Human Resources Committee on April 16th, 2013

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you very much for that presentation.

We'll now go to Mr. Wellar. Go ahead.

[Keenan Wellar, Co-Leader and Director of Communications, LiveWorkPlay]

Thank you very much.

I appreciate those comments. Ditto for much of that.

I will also echo the sentiment that we need to look at targeting those with the greatest barriers, recognizing that certain disability subgroups, such as people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, face more serious and severe attitudinal and systemic barriers. Those barriers are unlikely to be overcome in a significant way if we approach the employment of people with disabilities as though they are a homogenous group. They are not. They are very different individually, but also as groups, and sometimes the groups merge and are complicated.

My experience is as a local provider, not only of employment supports but of supporting people with intellectual disabilities to live, work, and play in the Ottawa community. Part of that is helping people find employment and helping employers welcome them to their workplaces. Through that experience, I've seen a lot of what works and what doesn't work, and that's what I'd like to talk about.

I'm also a volunteer with United Way Ottawa. I'm one of the first focus-area champions. I go out and speak about the advantages of hiring people with disabilities and promoting attitudinal change in that area.

With respect to employment, I just want to bring home some of the local context, because right now, within sight of this great building, down at the Westin, one of our LiveWorkPlay members is actually at work in the accounts department. To move a little bit west on O'Connor Street, we support an individual who runs a small business, where he works with Accenture. To go south on Bank Street to The Works Gourmet Burger Bistro, we have someone there right now helping out with the lunch rush. Just to give you some local perspective, that's what we do. They're real people right here in your local community.

We are a local organization with a local focus, but we try to inform our work by best practices from across the province, the country, and the world. Some of the gentlemen you had sitting here—in fact, right in this seat you had Mark Wafer, and you also had Cam Crawford—are people who I'm very familiar with. Again, I would echo many of their comments, so I'm grateful that I don't really need to bring that context. We need more Mark Wafers in Canada. Our country would be a much better place, and a better place for people with disabilities.

We also work with the Ontario Disability Employment Network. I know that Joe Dale testified here as well. We're quite aligned with those comments.

Locally, we're part of the Employment Accessibility Resource Network, hosted by United Way Ottawa. It's bringing together about 30 service providers and employers. I think it reflects well what the panel was saying in their report, not only about promoting the benefits of hiring people with disabilities but also about how to connect with people like ourselves who know these individuals, can connect with an employer, can help communicate the benefits, and can find the right job for the right person.

I see how fast time flies, so I'm going to skip ahead.

There's one thing I want to do. I know it's common to talk about best practices, but I want to talk a little bit about worst practices, because I think that's important. In these times when it's a constant dialogue of scarcity of resources, I think we can't only emphasize the positives. We have to look at where our resources are being used perhaps ineffectually or even in a regressive manner.

One of the things that certainly concerns us and our partner organizations is segregated and/or sub-minimum-wage work environments. In the field of developmental services, as it's labelled in Ontario, we see scarce government dollars continuing to flow to practices and activities that not only fail to support community inclusion but in fact create barriers and have regressive impacts. A lot of this is covered in the CACL report on achieving social and economic inclusion, where they note:

Although enrollments in sheltered workshops are slowly declining...segregated day programming and enclave based employment persist as a dominant model of support for this group in Canada. With below minimum wage compensation, they constitute a form of financial exploitation and social and economic exclusion with substantially lower quality of life outcomes....

This has certainly been our experience, having supported people who have been in these segregated situations and who perhaps have been told that it is because they do not have opportunities, a future, or a possibility in the real workforce. This has been proven wrong time and time again. The greatest barrier was in fact that message to them and to their family members that they would not have success with employment, so this segregated work-like arrangement was what's best for them.

I would note that in some ways the Government of Canada does support that practice by sometimes contracting with these agencies where basically you have a salaried staff member like myself who is supervising a bunch of people with disabilities who are being paid at a sub-minimum wage to perform a task. I would encourage looking internally at what goes on there and dealing with that, because it's wonderful that there's this talk about best practices, but I think leadership through demonstration is critically important.

Another worse practice—this is more of a fear I guess—is going forward again in a dialogue of scarcity. Sometimes there's a tendency toward one-size-fits-all. It sounds economically efficient. Let's send everybody with a disability who is looking for a job to the same place, and then we'll save on various costs.

