Thank you for welcoming us to your standing committee. We are from the L'Arche Ottawa community and we wish to contribute to this dialogue on employment from the perspective of people with developmental disabilities.
L'Arche is an international organization founded by Canadian Jean Vanier. It has over 130 communities around the world. Each community supports people with and without developmental disabilities in live-in home models. This of course includes supporting people in day programs and work environments.
L’Arche’s conviction is that every person with a developmental disability who wants a job should have access to meaningful work. People with developmental disabilities have demonstrated that they can be valuable employees when they are given the chance. The following stories will illustrate how people with developmental disabilities contribute to the workforce across Canada.
Our first example is here in Ottawa. It will illustrate how the federal government directly participates in creating jobs for people with developmental disabilities. The Ottawa-Carleton Association for Persons with Developmental Disabilities, OCAPDD, is a local agency. Part of its holistic vision is to provide meaningful work for people.
Ten years ago a tripartite agreement was made between the federal government, the Ontario government, through the Ministry of Community and Social Services, and OCAPDD to maintain and sustain an employment program that was created over 30 years ago at the National Archives. The work program at the National Archives is to destroy confidential government documents that are no longer needed. Sixty people with developmental disabilities working full-time and part-time are remunerated with a per-hour training allowance from the contract with the federal government, and the three full-time staff wages are funded by the provincial government.
Now we'll take a bird's-eye view of work opportunities in large communities in Canada.
We'll go to Winnipeg. The L'Arche community there operates the Tova Cafe. This cafe is based on a social enterprise model that provides daytime employment. The cafe offers a bistro-style menu to the general public, and also includes catering and take out. This inclusive model of employment provides not only a pleasant atmosphere, but also a place of hope both for people with developmental disabilities and their parents who may feel socially isolated and rejected in society.
Moving to Toronto, L'Arche Daybreak operates a woodery housed in a renovated barn. People with developmental disabilities work to make surveying and horticultural stakes as well as other wood products for commercial, industrial, and residential applications.
Going across the river to Quebec, the L'Arche community in Gatineau provides a work day program called Jouets d'arc-en-ciel. Here people with developmental disabilities collect, wash, and disinfect toys from a local daycare. In all aspects of the program, from the work itself to the decisions taken, people with disabilities participate.
Jim Cassidy is here with us today. He's a member of L'Arche Ottawa and he works at the Loeb Centre. Jim, tell us what you do at the Loeb Centre for work.