Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to all the witnesses. You are giving us a lot of insight today; it's very important.
James, you seem to be a very intelligent and bright guy, so I'm sure you'll be an asset to whoever hires you once you finish your school. Good luck with that.
I think we all know how dire the situation is. About 50% of the nation's homeless are people with disabilities and about half of those who have to line up in the food lines and bread lines of this country are people with disabilities. So the situation for people with disabilities is very dire in this country, there is no doubt, in part, because of neglect. The solution, of course, as you have all pointed out, is putting into place the support networks that allow Canadians with disabilities to get the kind of gainful employment they need. That certainly would help them fully contribute to this country.
The problem seems to be the lack of supports in the workplace. I was part of a consortium that founded the Disability Employment Network in British Columbia. What we found is that people with disabilities would get to the job site, and as you mentioned, Ms. Hooper, it was supposedly an accessible building, but they couldn't get past the stairs; or there would be accessible washrooms in a non-accessible building; or an accessible building on the first floor, but no accessible washrooms. For deaf Canadians, there would be a lack of interpretation that would allow them to go through the job interview. So we put in place a variety of supports and were very successful.
This was a decade ago. A lot of those support programs have been eroded. The funding is simply not there.
I guess my question for all three of you, starting with you, Ms. Hooper, is this. How important is it to have in place those disability supports, those job accommodation supports that come from federal government funding so that we can provide that opportunity for employers really to see how interesting and exciting it is to hire a Canadian with disabilities? We know the loyalty is much higher and the turnover is much lower for Canadians with disabilities once they get the job. How important is it to have those supports in place that the federal government has neglected, to make sure they do get the job?