Human Resources Committee on Feb. 28th, 2013

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Chris Charlton]

Terrific. Thank you, Mr. Beachell.

[Laurie Beachell]

Good morning, and thank you for the opportunity to be here.

We're pleased to see a parliamentary committee taking an extended focus on disability issues, particularly on employment issues.

We were here for the last hour's presentation and conversation, so some of the questions that were raised I think we will also attempt to address. I assume there will be others as well, so we may modify the presentation.

Our chairperson, Tony Dolan, who is from Prince Edward Island, had hoped to be here, but developed an infection and was unable to travel. Michael Bach, executive vice-president of CACL, with whom we work extensively, is in transit. His eight o'clock flight got bumped to 10:10 and I don't know if that left on time out of Toronto. So he's on his way, and if he arrives, we're most willing to do a collaborative presentation with him.

Here's our expectation and our hope of this study.

Our hope is that we understand that disability is everyone's issue, that disability is a non-partisan issue, and we hope for a consensus report. We ask members of Parliament to understand that disability is no respecter of political ideology, of age, gender, or geographic region of this country, and that there has been a long tradition of consensus around how we move forward incrementally to improve the status of people with disabilities. We need to find that consensus. We need to find it not only here, between community and members of Parliament, our elected representatives, but also with provincial governments and with employers, business, unions, etc. We must find a way forward that actually builds on much of the achievement of the past.

I've circulated a little booklet that we put together called Celebrating our Accomplishments. It's available in French and English. It is what we think has occurred over the last 30 years.

Mr. McColeman, you were looking for something simpler and more direct to do. I have been in this business for 30 years, longer than that, actually. I started as a volunteer in 1969, when somebody pulled me into a little group to support some kids who wanted to do physical activity and kids who happened to have a disability, and I've been engaged ever since that time.

I've been at CCD over 30 years. We are not a simple community. We are a very complex community. There are no silver bullets. There is relentless incrementalism. There is a need for ongoing attention, support, and innovation. If that climate does not come together, then, frankly, we begin to stall and we begin to move backward.

We have an organization for every disability, disease, body part, therapy, treatment, and we've got them at the local, provincial and national levels. We are a complex community, but many do operate in silos. What CCD tries to do is address broad social policy issues of concern to people with disabilities, issues like poverty, employment, human rights expectations, transportation and access, international development issues, justice issues, etc., and that's what we've done since 1976. I think that's what we've done successfully in trying to move forward a disability agenda.

Having said that, our latest vision and aspiration you can find within the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. We believe that document, which Canada has ratified, sets out a framework for going forward. We had hoped to see the development of an implementation plan at the federal level for that. In that regard, I will go quickly to some of the main recommendations that we would make to your committee.

We would call on the Government of Canada, and on Minister Finley specifically, to develop a five-year strategic plan to address employment needs of people with disabilities. One-off single issue, one-community measures will simply not get us where we hope to be.

We would ask that the plan have the input of the disability community and that there be a technical advisory committee established for input from the disability community into the development of that plan.

We understand from the panel report that it would need to engage employers and it probably needs to engage the provincial government representation as well. Only in a collective and collaborative way are we going to be able to actually achieve success.

We say that part of that first priority should be for young people with disabilities, those people between the ages of 18 and 30 who move from school to work. If we can get that transition right, if we can help people and support them in robust ways so they have the training, the accommodation, the access they need to be employed, we won't have what we have right now, which is a 38% increase in people with disabilities on social assistance. We don't have a 38% increase in people with disabilities getting jobs; we have a 38% increase in people moving on to social assistance because they cannot get jobs.

There must be a range of services and supports. This is where the complexity comes in: looking at people with mobility impairment, people with vision impairment, people who are hard of hearing, people who are deaf, looking at aboriginal people on reserve, and looking at issues of women with disabilities.