The problem is that tends to incentivize the marginalization of those who are most difficult to serve because the metric by which performance of those career centres is usually measured is simply how many jobs. So it's not a one job equals one job situation. If you have a person with an intellectual disability who is in a group that is facing 75% or higher unemployment, and they get a job, that is a very different outcome from someone with a Ph.D. who sustained a workplace injury and has been supported to return to work. I'm not saying that is not important, just that it's very different. If you count those two things as the same outcome, then the most marginalized people are unlikely to benefit from that perspective.

Years ago a young man came to our office—actually his mother, but he was there too. She was in a rage because her son had been assessed by a career centre as having a 3 out of 100 score in employability. That is not a very good message to receive. Long story short, he has now been working for a TD bank locally here in Ottawa for more than a decade, has a full salary, pension, everything. That is obviously not the outcome nor the destination that had been determined for him through that initial assessment, so we need to be wary of that.

If we do have people going through the same door, we have to make sure through the other side that there are people who understand the particular needs of different disability groups and subpopulations because those are very specialized skills. What we do in terms of the work we do with employers and developing those relationships is not the same as helping someone prepare a resumé and look through job postings. That's one type of job support.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

I'm going to ask you to bring it to a conclusion.

[Keenan Wellar]

Sure.

Worse practice three is wage subsidies. The opportunities fund tends to require that people like ourselves would use wage subsidies in our program delivery, so that pretty much excludes us from being involved because we will not do that. It is not an effective practice for us. It gives the employer the message that the person is worth less than another person. They have to be used very carefully and not applied exclusively to people with disabilities.

On a positive note, I have provided a briefing of about 16 pages with many different positive stories from small businesses, franchises, and corporations that are all working effectively and employing people with intellectual disabilities because it's a good business case, and also because they believe that a workplace should reflect the communities around them.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you very much, and thank you for presenting your brief. It certainly contained a lot of information. It's an interesting perspective looking at ineffective and regressive practices as well. It's something we need to keep in mind.

Mr. Smith, go ahead.

[Frank Smith, National Coordinator, National Educational Association of Disabled Students]

Thank you very much for the opportunity to appear before the committee today to discuss the employment of persons with disabilities in Canada.

This is an important issue for our organization. It's of fundamental importance to the work that we do. Since its founding in 1986, the National Educational Association of Disabled Students has had the mandate to support full access to education and employment for post-secondary students and graduates with disabilities across Canada. We represent the more than 100,000 persons with disabilities studying in Canadian colleges and universities.

The organization is consumer-controlled and cross-disability-focused, and it responds in all the work that it does to the educational and employment needs of post-secondary students and recent graduates with disabilities, through a variety of projects, resources, research, publications, and partnerships. The organization is governed by a board of directors that represents all the provinces and territories. We are an autonomous organization, but we are also a member group of the Council of Canadians with Disabilities, the CCD.

We focus on three important areas for our constituents: student debt reduction, student experience in class and on campus, and student and graduate employment both after post-secondary education and while in school. Within the mandate we have, the organization functions collaboratively with post-secondary stakeholders, other non-governmental organizations, employers, disability service providers, and the various communities that improve opportunities in higher education and the workforce for persons with disabilities.

We as an organization provide ongoing expert advice to Human Resources and Skills Development Canada and to provincial and territorial governments. The association's primary activities include maintaining a website, which is fully accessible, and we have developed a financial aid portal, which is a unique resource.

Our financial aid portal includes comprehensive information on national, provincial, and territorial government funding programs offered, with around 350 disability-specific bursaries, scholarships, and awards, and on other funding sources through colleges and universities, private sector funders, and non-governmental organizations. We are trying to do our part to support information sharing on funding programs.

It is important to note that NEADS serves as a member of the Human Resources and Skills Development Canada national advisory group on student financial assistance, along with other stakeholder organizations, to advise the federal government on the Canada student loans program.

NEADS provides information referrals to hundreds of post-secondary students with disabilities through its national office each year. We also respond to requests for information and advice from employers, provincial and federal government departments, service providers, and faculty members—teachers on college and university campuses.

Since 2005, it's important to note, we have held 25 transition from school to work forums across Canada. These were first called “job search strategies” forums and were delivered through a funding partnership with BMO Capital Markets. In the last two years, we've been calling them “strategies to employment” events. These interactive conferences have included the participation of some 2,000 college and university students and graduates with disabilities, private sector employers, career professionals in the post-secondary community, employment agencies, and other non-governmental organizations.

