I think the fear is always that if you actually were to have government set targets, there'd be some kind of punitive consequence, whereas I think a lot of the challenge is that people don't think the labour pool is big enough for them to be able to meet those targets.
I think that is a mistaken impression. Again, the awareness piece is just so important.
I want to follow up with respect to subsidies. I don't expect any of you to say, “Oh, no, we would turn our back on subsidies, and really we wouldn't want any money if the government were giving it to us”, because I'm sure you'd all gladly accept it.
There are challenges sometimes with subsidies. As I heard from people in my riding, there was a subsidy from the provincial government to hire people with disabilities. It was a subsidy for one year on the assumption that someone would be fully trained up after one year, and therefore the subsidy would no longer be needed.
What happened is that the office became a revolving door. They would hire somebody with a disability for a year, turf them out, and then get a new subsidy for the new hire.
So in thinking about subsidies, I think it's really important that it be about not just getting somebody into the job. We need to talk about retention, not just recruitment.
I wonder whether particularly you, Ms. Ramseyer, have any thoughts on what kind of subsidy you were envisioning when you raised the topic.