This is not a simple task. That's why, for many years, we advocated for a subcommittee, frankly, that had ongoing responsibility to address disability issues. This committee has a responsibility and we're pleased to be here, but you may need, and we would ask you to consider, the establishment of a subcommittee that would keep a focus on disability, whether that is reform of the Canada pension plan disability benefit, improvements to the registered disability savings plan, or new federal-provincial initiatives around labour market agreements. Those are the kinds of things we need.

We would also say to you that the support systems we designed back in the 1970s and 1980s for people with disabilities were designed in a very different environment, a very different labour market than we have today.

There is need for research on what the impacts are of a much more fluid labour market where people now talk about employment insecurity, part-time, term, no benefits, and short-term contract employment. What impact will that employment environment have on people with disabilities?

You heard Shane and Shelley talk about medical benefits. If you can get those on social assistance but you can't get them if you take a job, what's your choice?

We would say that labour market agreements that are negotiated between the federal government and the provinces must include targets and specific accountability measures for how they address people with disabilities. It cannot all be built on employment insurance moneys, because our community is not EI eligible. How do we ensure in those agreements, where we have given away responsibility for the active measures at the federal level to provincial governments, that they—

Here's Michael Bach to join us, so he'll come to the table and jump in where he can.

Current barriers to the labour market are well documented. We would ask HRSDC to create a user-friendly document about current barriers and about success stories.

I want to leave you with a couple of other quick examples. We have done research under a SSHRC, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, grant that is actually documenting a substantive increase in the number of people with disabilities going on to social assistance. That is exactly what we do not want to be seeing, but that's where people are going.

On the programs that we have designed for those insurance programs—Canada pension plan disability benefits, workers' compensation, EI, a number of benefits—frankly, we are not seeing such an uptake there. It is social assistance.

People have not been able to establish labour market attachment in order to become eligible for those programs. Those programs, many of them in the federal realm, are doing most of the heavy lifting.

We believe the Government of Canada must be a model employer and that if we're not doing it right on the Hill and are not doing it right within our bureaucracies, then we are not doing it right.

We would say to you that 5.6%, which I believe is the present stat, in 2010, for the participation of people with disabilities within the civil service.... I'm not sure what that stat will be after we have done a downsizing of the civil service. It would be an interesting study to know how the downsizing is affecting people with disabilities. Were we the last hired and the first let go? Were we the people in term positions that have gone?

The other thing we will say to you, and what that booklet demonstrates, is that the catalyst for change in this country around disability has been and remains people with disabilities. CCD is an umbrella association. The DisAbled Women's Network Canada is a part; People First of Canada is a member; the Canadian Association of the Deaf is a member; the National Network for Mental Health is a member; the Thalidomide Victims Association of Canada is a member; the Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians is a member.

Also, we have a provincial network of cross-disability associations across the country. They are not service bodies; they are collectives of people with disabilities from a cross-disability perspective who have come together and said that these are the things we need to do in our society to make it more accessible and inclusive.

If that voice is not supported, if that voice is somehow diminished, then we can assume that the catalyst for change that has created those changes over the last 30 years will be silenced.

We are pleased to see this study. We hope it is a consensus report. We hope we can get into a discussion around federal responsibility and roles and impact and on how we move this agenda forward. We hope the framework is the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

I'll leave it there for presentation and hope for questions.

I will turn it over to Michael.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Chris Charlton]

Thank you very much, Mr. Beachell.

Mr. Nikias, did you want to add anything first?

[Vangelis Nikias, Project Manager, Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Council of Canadians with Disabilities]

Sure. Thank you and good morning.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is the first international mandatory law instrument of our century; therefore, the Council of Canadians with Disabilities is very pleased that the departmental representatives last Tuesday made positive reference to the ratification of the convention.

With respect to the issue today, the convention contains article 27, whereby Canada through ratifying the convention has recognized the right of persons with disabilities to work. This includes the right to gain our livelihood through freely chosen or accepted work. Canada and other Canadian jurisdictions have undertaken to safeguard and promote the full realization of this right. The rest of article 27 contains specific measures, which you can take into account when you are considering this issue.

We appeal to you today to support, as a follow-up to the ratification, a federal-provincial implementation plan, which is part of what Canada has undertaken to do in the convention.

