Evidence of meeting #112 for Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was within.

A video is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Carla Qualtrough  Minister of Public Services and Procurement and Accessibility
John Barlow  Foothills, CPC
James Van Raalte  Director General, Accessibility Secretariat, Department of Employment and Social Development
Gordie Hogg  South Surrey—White Rock, Lib.
Erik Lapalme  Senior Policy Analyst, Accessibility Secretariat, Department of Employment and Social Development
Kerry Diotte  Edmonton Griesbach, CPC

8:50 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Bryan May

Good morning. Welcome to the committee's first meeting on Bill C-81, An Act to ensure a barrier-free Canada. The objective of today's meeting is to start the committee's study on the bill. We will begin this process today as we are joined by the Minister of Public Services and Procurement and Accessibility and her officials.

Bear with me, I've got a bit of a preamble here. I'd like to take a moment to remind both those participating in the proceedings as well as those observing the proceedings of the committee in person and on video that the committee adopted a motion on September 18 that included instructions for the clerk to explore options to allow for the full participation of all witnesses and members of the public on this study.

As a result, the committee has made arrangements to make all meetings in relation to the study of Bill C-81 as accessible as possible in a variety of ways. This includes providing sign language interpretation and near real-time closed captioning in the room. Please note that both American Sign Language and Quebec Sign Language are being offered to those in our audience. The sign language interpreters in the room are also being videorecorded for eventual broadcast of the meeting on ParlVU via the committee's website.

In light of these arrangements, the committee would ask that if you need to leave the room during the meeting, please do not walk in front of the sign language interpreters. Instead, please use the extremities of the room. In addition, we would ask that those in the room remain seated as much as possible during the meeting so that everyone in the audience can clearly see the sign language interpretation.

Finally, if a member of the audience requires assistance at any time, please notify a member of the staff or the committee clerk.

Thank you very much, everybody, and without further ado, I would like to welcome the Honourable Carla Qualtrough, Minister of Public Services and Procurement and Accessibility, as well as James Van Raalte, director general of the accessibility secretariat, and Erik Lapalme, senior policy analyst, accessibility secretariat.

Welcome to all of you, and Minister, I believe you have some remarks. The next 10 minutes are all yours.

8:50 a.m.

Carla Qualtrough Minister of Public Services and Procurement and Accessibility

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for your intentional and deliberate efforts and success at making these committee meetings inclusive and accessible for everyone. I know that the members of the disability community certainly appreciate it, as do I.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for inviting me here today to present Bill C-81, an act to ensure a barrier-free Canada, the accessible Canada act.

It was an honour to stand up in the House of Commons two weeks ago and open debate for this proposed act. The bill, should it be enacted, will allow for the identification, removal and prevention of barriers that keep all Canadians from participating in society. Bill C-81 would significantly transform how Canada addresses accessibility. It would allow us to become proactive instead of reactive. It would allow for a fundamental shift in the way the Government of Canada does business.

We need to ensure equality for all from the start. It's time for broad organizational and cultural change. There is no reason to wait for people to be discriminated against before we act. We know discrimination exists. We know that over 50% of the complaints to the Canadian Human Rights Commission are on the basis of disability.

Canadians with disabilities deserve better, to be valued as civic, social and economic contributors to Canadian society with the full rights of citizenship.

An incredible amount of dedicated work and public consultation went into the drafting of this bill. We heard from over 6,000 individuals and organizations from all across the country.

This extensive consultation allowed us to better understand the needs of the disability community.

We came to the conclusion that policies and practices currently in place simply do not adequately take into account the barriers faced by Canadians with disabilities in their day-to-day lives. Canadians with disabilities do not want to be treated as a burden, but as full, equal members of society. They should have the same rights and the same opportunities as everyone else, and accessibility is about addressing the barriers created by society that prevent people with disabilities from enjoying their human rights on an equal basis with others.

Bill C-81 will lead to the establishment of accessibility standards in the areas of employment, the built environment, information and communication technologies, the delivery of programs and services and transportation. It will apply to Parliament, the Government of Canada, crown corporations and federally regulated entities, including organizations in the transportation, telecommunications, broadcasting and banking sectors.

Thanks to Bill C-81, Canadians with disabilities, who are valued and contributing members of society, would have greater opportunities to participate in their communities and in the workplace. It would make it easier for them to get a job and stay in that job, to travel, to communicate with friends and family, and to access products, programs and services on an equal basis with others.

Bill C-81 would create a framework and new organizations for developing accessibility standards, establishing and enforcing accessibility requirements, and monitoring implementation. It would establish the Canadian accessibility standards development organization, or CASDO, in order to create standards that work for both industry and the disability community.

The majority of CASDO board members would have lived disability experience. Once accessibility standards are developed, they would need to be adopted into regulations by the Government of Canada to become law. Standards would change over time with changes in technology and best practices. Having standards in regulations, rather than in the proposed act, would mean they can be updated more readily to reflect these changes.

