Human Resources Committee on April 16th, 2013

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

It's my first chance to thank you personally, on the level I'd like to, regarding the report that you worked so diligently on and brought forward. It truly was an inspiration.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I have a motion in front of Parliament to take some next steps. I am under no illusions that we're going to change the world overnight, but we need to elevate this even further, and the opportunity is there. I'm also a 25-year business person. I owned my own company and employed 20 people before I got into politics in 2008, and I have a 26-year-old son who is intellectually challenged.

I suppose this is directed to you, Mark, more than anyone else, but anyone else, please weigh in on it. Now that you know the background, the essence of my questioning really is about the pragmatics of a business person who doesn't really understand the dynamics and understand that there is a business case for this. I'm a former Rotarian as well, so I'm aware of your work within Rotary, and the business champion model appeals very much to me, peer to peer.

Certainly government has a role to play with supports, as we are doing generally for the unemployed through, most recently, the Canada job grant that we came forward with, and possibly with some future initiatives that would enhance that for persons with disabilities. I'm not sure that's in the cards from the government's point of view, but I'm just kind of daydreaming or dreaming a bit here about how we attack this, from a government point of view.

More from the small and mid-sized business point of view, Mark, what's the importance of a mentoring program within your company? When someone arrives that you'd like to hire, that you'd like bring into your workforce, how important is it that there be someone within the company—in my case, I was in construction so it would be someone like a carpenter—who would mentor his assistant who might be a person with a disability? How important is that in practical terms?

[Mark Wafer]

It's actually very important and there are a number of reasons for that. One of the things that we've discovered over the years is that people who have disabilities, when they get out of school—even if they came out of university—are lacking in soft skills. When they come into the workforce, whether it's a minimum wage job like my business, or Deloitte, there's going to be extra mentoring required, not just for the job but for life skills. In fact, we were just talking about this before we came in, and we had a couple of funny stories about it. It is definitely something that every company should set up in some way. It's not something that needs to be formal and it's not something that needs to be costly.

Mentoring works in many different ways. Eight of my 36 employees who have a disability happen to have an intellectual disability. They don't necessarily need mentoring, but they definitely need coaching. That's where the relationship with the community becomes crucial. When I bring in a new employee who has come from a community-living organization or something similar, my expectation is that the job coaches and the job developers will develop a relationship with me that is ongoing. This way, these people can act as my consultants. They will be experts who will come in and help me to get through whatever the issue is, whether it's related to work, the home, or the disability.

Mentoring is good but I will caution that there are too many companies out there that use mentoring for free labour. We have to be very cautious of that. Take a person coming out of university with an M.B.A. who happens to be in a wheelchair. Getting him job experience is very important because he probably doesn't have anything on his resumé. He probably didn't have a paper route or work at Tim Hortons. He has a blank resumé. So having him work in a company that has a mentoring program can be very beneficial and important, but there have to be start and end dates. We can't have people in mentoring situations that go on forever, because that's free labour.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

I'm glad you made the bridge to coaching. You spoke of community partners, which I would assume are organizations within the community. I know you were recently in Brantford and spoke with Lisa Hooper, who runs her own little business. She's doing that as a private enterprise, as an entrepreneur. We've been focusing in the past on certain directions for funding. Do you see this as the most helpful way the government can use our resources? Is the coaching function something that's available to you when you need it?

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you, and we will conclude with your response.

[Mark Wafer]

Yes, that is absolutely crucial.

The cornerstone of my success in hiring people with disabilities has been community partners. There are nuances that come with hiring a person with a disability. Every disability is different. Every disability is a spectrum. It can be a little challenging sometimes for a business owner. Community partners are experts, so we need them to be in there.

We have talked to the Ontario government many times about how it should work, what the standards should be, and what we should do with organizations that don't have very high standards. There have been some issues where we tried to raise the standard level of community partners so that they can meet the needs of business owners. One of the key areas where government can really help is to fund these agencies so they can be successful. In Ontario, for example, we just removed some of the funding for pre-work training. Pre-work training happens to be extremely important for a person who has an intellectual disability. You can't just take a person with an intellectual disability, drop him into a Tim Hortons, and tell him to go to it. There are areas of resources where the government can be very beneficial.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you very much for that comment.

We'll move to Mr. Andrews. Go ahead.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Welcome to our guests.

I want to follow the same line as Phil. As you know, one of the biggest obstacles for people with disabilities is the lack of job experience. How do they get that job experience so they can get good jobs?