Mr. McColeman, you raised the question about silos. A carefully designed implementation process of the UN convention, one whereby we progressively, steadily, incrementally take measures to break down the silos and to enable Canadians with disabilities to participate fully in our society is, we believe, to some extent the answer to the question you raised. We appeal for your support for working on such an implementation plan.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Chris Charlton]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Bach, I'm glad your flight landed safely and that you made it here safely. I'll turn the floor over to you.

[Michael Bach, Executive Vice-President, Canadian Association for Community Living]

Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee. My apologies for being late, but weather conspired against me and the airlines this morning.

First of all, thanks to the committee for initiating this study. We think it's a very important step and in a sense overdue, because we have felt the urgency of this issue. We appreciate the leadership of this committee in taking it on.

I'm executive vice-president of the Canadian Association for Community Living. We're a national association of people with intellectual disabilities and their families. We have 40,000 members, 300 local associations across the country, and 13 provincial–territorial associations. We work in close partnership with the Council of Canadians with Disabilities and also in very close partnership with People First of Canada, which presented earlier today.

I want to start by saying that CACL is fully supportive of the 10 broad messages and recommendations of the Council of Canadians with Disabilities. We've worked closely together over the last number of years to formulate a shared national disability agenda, so we're fully behind and supportive of those recommendations.

Today I want to bring some perspectives on people with intellectual disabilities in particular.

There are in broad terms about 500,000 working-age adults with intellectual disabilities. The usual trajectory for a person with an intellectual disability is to turn 19 and go on social assistance. That's the expectation and that's what happens for people. Generally, one-third of people on social assistance in provinces across the country are people with intellectual disabilities. We think it's time to end that trajectory.

Given Canada's labour force and labour productivity challenges, we think this is a huge untapped labour source. We were pleased to see the recommendations of the Panel on Labour Market Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities in their report, “Rethinking disAbility”, which recognizes the untapped pool. We're supportive of the broad directions of that panel. I want to come back to these in a few minutes.

So we have this group of people with intellectual disabilities. About 30% are in the labour force, but the vast majority spend their lives on social assistance. Why does that happen? I think we need to tackle the multiple sets of barriers that people with disabilities and people with intellectual disabilities face.

One is not getting access to education. Only about 50% of students with intellectual disabilities are fully included in education. They're not going on to post-secondary education and training, even though we have excellent examples of people with intellectual disabilities, even significant disabilities, participating in post-secondary education. Maybe they're not getting high-level academic and technical degrees, but they're getting the social capital that others who participate in post-secondary education are getting, and they're getting training and skills.

In demonstration initiatives in Alberta for post-secondary access—and these aren't special programs at universities or colleges, but are fully integrated into programs—80% of those adults with intellectual disabilities are leaving university and college to go on to a paid job.

So it can be done. Post-secondary education works for people generally. We know there are labour market challenges, but it works for people with intellectual disabilities as well.

There is certainly a lack of access to needed disability supports in the form of personal assistance and sometimes of technical aids and devices. I note in the terms of reference for the study by the committee the recognition that disability supports and services are the jurisdiction of provinces and territories. We fully recognize that, but we also recognize, and it's one of the key findings of the labour market panel, that employers lack effective community partnerships to enable people with disabilities to get into the labour market in their communities. I think that's one of the big pieces the federal government can focus on, and I think there's a mandate for the federal government to focus on it.

The number one strategic outcome in the planning and priorities framework for Human Resources and Skills Development Canada is a skilled, adaptable, and inclusive labour force and an efficient labour market. We applaud the government for stating that as its number one strategic outcome. We believe in it, and we take very seriously the qualifier of inclusive labour force in that strategic outcome. The federal government has said that it's one of our key outcomes. The strategies that CCD have laid out and the recommendations that we lay out in our brief can take us a significant way down that path.

Creating an inclusive labour force for people with disabilities has to happen at the community level. There need to be tools at the community level to address the barriers to school, to post-secondary training, to making sure that people get the individualized supports they need, and to making sure we've got effective transportation systems and that we're linking employers with people with disabilities. What makes that work is effective community capacity.