More recently, through another private sector partnership, with Enbridge, we delivered a strategies to employment forum in Edmonton in 2012. In the last fiscal year we have also, with Service Canada funding, delivered employment or transition from school to work events in British Columbia—three events in British Columbia—and we partnered with a number of community organizations and the provincial government in Nova Scotia to help deliver the symposium on inclusive education and employment last December in Halifax, which attracted more than 300 delegates.

The other thing we're doing as an organization with respect to financial assistance is that we have our own national student awards program. It's important to note that this program, which receives funding from many private sector companies, has given out 57 scholarships of $3,000 to outstanding Canadian college and university students with disabilities in undergraduate, diploma, and graduate programs.

This program is funded by corporate supporters representing various sectors of the Canadian employment market. It is our hope that if a company gives out a scholarship to a student with a disability for outstanding academic and community achievements, that same employer may look to hire the scholarship recipient when they graduate.

In the past two years we have been engaged in a project to consult career and employment centre professionals who work at Canadian colleges and universities in order to find out how they support and accommodate students through their centres and what could be done to improve these centres as they serve the unique needs of this population. This career centres initiative has been funded by TD Canada Trust.

So we're trying to partner with a number of private sector companies and with employment agencies to do our work as an organization.

The recent federal report, “Rethinking disAbility in the Private Sector”, from the Panel on Labour Market Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities, identified an alarming statistic:

...of the 795 000 people with disabilities who could be – but aren’t – contributing to our economy, almost half (340 000) have post-secondary education.... These qualified, capable people can play an important role in filling the forecasted two-thirds of all jobs requiring higher education.

At the same time, the overall labour force participation rate for working-age adults with disabilities is around 60%, compared with around 80% for those without disabilities. Yet, according to the 2006 participation and activity limitation survey, persons with disabilities are better educated than in the past, and their educational profile is generally similar to that of those without disabilities. We notice, however, a slight decrease in the percentage of persons with disabilities who are acquiring certificates, degrees, or diplomas. It is 3% less than for the rest of the population. As well, persons with disabilities are more likely to possess an apprenticeship or trade certificate or diploma by 4%. Of course we know that there's a demand in the economy in the skilled trades.

About 14% of persons with disabilities had a university certificate, degree, or diploma, compared with about 20% of the total population. Additionally, 23% of persons with disabilities had less than a high school education, while 23% had some post-secondary level of education, equal to the level for the total population.

I note that in their earlier presentations to this committee, the Council of Canadians with Disabilities cited a series of relevant statistics pertaining to education rate, employment, and poverty. To quote the CCD brief:

For example, 28.7% of people with disabilities who don’t have a high school graduation certificate are in low-income households, compared with 14.2% of their counterparts without disabilities. The two to one spread in low income rates between people with vs. without disabilities is similar for people with a high school graduation certificate (20.2% vs. 11.1%), trades certificate or diploma (17.8% vs. 9.2%) and a college certificate or diploma (17.0% vs. 8.3%). However, the spread decreases where people with disabilities earn a degree, diploma or other certificate from a university. Here, 12.4% of people with disabilities and 8.2% without live on low incomes, a spread of 1.5 times instead of twice the rate of poverty.

These statistics are important.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

If I could get you maybe to wrap up, that would be great.

[Frank Smith]

It's important to stress as well that employment is an enshrined right through the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Canadian Human Rights Act. As Carmela Hutchison had mentioned, there are certain obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

I just want to mention a couple of examples here before I go to the recommendations. As with post-secondary access, those with the most difficulties within the system and the employment market are often folks with severe physical and episodic disabilities, those with mental health conditions, and deaf individuals. The high cost of sign language interpreters on one hand may discourage an employer—particularly a small private sector company—from hiring an otherwise job-ready person who's deaf.

On the other, an employee with an episodic disability, such as multiple sclerosis, may go through periods of relative health when they can work full-time, then have a relapse. In the post-secondary setting this might lead to a reduction in course load from full-time to part-time. On the job, this person may require adapted or reduced work schedules with a capacity to work remotely from home. Persons with mental illness may also require modified work arrangements. They may be reluctant to self-identify the disability for fear of poor treatment or stigmatization in the workplace.

I'm just going to move on quickly to the recommendations. I just want to acknowledge as well that in budget 2013 the government announced the extension of the labour market agreements for persons with disabilities, which we applaud, and that the opportunities fund and the enabling accessibility fund—two important programs delivered by HRSDC—have become permanent programs.