I'm curious, because I know in Newfoundland and Labrador we have the opening doors program. I assume that other provinces have similar programs. From your experience, when people go through these programs in the provincial government and try to get a job in the private sector, does it help them? Do these programs deliver the work experience they need in the private sector?

[Mark Wafer]

That's a difficult question. I would say not really. There are some very good programs out there whereby people with disabilities have had mentoring that has led to full-time work or to a job or pre-training—whatever you want to call it. After a 20- or 25-week program, the candidate then comes back to square one. You're still faced with getting into the private sector. You're still faced with CEOs and HRs who are still going to be buying into their myths and misperceptions. That's the greatest barrier. We have to fix that first, and that's going to take education. The government can definitely help in that regard. We have to remove those barriers first.

Training is a great idea: coaching, mentoring, training, pre-training, whatever the case. Absolutely it's going to help, but it's not going to help them get into a job because you're still going to have that barrier of myths and misperceptions.

[Kenneth Fredeen]

Mr. Chairman, if I could, I'll comment on that question as well.

Again, I think we learned from the private sector we consulted that there's a real interest in doing that type of thing—coaching, mentoring, internships—to allow people with disabilities to gain access to experiences that others get naturally. Those programs do exist, and they were interested in doing more of them. I think you have to look at it holistically.

The other thing is that—and maybe this isn't quite on the point you were talking about, but I think it's important—everybody in this room is going to be a person with disabilities at some point. Certainly, as the workforce ages, as mandatory retirement no longer exists, you will need to learn how to be better at creating an inclusive workplace. To that point, what's different? I think it's natural. I think there are a lot of things moving at the moment that will create a different scenario for employers. That requires them then to look beyond, into such things as coaching and mentoring, where they are already involved.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Kenneth, you mentioned four best practices. Could you explain a little more about best practices, how we compile them, and then how we ask people to use them?

[Kenneth Fredeen]

It's difficult to ram something like this down somebody's throat. This is something where I think education is hugely important. I think more collaboration by the various groups involved—in particular, employers taking a lead, which is going to happen through this newly funded employers' network—is going to be very important for employers to develop best practices around training, around approaches that can occur.

We learned there isn't a great cost in terms of accommodation. It's simply opening your mind to possibilities that you wouldn't have thought of before. Usually there's no cost to accommodate 57% of the people who are disabled. The rest of the cost is $500, on average. It's a small investment. I think it's really around education.

Again, I think employers listen to employers. When they see success in business coming from hiring people with disabilities, others are going to want to know how they can do that, how it works, and share best practices. When you do that, you'll simply ratchet up the best practices that employers will employ.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

You have a few seconds left. I think it would be great to conclude with Mr. Crawford. Certainly, I think Mr. Wafer as a businessman has indicated some of the benefits. When you hear a businessman speaking to a businessman, you certainly understand where they can take their business.

Mr. Crawford, could you conclude with your response?

[Cameron Crawford]

I have two responses in terms of whether or not programs work.

Programs are often played broadly in terms of how they're designed. They're created to create incentives and wiggle room for an array of organizations to do all kinds of things. I believe there was an evaluation done in Newfoundland and Labrador a couple of years ago on several organizations that have been involved in the kind of work that you raise the question about. The result, as I recall in the research, was that it depends. It depends on the organization and how they're structured, their organizational culture, the skill of the staff, and their values. There are a lot of ingredients that can lead some organizations to be more effective at getting people with disabilities embedded in the local economy than other organizations.

In terms of who does the work as an employer, employers have many levels. You have the CEO, the owner, the manager, people working in human resources, and so on. A person going out and being like a champion is one thing and it gets people established in a comfort level. You can get some informal connections and maybe some questions answered. In terms of where the rubber really hits the road, sometimes it's people who are focusing more on the personnel in an organization that really understands how that works.

An idea that we floated at the Roeher Institute a number of years ago was to make it possible for people working in organizations that are doing a good job at helping to integrate disabled workers and keep them there once employed, to get out and share that knowledge with other people in business. In order to do that it means that whoever runs the company has to free that person up. The thought was that perhaps some funding could be there for organizations to enter into that sort of altruistic work to help their other labour market partners do a better job of integrating people. It's just one idea.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you, Mr. Crawford.

Did you wish to go ahead, Mr. Daniel? We'll conclude with your questioning.

[Joe Daniel, Conservative, Don Valley East, ON]

Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, witnesses, for being here.

My question is in two parts. One part is that we see a lot of focus on all the research on the disabled folks, and that's wonderful. But in Canada over 80% of all the businesses are small businesses. So, Mr. Wafer, the exemplary work that you're doing with disabled folks is phenomenal, but we have over half a million small businesses in Canada. We need to get that message of employing people with disabilities to those.