The problem is we have largely an outmoded service delivery system at the community level for people with intellectual and other disabilities. On the one hand, the labour market services delivery has taken a generic approach, and there isn't the specialization and skills within that generic HR services delivery at the community level to respond to the unique needs of people with disabilities, provide the referrals and the package of supports, and link people up to what they may need.

On the other hand, we have a designated disability employment service system that is largely outmoded. When it comes to people with intellectual disabilities, it's still largely day programs and sheltered workshops, despite the best efforts of some to try to transition out of that really outmoded system. That system basically provides a place for people who are on social assistance to go, to put the plastic on our earphones and things like that, and they're getting paid a couple of dollars a day to do it. We don't think this is the trajectory for people with intellectual disabilities and we think it can be changed. That's going to take the federal government really thinking about how it shapes and attaches some requirements to its investment tools, which are for labour market inclusion of people with disabilities. That's in the labour market agreements, and that's in the labour market agreements for persons with disabilities.

Our view, and this is cross-disabilities, is that there needs to be more proactive effort by the Government of Canada in negotiating those agreements. Right now, the $22 million that's flowing through the LMAPDs is largely going into this outmoded service delivery system. It's not having the impact it should have. The feds are not getting the bang for their buck, despite their number one strategic outcome saying we need an inclusive labour force. We're not going to get an inclusive labour force in this country unless the federal government is more proactive with the dollars that it has. We would really encourage leadership by the Government of Canada in the negotiations coming up to the renewal of those labour market development agreements.

The labour market agreements provide funds to provinces and territories to address the needs of those who are labour market disadvantaged. The bulk of those dollars are going into that generic system that doesn't have the capacity or the expertise to adequately serve people with intellectual or other disabilities. This is why we're very supportive of CCD's number one recommendation, to create a five-year strategic plan, establish a technical advisory committee, and figure out how to do this. At this point, quite frankly, our view is that the feds are wasting their money. It's not having the impact that it could have. We want to be part of the solution to make sure that the investment is resulting in an inclusive and effective labour market in this country.

We have a number of recommendations that are in our brief. Overall, we would recommend that the policy tools and investments by the Government of Canada be guided by what we would call an employment first policy framework. Employment has got to be the first option, the preferred option for people with disabilities. The 500,000 people with disabilities in this country, even with significant disabilities who are on social assistance, could benefit from a more proactive set of interventions. The brief lays out a number of specific recommendations, but we'll leave that for discussion.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Chris Charlton]

Thank you very much, Mr. Bach.

Madam Boutin-Sweet.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

Thank you, gentlemen.

I am so glad you made it here, Mr. Bach.

I am not sure if you are aware, but the last two studies that this committee has conducted dealt with the labour shortage in some occupations and with apprenticeship programs. We asked the witnesses about how to attract underrepresented groups, including those with physical or intellectual disabilities. As you are in a very good position to tell us about that situation, I would like to ask you some questions about it.

How could the federal government make sure that existing apprenticeship programs are inclusive and meet the needs of those with physical or intellectual disabilities? You may have already started talking about infrastructure programs, but could you give us some more details?

[Michael Bach]

We were pleased to see that focus with the committee. There are a couple of challenges when it comes to apprenticeship programs, and I'll speak to people with intellectual disabilities specifically, and then more generally Laurie and Vangelis can pick that up.

Because of the nature of the technical skills that are required, there's no question there is a group of people with intellectual disabilities who could participate. What this is going to require, though, is a concerted effort, just as we do in education, to provide more diversified approaches to learning, some assistance in that training and in that learning, and some accommodation for meeting the requirements of the program.

We have examples of people across the country who have participated in those programs and have gone on to participate in the trades, but they're few and far between, given the potential. I think it largely comes back to having a community service system that provides the linkage and the support to those apprenticeship programs, just like the labour market panel rethinking disability said we're lacking the effective community partners. It's the same issue here in terms of accessing post-secondary education. We're still investing in this outmoded service system, and I think that's the lynchpin to enabling people to access these opportunities.

