultimate erosion of these programs.
I want to ask about John Rae's proposal on employment equity—extending it to small and medium businesses. Mr. Collins, many small businesses are the ones that are out there hiring in my neighbourhood. What kind of support will these small and medium businesses need to be able to do this kind of hiring? That's one question.
Also, I'm vice-chair of the government operations committee, which is responsible for procurement. What are your thoughts on what we could be doing about procurement in Canada? I'm asking Mr. Rae, Mr. Collins, and anyone else.
11:15 a.m.
President, Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians
Thank you for your question.
On the procurement side, the Government of Canada should not purchase any equipment that isn't usable by everybody. Inaccessible computer equipment and inaccessible telephone equipment still gets purchased. The Government of Canada needs to use a contract compliance approach whereby it stops purchasing inaccessible equipment unless and until it is usable by everybody. Second, it should reach out more to businesses run by our community.
The other part of your question I wanted to address, which is--
11:15 a.m.
NDP
Peggy Nash NDP Parkdale—High Park, ON
About employment equity and small and medium-sized businesses.
11:15 a.m.
President, Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians
Smaller businesses will probably need some support in terms of being able to cover the costs of technical equipment. There is, of course, a duty to accommodate already in place through human rights law, but to make that possible--and here I think the Government of Canada could help, either directly or through the provinces--create a new fund so that some of the costs of accommodation can be covered by public funds.
11:15 a.m.
Director, Goodwill Industries, Partners in Employment-London/Middlesex
In response to your question, my understanding is that the federal Employment Equity Act only applies to federally regulated industries, and therefore, it would only cover--
11:15 a.m.
Director, Goodwill Industries, Partners in Employment-London/Middlesex
And contractors. Therefore, it would only cover a certain part of the spectrum. The argument for a national disabilities act means that it would be more pervasive and broader.
Second, my understanding is that under the federal Employment Equity Act at the moment, persons with disabilities have been the least successful groups in terms of making progress, compared to the other equity groups. Maybe the analyst can assist on whether or not I'm accurate, but that's my understanding. Therefore, I'm not sure that's the most effective means to reach the goal I think you're after.
Many employers in small and medium-sized businesses are fantastic employers of persons with disabilities. The encouragement and support they need are where there are excessive costs for accommodation, and means of supporting that. Also, though, they require the knowledge, and this is what we keep finding from our feedback. Will they be there when Johnny has an issue six months from now? Our funding is only to support them for three months. Yes, we will be there, but that's money we'll have to raise ourselves to provide that extra support. So it's not by program design that the employer support is there, and that's only within certain agency's capacities to do that. It's not a national program with national sets of standards employers can count on.
As for procurement, there are fantastic examples from other jurisdictions. One I would let you look at--but say there are a number of cautions to it--is NISH program in the United States, where they, significantly, use federal funds to acquire a whole set of services, with the requirement that they hire persons with disabilities in the application or provision of those services. The program is currently being reviewed by the House in the United States. It does require it to be more inclusive in its approach in terms of the workplace, so it's not just replicating sheltered workshops, but providing some real opportunity for people with disabilities to be in the workforce.
11:20 a.m.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Jean-Claude D'Amours
Mr. Mantis and Mr. Crawford, if you can do it in 30 seconds each, please.
11:20 a.m.
Secretary, Ontario Network of Injured Worker Groups
Looking around the world in terms of what seems to work best for hiring people with disabilities, the German system seems to have become the best. They have a system of grant levies--6% of your workforce needs to be people with disabilities, and if you don't have that, you pay 200 deutschmarks a month. That money goes into a restricted fund that then supports employment for people with disabilities. A fund created directly from employers can help support the necessary accommodation and training.
11:20 a.m.
Director, Research and Knowledge Management, Canadian Association for Community Living
If we ensure that people have at least high school education, get back for some retraining, and get the disability supports they require--for example, the help from other people, technologies, wheelchairs, medications and so on--and if we ensure that the community transportation system is accessible for people, the chances are very good that the employment levels for people with disabilities will be very close to those of other Canadians.
In order to achieve those goals there needs to be more collaboration between various levels of government. Community transportation is a municipal responsibility. The issue of disability supports kind of cuts across the federal and provincial jurisdictions. I think we really do need to look at how to get levels of government working more effectively together, so they can put in place the accommodation funding, the disability supports funding, and use their collective economies of scale through procurement. These supports could be much more affordable if governments were to join forces and jointly purchase the accessible technologies that John has suggested are needed, to jointly purchase the medications people require and so on.
11:20 a.m.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Jean-Claude D'Amours
Thank you.