Our intention is to allow the government to move more quickly to improve accessibility by adopting recognized and established standards that have been developed and validated by technical experts, industry and people with disabilities.

What would all this mean for Canadians with disabilities? An example I like to use involves the accessibility of a bank ATM for a person with a visual impairment. In our current system, if a customer is blind and can't use the ATM and this isn't addressed by the bank, the person would need to file a discrimination complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission. Once a decision was made—and this could be years later—in favour of the complainant, it would be applicable only to the specific ATM in question and not to all banks and certainly not all ATMs across the board.

To compare this with what the scenario would look like under the proposed legislation, it would be CASDO— through a technical committee comprising persons with a disability, industry representatives and technical experts—that would define the standards for accessible ATMs. The standard would then come to the minister of accessibility for adoption through the regulatory process, after which time the regulation would apply to all banks in Canada. The accessibility commissioner would monitor compliance with the regulation and would have the ability to impose monetary penalties if the banking sector was not adhering to the regulation.

This example shows how this important change in framework and process shifts the burden from the individual to the system and also allows for a more comprehensive and consistent application of accessibility within areas of federal jurisdiction.

This is a very tangible example of how this legislation will positively impact Canadians.

The proposed legislation would require organizations to think about how to integrate accessibility into their day-to-day operations. However, there may be circumstances, albeit exceptional, in which it would be appropriate for a regulated entity to be exempted from certain requirements under Bill C-81.

For example, it may be appropriate to exempt, on a case-by-case basis, a small business, because it might be more productive for this organization to focus its resources and efforts where it can have the biggest impact on accessibility.

To ensure transparency and accountability, the exempting authority—the designated minister, the CRTC or the CTA—would be required to make exemptions public by publishing them in the Canada Gazette.

The bill also provides real teeth to ensure meaningful and lasting change among organizations under federal jurisdiction. Compliance, enforcement and complaints would be processed through the accessibility commissioner, with the exception of those under the jurisdiction of the CRTC, the CTA and the Federal Public Service Labour Relations and Employment Board.

This model builds on existing sector-based mandates for the purposes of efficiency and takes advantage of accessibility experience and expertise. Bill C-81 includes provisions for a "no wrong door" approach to ensure collaboration and coordination across organizations for efficient and expeditious referral of accessibility-related complaints.

If passed, this legislation will also be a significant step in Canada's ongoing implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, to which Canada is a proud state party. Once Bill C-81 receives royal assent, the Canadian Human Rights Commission would become responsible for monitoring the Government of Canada's implementation of the convention.

Make no mistake. There is still a lot to be done to create a Canada without barriers and it's imperative to do things right from the get-go. As proposed, the legislation includes a number of foundational elements. It's anticipated that new organizations such as the Canadian accessibility standards development organization, CASDO, the accessibility commissioner and the chief accessibility officer would be up and running within six to 12 months of the legislation coming into force and that the first set of regulations under the legislation would come into force in 2020-21.

I'm being told to slow down.

How will Canadians know that organizations are taking steps to improve accessibility? Under Bill C-81, regulated entities would be required to prepare and publish accessibility plans in consultation with persons with disability. These plans would describe the organizations' strategies for improving accessibility and meeting their legal obligations. The organizations would also have to establish feedback processes on their accessibility from employees and members of the public, and prepare and publish annual progress reports on the implementation of their plans.

Moreover, a new position, called the “chief accessibility officer”, would be established. The person appointed to this role would be responsible for monitoring and reporting on the overall outcomes achieved by the act and in respect of systemic and emerging accessibility issues.

These measures would allow for Canadians to monitor progress on accessibility and the implementation of Bill C-81 in a very transparent manner.

If adopted, Bill C-81 will bring broad organizational and cultural change.

Through the creation and enactment of new accessibility standards, new planning and reporting requirements, and strong proactive enforcement tools, Bill C-81 will lead to greater accessibility for everyone in Canada, especially persons with disabilities.

Bill C-81 would set a standard worthy of Canadians and Canada's place in the world.

Thank you. I would be happy to answer questions, and I promise to speak more slowly.

9 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Bryan May

Thank you.

I apologize. We were trying to get a note passed to you through your parliamentary secretary.

9 a.m.

Minister of Public Services and Procurement and Accessibility

Carla Qualtrough

I don't do well with visual clues. I apologize.

9 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Bryan May

I'll have to add that to my already long preamble.

9 a.m.

Minister of Public Services and Procurement and Accessibility

Carla Qualtrough

Be slow, in respect of the interpreters. I get that, and I do apologize.

9 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Bryan May

Yes. We do have the unique scenario of the multiple types of interpretation going on here today, so I encourage all participants to be clear and keep a slower pace than maybe we're used to.

