Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Good morning, Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee.
On behalf of the Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians—and I'm afraid I'm going to have to speak a little faster than the translators might want, because I've got a lot to cover—I appreciate the opportunity to be here.
What I'm going to do is to call for the Government of Canada to initiate a new national economic strategy for Canadians with a disability, including those of us who are blind, deaf-blind, and partially sighted.
The Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians is a national consumer organization that was brought together to give us our own voice, to give us a vehicle for working together to support each other and advocate for change to improve the quality of life for both ourselves and those deaf-blind, blind, and partially sighted individuals who will come after us.
If we look at statistics—and I'm not one who tends to dwell on statistics too much—over the past 25 years, since the release of the landmark Obstacles report in 1981, numerous studies and programs have been initiated by government, the private sector, private philanthropic organizations, and consumer organizations such as ours.
If we look at those statistics in an employment context, the irrevocable conclusion is that taken together, those programs may have assisted some individuals. I'm a bit of a success story when it comes to some of the old programs, which I could talk about later. But the unemployment rate and the rate of poverty that continues to confront our community tells us only one thing: taken together, those programs represent a failure.
One of the reasons they represent such a failure is that employment is often looked at only in the context of employment and not in the broader context. That's the reason why. I'm not here to talk about just an employment strategy or a labour market strategy, but an overall economic strategy, because if individuals do not have safe and affordable housing, access to public transit in the communities where we live, coverage for needed disability supports and assisted devices, employer commitment, and most importantly, more money in our pockets, then the goal of getting employed, remaining employed, and advancing in employment is likely to remain elusive.
So what are we after? I've called this a national economic strategy. It must start with new commitment and dedication from the Government of Canada—something that has been lacking from all parties, not just one or two. That's the first thing.
To demonstrate this, the Prime Minister should call together leaders from business, government, labour, and organizations of persons with disabilities, such as ours, to develop this strategy to forge a new collaboration and to show that there is new commitment on the part of the federal government.
In terms of some of the needed building blocks, there's the Employment Equity Act and programs such as the federal contractors program, parts of which have a 100 threshold for employer coverage. In our view, that level is far too high. It needs to be reduced in stages. We can't expect it to be reduced in total overnight; we understand that. So reduce it in stages to an area of about 20, so that employers with 20 or more will be fully covered by the program.
There needs to be new educational programs to get buy-in by employers. There needs to be enhanced infrastructure across Canada to support improvements in public transportation. There needs to be enhanced opportunities for mobility training for blind, deaf-blind, and partially sighted Canadians. Our transportation system needs to be improved.
The Canadian apprenticeship system is crying out for more participants. It talks about chronic skills shortage, yet persons with disabilities are one of the most underemployed and unemployed segments of our population.
We have not taken up the apprenticeship opportunity to the extent we should have, and so the Canadian Apprenticeship Forum needs to be given funding to do further research and develop a strategy to help us participate more in that system.
In the area of training, a number of existing EI-based programs are available only to EI recipients. If we look at our community as being as unemployed as statistics tell you we are, a lot of us have not participated in work to the extent that we become EI recipients, so we're doubly penalized. We didn't get to work, and now we can't qualify for retraining and other programs that are available to those who have had those traditional advantages, advantages we have never had.