[Laurie Beachell]

Interestingly, some years ago—and as I mentioned, I've been in this business for a while—when we talked about accommodation, we talked about it with an affirmative action component as well. It was not simply offsetting and covering the additional cost of disability, but we had some years ago affirmative action programs that were paying more than simply the cost of disability. Many of the leaders of our community, frankly, got their post-secondary education because at that time tuition, books, a living allowance, and their disability costs were covered under an old program called the vocational rehabilitation of persons with disabilities. It is not simply covering the disability costs; it is creating a climate where we're actually creating incentive for people to get post-secondary education. Many of those programs don't exist any longer.

We assume that new technologies and new levels of access have removed barriers, and they have to some extent, but they've also created new barriers. For many people who are blind, frankly, information is now in formats that are not accessible. They may be accessible if you can afford an iPad. If you're blind it has an accessibility feature. It is wonderful. But if you can't afford it, much of that information is inaccessible. Recently we had to have someone with a disability actually challenge the federal government's website information, to ensure that government websites were fully accessible and met web accessibility standards.

Those are the battles we're fighting. We're still fighting battles of transportation access at local levels, at provincial levels, and at the federal level. We challenged VIA Rail, which purchased inaccessible passenger rail cars in 2000, and we won at the Supreme Court in 2007. Now the cars are being retrofitted. In 2013, this summer, we only have about six of them coming onto the tracks. The other 30 that were purchased in 2000 are still being retrofitted.

This is a long-term business, folks. It is not that you're going to remove the barriers overnight, but we have created systems....

I'll give you another example. We worked long and hard to ensure that television was captioned so that people who were deaf had captioning. But now how do we get captioning? How do we get our news and our information? We get it through the Internet, which is not regulated. No captioning is provided. When CTV covered the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, everything that was over broadcast was captioned. Everything that was live was not captioned. There were no regulations requiring captioning.

So as our society evolves, as we create new ways of doing business, as we create new ways of getting information and access, we have to ensure that those same standards are in place to create access for people with disabilities. Apprenticeship programs will not be accessible until we have information systems accessible, until transportation systems are accessible, and we don't penalize people when they go off social assistance and make them lose all their benefits.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Chris Charlton]

Thank you very much, Mr. Beachell.

Mr. Butt.

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Thank you very much, gentlemen, for being here today.

I'm more of a glass half full than a glass half empty kind of person and I think you are, too. I was very inspired by your presentation to committee, because you talked about the fact that we're all in this together, so let's get something done and let's move forward.

I'm certainly more familiar with Community Living. Community Living Mississauga, where I am from, is very active in the community. It's a very well-run organization and they have excellent partnerships with employers.

Can you share with us some of the best practices with employers? Who's getting it right? We know there are many corporate citizens in Canada who are actively employing people with a range of disabilities. It's part of their corporate philosophy. They're doing it not necessarily because government is or isn't doing anything to support that, although some of them certainly are taking advantage of the fact that governments at all three levels and community organizations are playing a role in helping with that. I'd like to hear some of the success stories. I'd like to hear about some of the best practices. What is working? These champions in the corporate community who are employing people with disabilities, and it's working out for their companies, why are they getting it right and what can we learn from that?

Mr. Bach, maybe you would want to start.

[Michael Bach]

Sure. I take that approach, too, in terms of the glass being half full. There are some very successful examples across the country. We've been looking at this very intensely over the last year and a half or so to figure out what the key factors are and what needs to happen.

In terms of some very practical examples, I think of the rotary clubs across Canada. There's an initiative in Ontario, New Brunswick, and Alberta. This fits very much with the approach that's outlined in the “Rethinking disAbility” labour market panel report. Employers themselves take the leadership and inspire one another, and demonstrate how someone has hired someone with a disability. What makes those programs effective, those employer-to-employer networks, is having a community-based partner, because they need information, they need confidence, they need to be linked to people in the community who may have an intellectual or other disability, who they can hire. They may need some ongoing coaching, some co-worker training.

