Thank you very much. I'd like to say how much we appreciate the time the committee has given us.
My name is Sean Wiltshire. I am the CEO of Avalon Employment, and I'm the founding president of the Canadian Association for Supported Employment. I want to thank the committee members for their time in addressing an issue that can affect the productivity of Canada as a whole.
I want to start and probably finish, because I don't have very much time, with a quote from your own report. The Standing Committee on Human Resources and Skills Development for 2013 says that under-represented groups, including people with disabilities must be tapped to resolve some of the skill shortages in the Canadian economy.
I would now ask you to reference this quote:
Government must place a high priority on expanding meaningful employment opportunities for the disabled. Society can no longer tolerate the massive waste of human resources that is inherent in keeping the vast majority of disabled individuals on the unemployment lines.
This quote, ladies and gentlemen, was from the “Obstacles” report in 1980. Thirty-three years ago, we said the exact same thing.
I would like to reference comments from my colleague and friend, Joe Dale. He talked about subsidies. I would like to echo his comments. They don't always work in urban and rural areas. Many employers are looking for very different things, so we need the ability to be flexible.
I would also like to reference youth. Many people do not transition from school and they spend many years on income support programs before finding the right path to employment. As Joe said, finding a job while you're in school means getting a job when you're out of school.
If you're looking for other information on ways that you could find new employment, engage. Whether it be the Canadian Association for Supported Employment, the Canadian Down Syndrome Society, or individuals in their own right, everybody would have an idea on how to improve these systems, but the consultations that you're undertaking today and will be undertaking in the future are critically important to how programs are developed.
While the labour market development agreements have been devolved to the provinces, it's critically important that the federal government continue to stay very much involved in how those agreements are worded, what criteria are included, and how people are scored for success. The definition for success for every Canadian is different, but what we do know is that the inclusion of people in citizenship includes a real job with real pay in a real community.