We will now turn to Mr. Brown for seven minutes.
11:20 a.m.
Conservative
Patrick Brown Conservative Barrie, ON
Thank you.
I appreciate everyone's comments today, for coming and taking time out of what I'm sure are busy schedules to share your opinions with us today.
I have a few questions touching on the last comment of Mr. Crawford about training. This is a question I asked earlier today when we had a different deputation. What role do you see for the federal government in putting forward more training? Is it inadequate or are there opportunities for the government to improve on existing programs?
11:20 a.m.
Director, Research and Knowledge Management, Canadian Association for Community Living
If you look at the Employment Insurance Monitoring and Assessment Report, EMR, and if you look at the participation rates of people with disabilities across jurisdictions in various kinds of programming, you'll find they're far under-represented in relation to the actual prevalence of disability in the working-age population. What's also interesting is that some provinces do much better in terms of involving people with disabilities than do others. For example, Nova Scotia does quite a good job. They have, you could say, a disproportionately large proportion of people with disabilities participating there in various kinds of training. In Ontario, it's simply dismal with respect to levels of participation in apprenticeship programs.
There's a lot of unevenness here, and arguably the federal government could play a bit of a role in setting...I don't like the term “national standards”, but maybe some common priorities and objectives that the provinces could buy into, where there'd be some sense of joint ownership and responsibility for achieving better results for people with disabilities than what has been achieved to date.
If you look at those reports, you'll see that historically the levels of participation by people with disabilities in the labour market programming available under part II of the EI Act has been very low.
11:25 a.m.
President, Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians
I've spoken about the need for leadership from the Government of Canada. Here, Treasury Board needs to make the federal public service a model employer, which it's not now. One of the aspects of this--and there are a lot more aspects--is that in the area of training, not only does the federal government need to establish a vigorous outreach recruitment strategy, but it should create an internship program specifically in the disabled community to help bring us in. Once we're in, then programs need to be put in place for retention and advancement.
While the focus for some groups is retention, for us it's often getting us in the door to begin with. Lots of us have the training, skills, and desire to work, but we need programs to bring us into employment situations. Treasury Board needs to take the lead and make the federal public service a model employer, so that others can follow that lead. That involves a lot of work.
11:25 a.m.
Director, Education, Ontario Federation of Labour
I want to come back to the labour market partnership agreement. The portion allocated to addressing those facing barriers to employment would have been $80 million that would have targeted those people with disabilities and so forth.
Again, I think one of the key things is that this agreement be honoured. It was a signed document between the federal government and the Ontario government, and Stephen Harper himself put in writing prior to the federal election that the agreement would be honoured. With that money coming into the system, it's $1.3 billion that would be available to people who don't need to qualify for EI. That's the whole point of that particular agreement, so I think it's a critical step forward in terms of what resources we can make available for training.
11:25 a.m.
Secretary, Ontario Network of Injured Worker Groups
I'm going to come at this from a different angle. I'm going to build on what John Rae talked about. If the federal government could be a model employer, maybe they could put some of those dollars into training management.
We have consistently seen policies and practices that are dictated by management as being the barriers to employing people with disabilities. Once you get into a structure, that this is the way it has to be done, the room for accommodation starts disappearing. Managers see having to accommodate as challenging their authority to dictate how work is done.
I can tell you that I myself have been able to be accommodated throughout my career, because I've been in management. I have control over how the work gets done. I can get the work done, no problem. But if I have to do it according to your norm or your norm, I'm going to run into problems. So maybe a little funding for management....
Canada Post is one of the worst. They're a huge employer run by the government. They're terrible in terms of how they treat their workers. It's just shameful.
11:25 a.m.
Director, Goodwill Industries, Partners in Employment-London/Middlesex
I didn't hear the question. I think we were being asked about the broader challenge of increasing an educated workforce, including persons with disabilities.
I think it's very clear that we need to have employer incentives for training. We also need to take a longer-term approach to training. We need clear regional and local strategies to what the labour market conditions are over the longer term, rather than just quick fixes. As we've heard earlier, people are being trained for short-term positions. They are not taking the longer view. That got us into trouble with doctors. It got us into trouble with nursing. It got us into trouble with every area of our society. It has to take a longer view.
There needs to be planning mechanisms, with dollars applied to local priorities outside the institutional system that can allow for planning to occur with the full forces of labour, the disability community, and others participating in that.
I hope that's helpful.
11:30 a.m.
As an Individual
Education is a provincial matter. However, finding ways of encouraging provinces and municipalities to keep these things going is something that has not been at the forefront. It seems to me, as someone formerly from the most junior level of government, that the bickering is difficult.