The first thing is employer leadership, confidence, and awareness. There are employers across this country, as that panel report made very clear, who want to do this. I think one of the effective practices is employer-to-employer networks, through the chambers of commerce, rotary clubs, other service clubs, and really investing in their leadership.

I have another example along that line. It's not employer to employer so much. We've seen some excellent examples in Tim Hortons. Mark Wafer was on that labour market panel and has shown real leadership. Actually, it's like inclusive education, which is another one of our major priorities, and they're obviously linked. You can't drive it all from policy down. You need leaders on the ground. In education, it takes principals and teachers who get inspired, who change their minds. It's the same thing as with employers. The frustration for employers, as they've gone out to do that and they've tried to make it happen, as the panel pointed out, is they don't know where to go for information. They don't have the ongoing kind of support and investment. I think that piece is really critical.

Another fundamentally important piece here, a factor in terms of best practice, is youth. You recognize that in the priorities of CCD, youth from 18 to 25 years are a priority. The research shows that for people with even significant intellectual disabilities, the number one factor related to employment, being employed two years after high school, is having a job while in high school. That's the number one factor. The same evidence shows for people who are injured on the job. The longer you're out of the job, the harder it is to get back in.

For those of us around the table who may have a child who doesn't have a disability, my assumption was never that my sons would turn 19 and go on social assistance, so why have we pushed parents into that position in this country? We need teachers, principals, employers who are willing to support youth to be in a cooperative education workplace, summer employment. We have some great examples of using the Canada summer employment program to support youth with intellectual disabilities to get part-time jobs.

I'll finish there and hand it over to my colleague Laurie to pick that up.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Chris Charlton]

I'm sorry, I think we're going to have to move on, unless you have a very brief comment.

[Laurie Beachell]

Just quickly, Boeing, the banks, and a number of other institutions have done so, but they have been large employers that actually have long-term employment opportunities and benefit packages. It is a real challenge in a smaller business, where there is no benefit package that covers some drug costs or dental costs, or other kinds of things, and that's the nature of the labour force.

Just one quick thing. We have created in the past what we call team Canada to go internationally to sell trade. Why don't we create a team Canada here that goes to our employers to sell, to market, to push, and to promote, to do initiatives to get the message out? Create something that we do internationally here. The fellow from Tim Hortons has a damn good message. It's good for business. Do it. You'll reap rewards.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Chris Charlton]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Sullivan.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Thank you, all of you, for some compelling testimony.

I want to go back to where we started this, which was at the UN convention and the fact that it's the overarching piece that people in the disabled community are hoping will actually provide some guidance, or some power more than guidance. But I'm afraid we've signed something with no teeth, or at least the federal government hasn't exercised the teeth that it should have.

For example, in one of the provinces, the earnings of persons with disabilities were frozen against inflation. That's in violation of the UN convention, which says people with disabilities shouldn't go backwards, that they should always go forward.

What would the federal government be able to do to that province to prevent that happening, if anything?

[Laurie Beachell]

Canada did ratify the convention, and did rather quickly do so. We do not as yet have the Government of Canada's first report to the United Nations. Having signed, they are obligated within two years to provide that report. We're still awaiting that.

Our disappointment here is that we do not have two things.

We do not seem to have a strategy for how we're going to move forward and use this document, in which people from around the world came together and said that this is the new vision, that this is the way forward. We don't seem to have a strategy. Yes, as new policy initiatives are going forward, we believe in some cases they're being measured against the convention, but we don't know that there's a strategy going forward.