From our perspective there are a number of recommendations that we would make to the committee. The federal, provincial, and municipal governments should encourage the hiring, retention, and promotion of persons with disabilities across all sectors of the Canadian economy with the disability supports accommodations required to enable Canadians with disabilities to be successful in the workforce.

The federal government should strengthen support for post-secondary study through the Canada student loans program, particularly the Canada student grants and other measures such as repayment assistance for persons with disabilities after graduation.

The federal government should work with provincial and territorial partners to ensure that financial aid programs are working in concert to best support the post-secondary studies of students with disabilities. Such measures will increase post-secondary access and will ensure that disabled persons can compete in today's economy.

There are two more things. To reiterate a recommendation by the Council of Canadians with Disabilities, there should be a specific strategic investment or investments for youth with disabilities—that is, persons 18 to 30 years old—to support the transition from school to work so they don't become permanently detached from the labour market.

Finally, to also echo the CCD advice, the Government of Canada needs to develop a five-year strategic plan to address the employment needs of persons with disabilities in this country. We support the development, as does CCD, of a technical advisory committee made up of members of the national disability community to work towards the development of a strategic plan for the government with respect to employment and persons with disabilities.

Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you for that presentation.

We'll now go to Madame Perreault.

[Manon Perreault, NDP, Montcalm, QC]

I'd like to thank our witnesses for being with us today.

Of course, hello to Ms. Brayton.

Since I never have enough time to ask all the questions I'd like, I'm going to fire them all off and then let you answer them. I'll start with Mr. Smith.

You said earlier that reducing the course load of students with disabilities allowed them to study remotely, from home. I recently spoke with a student by the name of Stacy; she is studying communications. She told me that having that option in university, to some extent, put more distance between her and the labour market. She said it was even harder for her to find a job. Stacy still doesn't have a job today. It's got nothing to do with her education, and she's incredibly smart. But it's hard for her to find the same advantages she received as a student in the labour market.

I will now go to Ms. Hutchison.

We talked about women with disabilities. We agree that they are in a difficult situation. It was said that people with disabilities offer employers many benefits, including the fact that they are hardworking. However, you raised a few issues that we should perhaps come back to.

I would simply like to know this. What would you say if you could make just one recommendation to help women with disabilities enter the labour market?

I am going to digress for a moment. We talked about episodic illnesses, but I would also like to talk about women who, at some point in their life, had some sort of accident that forced them to leave the workforce for two or three years. What happens when those women want to return to the labour market? When people have two- or three-year gaps in employment on their resumes, they have an even tougher time finding work.

I'll hand the floor over to you on that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you, Madame Perreault. Obviously, you've learned from the first panel to put in all of your questions in the first round.

Go ahead. Who would like to start? Mr. Smith.

[Frank Smith]

I guess the question has to do with the difficulty of studying through distance education and not on campus. I agree with you on that. I think the objective is for all students to have full access to college and university programs on campuses where they can study, go into the classroom, interact with fellow students, and that sort of thing.

In the 27 years I've been with the organization I've seen a tremendous improvement in the level of services, accommodation, and supports on college and university campuses. There are a number of schools that are offering attendant care services. Carleton University, here in Ottawa, has a 24-hour attendant care service in residence. That's a rare type of program.

I think with the network of disability service centres at schools right across the country, the objective is to have those students attending and participating in post-secondary studies on campuses. There still is a value to distance learning and some people can't study otherwise, but I think that's not the objective we would have.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Ms. Hutchison, do you have a remark there? Go ahead.

[Carmela Hutchison]

Thank you.

Women with disabilities have a 75% unemployment rate. Every program that is servicing people with disabilities must have a gender focus. As well, the medium and sick term disability benefits for EI, as reflected in the Caledon institute report, particularly option two that I presented on in 2009, are also strategies that we embrace.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

There is still time left if you have any other questions, Ms. Perreault.

[Manon Perreault, NDP, Montcalm, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My question is simple. As the critic for persons with disabilities, I have the opportunity to meet with many of them, of course. Something came out during recent discussions with groups I was meeting with. People told me they were seen as good volunteers, but when they would apply for a job, it was a different story.

I'll give you an example. I met a woman who did accounting. She volunteered her accounting services for seven years. She, of course, had the skills and education necessary to do the job. When the time came to hire someone, they hired someone who was, quote unquote, normal, and I hate using that word.