Apart from your going out to all the businesses across Canada, which will be quite an exercise, how else can we as a federal government assist in getting the message across that disabled people play an important role in our society and can contribute particularly well?

I'll ask my second question before I run out of time. Have you looked at any for-profit social enterprises that focus on disabled people creating their own businesses and actually employing disabled people through that process?

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

All right.

Kenneth, go ahead.

[Kenneth Fredeen]

Maybe I'll just add a couple of comments and let Mark weigh in.

We consulted with the Small Business Association when we started and we're going to go back and meet with them again, and Mark will be in tow with me when I do that. Small business is a huge employer. They have advantages and disadvantages in terms of hiring people with disabilities. We'll talk about the advantages for their business in doing it. Again, it's an education thing. Large businesses have advantages but they also have disadvantages. A lot of it comes from the top in terms of it being driven top-down into the organization. You need to see that leadership. When you're a small business owner you are that leadership and you can choose to make it work, just as Mark has done.

The second question is around social innovation. That's one of the things that's changing right now. When you take technology, opportunities to collaborate in ways that haven't occurred before, and the globalization of the economies, all of these things lead to great opportunities for people with disabilities in ways that didn't exist before. We didn't do consultations into that sector but that's one of the growth areas for this group.

[Mark Wafer]

First of all, education is going to be massive. If you look at all the people with disabilities who are participating in the workforce today, only 7% are working for large corporations, 93% are working for small to medium-sized businesses, and there are significant reasons for that.

If you look at a bank, for example, a Canadian bank can have 100,000-plus employees. The CEO and the senior executive, they do get it. They don't always get it for the right reason, but they do get it, because it comes back on them from a society point of view. The bank manager on the street corner, he gets it, because people with disabilities are using his bank, so he hires people who have disabilities, somebody who may be deaf or somebody who is in a wheelchair. But there are 96,000 employees in the middle and they are the people I call the permafrost because they are the ones who are very hard to change. Education is going to be key.

Like Ken says, if you are a small-business owner like me, I make all the decisions. I can make a decision today and have everything changed tomorrow, whereas BMO and TD, they make a decision today, and it's like turning the Titanic around. It's three years before they even get started.

[Cameron Crawford]

On social enterprise, it's interesting that community economic development is an area of activity where people take control of their own economic destinies, and yet people with disabilities have really not been on the radar in a major way. Arguably, that would be something where government could pay some attention and try to foster the involvement of disabled people in community economic development initiatives.

On the social enterprise front, there is support for that kind of thing in Quebec. I forget the names of the organizations, but quite a few of them do employ disabled people, not as the only folks who are working but as a significant contingent of the people who are working within the organization. They do work that has kind of a green or a social justice edge to it, but it is a business and they make money.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you. This may be a good place for us to stop.

Thank you very much for your valuable and informative responses, and for taking the time to share your views and valuable insights with us. We'll certainly take that into consideration.

We'll suspend now to hear from the second panel.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

If I could, I'll call the meeting to order and have members take their seats. We have three groups that will be sharing with us today, so we do want to get started for sure.

We have here with us Bonnie Brayton, who I've met with previously, and Carmela Hutchison from DisAbled Women's Network Canada, DAWN. We also have with us Keenan Wellar from LiveWorkPlay, and Frank Smith from the National Educational Association of Disabled Students.

With that, we'll start with the presentations.

Bonnie, are you going to start to present, or is it going to be Carmela?

We will start with Ms. Hutchison and her presentation. Go ahead.

[Carmela Hutchison, President, DisAbled Women's Network of Canada]

Thank you very much.

I want to acknowledge the territorial lands of the Algonquin peoples that we share here today.

Thank you for having us.

I'm going to start with recommendations because experience has led me to believe that is the most important thing, so we'll start there and amplify from there.

DAWN Canada's specific recommendations for employment and for women with disabilities is as follows. First off, priority across all programs must give priority to women who, as you will hear today, have the highest rates of unemployment. Within our population we understand that immigrant, racialized first nations and aboriginal women are experiencing triple discrimination.

Affordable child care is an issue for every parent in this country and for women with disabilities in particular. We must address this as part of a broader national child care strategy.

Disability supports that make employment possible, including deaf interpreters, deaf readers, home supports, and attendant care must also be provided in order to support the role of women in the workplace. Income support programs for women with disabilities must be enhanced, flexible and transferable. EI sick benefits, in particular, represent a key support for women with disabilities who represent a significant majority of people suffering from episodic illness. Women with breast cancer deserve income supports throughout their treatment.