The second thing is that in this convention it's different. It's the first that obligates governments to name a monitoring body, to name someone who will monitor that implementation. We had hoped that would be the Canadian Human Rights Commission, but that has not come about. There has been no naming of a monitoring body in Canada, and that monitoring body, according to the convention, must meet the Paris principles. The only body in Canada that would meet that would be the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

We continue to work with the commission, with departments and officials, hoping for some outcome of about eight years of work into language in the convention, and as yet we're not seeing that realized.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

The other power the federal government has, besides that convention, is the power to dole out money. They dole out significant numbers of dollars to the provinces and to individuals, to individuals in EI and CPP, and to the provinces generally in infrastructure money, in money that is spent on social transfers, on health transfers. But there are no strings attached to those transfers as far as disabled persons are concerned.

In fact, the most recent example is that the changes to the EI system, in my view, discriminate against persons with disabilities, because it takes them longer to find a job, and that seven weeks where you have to find a job that's lower in wages is not amended for a person with a disability. What I'm hoping the government will do is take the results of this committee and use them to look at their actions through a disability lens, to actually use the disability lens to make the Canada pension plan changes in Bill C-45 a positive change rather than a negative change. We still don't know what the results of that will be.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Chris Charlton]

Mr. Beachell, if you could respond in about a minute, that would be terrific.

[Laurie Beachell]

When it comes to Canada pension plan disability benefits, there have been some significant improvements over the years. Right now you can earn money. You can retain benefits. We have changed eligibility. If you made contributions for 25 years, you can get benefits. There are small incremental changes. You can go off the benefit and take work for two years and if, because of disability, you have to go back on, no questions are asked, and you go back on the benefit. CPPDB has done some significant work. The challenge is you have to have worked to be eligible.

That's the challenge with EI. EI has a real problem with those people who have episodic disabilities, mental health concerns, MS, those people who are well at periods of time in their life and can work, and then cannot work at certain times. They cannot establish eligibility. We can't find a way of doing benefits for EI. EI sickness benefits are only 15 weeks. We think they should be increased to recognize people with episodic disabilities, particularly people with mental health concerns who at points are in the labour force and at some points are out.

It is probably the challenge of insurable weeks. We base it on weeks rather than days.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Chris Charlton]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Shory.

[Devinder Shory, Conservative, Calgary Northeast, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, witnesses, for being here, and thank you for your hard work on this.

This is a moving file for me. When I was in my riding last week I visited an organization. I met a young man who would be about 22 years old. He told me his story. Most of his life he stayed on the street and had all kinds of issues, and mental health issues. Somehow he got involved in this organization. At present he is mentally stable and he is now able to work as a forklift operator. He is trained now.

I kept on thinking what other witnesses told us. There are 200,000-plus vacancies and almost 800,000 people with a disability who are able to work. There is some sort of disconnect. I wonder if in your organizations you have experienced gaining proper and appropriate employment for this kind of individual. If you have, how do you do it? The federal government could benefit from that input.

[Michael Bach]

Yes. We have experience with our local associations and other local agencies across the country. They're non-profit organizations run by community boards, and people with disabilities and family members often themselves. They're often contracted by provincial governments to deliver employment support services of one form or another. As I said before, that infrastructure needs a transformation because it's based on some really outmoded ideas in many cases that people with disabilities can't fully participate, that they may need a facility or day program where they can go and have some activities, etc.

There aren't effective partnerships between those community organizations and employers and employer councils. This piece keeps coming up, as I said, in the labour market panel, in the research. That community partnership, that community capacity is critical. I think it's important, as in other areas, that the federal government see that community capacity as integral to its goal to achieve an effective and inclusive labour market.

Those community organizations aren't simply instruments of the provinces. The federal government, it seems to me, needs a relationship with local communities in this country that can assist employers and those community organizations, put partnerships together to get people who have skills and opportunities into the labour market.

I think that's going to take a more targeted investment of the tools the federal government has under the labour market agreements for persons with disabilities and the labour market agreements. That means a targeted investment through those two federal instruments with some clear expectations to the provinces and territories for how those funds should be invested.

[Devinder Shory, Conservative, Calgary Northeast, AB]

The federal government has the opportunity to fund a program, for example to assist it and facilitate some of the programs. What other non-monetary programs or steps can the federal government take to basically encourage the employers? You mentioned some measures. What other steps should be taken by the federal government to look after this part??