She found that decision incredibly frustrating, because she had been volunteering her services. On top of not being paid, she felt as though her value was being diminished because she was good enough to volunteer but not good enough to be an employee.

And if the many organizations whose main mission is the employment of people with disabilities are anything to go by, more and more groups will make that their main focus. Have things really improved over the past few years?

Is my question clear?

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Would anyone wish to respond? Ms. Brayton.

[Bonnie L. Brayton]

Thank you, Ms. Perreault.

To be perfectly frank with you, there's been no improvement in the situation of women with disabilities. When you look at the figures, you see that that segment of the population still has the highest unemployment rate in Canadian society.

We're talking about, as Mrs. Hutchison said, 75% unemployment. No, things haven't improved. Until we have a solid strategic plan.....

Again, the CCD recommendations are something you've heard from all of us. We've been repeating over and over again that it's really critical that the government develop a strategic planning partnership with national disability organizations. This is not something that's a quick fix. This is not something that we can give you quick recommendations on. Fundamentally, what we're talking about is inclusion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you.

Mr. Mayes, go ahead.

[Colin Mayes, Conservative, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for being here today.

I'd like to direct my first question to Mr. Wellar. In your opening remarks you spoke of different disability groups—you used that term. The one thing that struck me is whether the programs out there today are disability-specific in their application. Do you see the need for a more specific target for programs for people with certain disabilities? Are there any success stories you could provide as a framework for future initiatives for the government to take that would be supporting that?

[Keenan Wellar]

Thank you very much for your question.

Yes, there are obviously many different disability subgroups. Ideally we're going to arrive at a point in our society where not only is disability not a factor—we're all just citizens—but we're not going to have these subgroups. Right now, though, you can't discuss employment of people with disabilities without realizing that you're also discussing human rights and discrimination.

There are certain groups historically that are just now approaching the start of citizenship. People with intellectual disabilities are one of those groups. They're just starting to live in our neighbourhoods. They're just starting to shop and work and travel in our communities. Within that context, it's quite different providing employment supports to such an individual. Not only will there be different attitudinal barriers, but they will have different ways of thinking about work. Most likely those entering working age have not had, for example, summer job experience, or perhaps did not even go through school with the idea that they will one day have a job.

As a provider, a lot of our work starts with that, with “Yes, you can work”, as opposed to maybe a career centre where what qualifies someone to be seeking a job is a long resumé and these sorts of things. For us, what qualifies them is “I want to work”. We operate on that basis. I think that's why you see these differences. It kind of depends on where you are on that whole developmental spectrum as a person with a disability, and on where you are in that human rights scale.

I'm sorry, what was the second aspect of your question?

[Colin Mayes, Conservative, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Are there existing programs, or have you put together some programs, that have provided some guidance for the government in terms of being more specific with regard to the funding or programming?

[Keenan Wellar]

Sure. I think the Ontario Disability Employment Network—it was Joe Dale who testified here—would have some excellent examples of that. They are providers like ourselves, but they have a collection of these stories. We have some excellent local stories we can certainly share, but there you'll find a lot of best practices. There will be a lot of commonality throughout those.

A lot of it will have to do with the fact that we look at it as developing a relationship with employers. For us, it's not so much about searching job postings and fitting a candidate. There's often a lot of work to be done in developing a relationship with an employer who has said specifically, “We believe in a diversified workplace here, and we realize that we have excluded this group to some degree, or even completely, so we have chosen to work with you to change that.”

[Colin Mayes, Conservative, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

I just want to commend all of you for the work you do. I have an older sister who has a disability. I can recall as a 16-year-old driving her and two other ladies to a workshop. It was interesting, because one of the ladies had actually been kept in the attic in her home for most of her younger years. There was a stigma around having a child with a disability.

So we have come a long way. Our government, by taking the initiative to do this study, shows that we want to go further and be more inclusive. I think we should be commended on that rather than criticized for not doing enough. There are limited funds, but we're looking at ways that we can communicate to business, to organizations, about the opportunity to hire people with disabilities and make it a more inclusive society.

I would like to direct a question to all of you with regard to communication. I appreciated the example of Enbridge and what they're doing. Is there an initiative that you have taken forward to business corporations or groups that could influence awareness of the opportunity that people would have?

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

We'll conclude with those responses in terms of Mr. Mayes' time.

Go ahead.