I refer you to a longer discussion of EI benefits and disabled women presented to Status of Women Canada on March 12, 2009, in which I commented and drew quite heavily on a report of the Caledon Institute of Social Policy.

Finally, accessible and affordable transportation is essential to successful workplace participation.

To begin, I did take a bit of a look at some of the previous testimony and tried to also address some questions that I felt didn't, perhaps, have a full answer. One of them in particular was the definition of “disability”. The Council of Canadians with Disabilities, when they developed their bylaws, actually took the preamble and article 1, basically recognizing that people with disabilities face attitudinal barriers. That's part of the preamble. Then the piece from article 1, paragraph 2 , talks about the fact that people with disabilities have physical or mental impairments that make it difficult for them to participate in daily life. So those two together comprise what we feel is the best definition, even though no true, established definition of “disability” exists.

Going from there on the issues facing women with disabilities in Canada, the social determinants of health have enormous impact on the economic prospects of women with disabilities. Canada lists 11 determinants of health: income and social status, social support networks, education and literacy, employment and working conditions, physical and social environment, biology, genetic endowment, personal health practices, and culture. We recommend that transportation be added as well to the determinants of health. Further to that, specific to people with disabilities, disability supports are absolutely essential for women with disabilities to maintain their health and should be added as a social determinant as well.

Much of the data available is not current because the participation and activity limitation survey, the survey of labour and income dynamics, and the long-form census data are no longer being collected. This needs to be urgently addressed in order to increase our understanding of how policies and practices are working, or often not working.

A new product has been developed but is not yet providing any data sets that inform policy, and we're not quite sure how that's going to compare backwards to the other data. The Panel on Labour Market Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities provides important insights but does not provide a real strategic plan that maps our future.

By far, the highest rates of unemployment and lowest levels of income belong to women with disabilities, regardless of age, of any population in this country. It is estimated that currently more than 3 million working-age Canadians have a disability and that disability is much more common among older Canadians. Of course, women living longer means that we're more likely going to be in that aging and disabled category. I know I'm certainly looking at that as I get a little snow on the roof and notice further changes to my own disability.

There was an observation that there was a desire to fund employment, but there has also not been a consistent, sustained effort in terms of employment of people with disabilities. We notice that the BUILT Network, which was a very successful program of the National Network for Mental Health, was not funded in 2008-09. The opportunities fund also has had many cuts to it. Notably, Opportunity Works in Calgary, where I live, was not funded through regional OF funding.

Also, when DisAbled Women's Network of Canada revitalized itself in 2006, we were funded for violence against women with disabilities and for the exploration of housing. But the third strategic priority, which was employment, was also not funded. This is really important for policy decisions to come out. If there is a goal of actually sustaining employment for people with disabilities, the money has to follow those initiatives.

Basically, there are also restrictive program requirements that were referred to you. People are not eligible for EI. This was a real problem in the BUILT Network program. If people had some labour force attachment and had EI eligibility, or they had long-term disability eligibility, then they were excluded from the program. Some of those people with previous labour force attachment should have also been given some equal opportunities to build up their employability.

There are lots of programs that are only for people with intellectual disabilities, or only for people with psychiatric disabilities. Again, if the programs are restrictive, it can be hard, especially when a person has more than one disability, which might cause them to be excluded.

Even in treatment of people with disabilities, while I do not work at paid employment I was not allowed brain injury rehabilitation because I had a mental illness. I also was denied access to any rehabilitation because I had too many things wrong with me. I couldn't even get a functional assessment at Foothills hospital. That situation has not changed.

People with episodic and chronic illnesses often do not have enough time to qualify for benefits. There's a lack of flexible supports for chronic illnesses not deemed severe enough. Very often we see people who are struggling to maintain employment while undergoing cancer treatment, or they have MS and again they're struggling. If they take a lighter schedule, then their funding for their disability is cut to that lighter schedule. Other people have talked about being considered too disabled for one program or not disabled enough for another.

On the UN convention and the collective responsibility of upholding it for public, corporate, and private citizens, we also refer to article 6 on women, article 27 on work and employment, article 32 on monitoring, and 32(b) on the enhancement of community organizations to monitor.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

If you could bring your report to a conclusion, I'd appreciate it.

[Carmela Hutchison]

Yes.

Basically articles 6, 16, and 28 are all addressing issues related to women with disabilities and sustaining their employability.

We're very grateful for the opportunity to present, and would like to express our willingness to serve as a resource to the Government of Canada in order to achieve equality for all Canadians through addressing the issues of women and girls with disabilities. Thank you.