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.