Welcome, MP Nuttall. You're up first for questions, for six minutes.

October 2nd, 2018 / 9 a.m.

Conservative

Alex Nuttall Conservative Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON

Thank you to the committee for welcoming me here today.

Also, certainly, thank you, Minister Qualtrough, for your presentation this morning. After I gave you the notes on consultation, I also sent a version to you digitally to ensure that I, too, was respectful of accessibility standards.

Minister, I'm just going to quote a couple of items from your presentation. You said:

It's time for broad organizational and cultural change. There is no reason to wait for people to be discriminated against before we act.

When I read that, I think about the three years that have gone by before this bill finally came to the floor. I'm by no means blaming you, Minister. That is not the intent. But a lot of language we're seeing around the marketing of this bill is that “we can't wait any longer”, yet the government has waited three years and is now onto its fourth minister, who was also its first minister. It's a little frustrating in terms of the stop-and-start that we've seen. I've heard that from consultations within the different communities.

This also goes on to talk about the extensive consultation. This consultation that's taken place.... I don't have the time to be able to read through it piece by piece, but essentially the first question I have is on something that we've been able to speak about and that your staff have been able to speak about with me as well. In terms of the consultation that's been taking place and people wanting immediate action—and I think the government is saying that it wants immediate action—the language that's used in your presentation today and is contained within the bill doesn't say that there are going to be changes in accessibility standards. This says it “will lead to”, and that's an exact quote.

In fact, it says that the first regulation changes would take place in 2021. If we use the timeline and the success of the timeline's place in terms of how six months after the government took its place it said it would have a bill related to the accessibility act, that 2021 could be much further out. I believe what the staff have said is that it's somewhere within the six-year time period from the point that this receives royal assent.

Could you demonstrate to the committee what actual practical changes affecting people with disabilities will go into effect—besides the creation of new bureaus and new departments—on day one?

9 a.m.

Minister of Public Services and Procurement and Accessibility

Carla Qualtrough

I have a couple of things in an immediate response around the consultation. Make no mistake—a lot of work has happened over the past three years.

We're very proud of the intentional effort around our consultations to be included, to have a national conversation, which, I would submit, has never happened before around disability issues. We needed to take the time to properly consult and include anybody and everybody who wanted to speak on what their vision of an accessible Canada was. I'm incredibly proud of the consultation process. I think it set a gold standard for how we can be inclusive in the way we consult as governments of any stripe.

What we clearly heard through the consultation was that Canadians with disabilities wanted to enshrine the concept of “nothing about us without us” in law. What that means is, “We don't want to have standards or requirements imposed by law, by government, that will impact our daily lives.”

What Bill C-81 does is create a framework of a process, a system, whereby Canadians with disabilities are squarely at the centre and have direct input into the decisions that are being made around the barriers to accessibility that they're facing.

9:05 a.m.

Conservative

Alex Nuttall Conservative Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON

Minister, I have two minutes, so what practical change on day one...? On the change in the system of the inclusion of those with disabilities and ensuring there's firm consultation in the process that's gone through, I completely understand it and I admire that part of the bill, but from what we've seen, there are no actual changes in terms of practical changes that will affect Canadians living with disabilities.

I have to go on to my next question. There is a portion in here in relation to fines for either government agencies or the private sector, which could be institutions, banks or many other things. On those fine dollars, where do they go when that fine is levied against that business or government agency?

9:05 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Bryan May

You have just over one minute.

9:05 a.m.

Minister of Public Services and Procurement and Accessibility

Carla Qualtrough

Thank you. I apologize for the preamble.

Make no mistake—to answer your first question—I think there will be absolute fundamental change in terms of how we interact and respect Canadians with disabilities, day one after this law is enacted.

In terms of the money for the fines, my understanding is that it will just be going into general revenue.

9:05 a.m.

Conservative

Alex Nuttall Conservative Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON

Wouldn't it be better if those funds that were levied against organizations for not respecting persons with disabilities went directly to something like the opportunities fund or something that would go back into encouraging better accessible standards with either private sector entities or within government entities?

9:05 a.m.

Minister of Public Services and Procurement and Accessibility

Carla Qualtrough

I think that's a very innovative and interesting idea.

9:05 a.m.

Conservative

Alex Nuttall Conservative Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON

Are you open to amendments coming out of this committee and towards this bill at the end?

9:05 a.m.

Minister of Public Services and Procurement and Accessibility

Carla Qualtrough

I definitely want to see this law being the best it possibly can. I don't want to prejudge the outcomes or recommendations of the committee, but I am certainly open to hearing what you all have to say and what stakeholders have to say.

9:05 a.m.

Conservative

Alex Nuttall Conservative Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON

Thank you, Minister.

9:05 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Bryan May

Up next is MP Long for six minutes.

9:05 a.m.

Liberal

Wayne Long Liberal Saint John—Rothesay, NB

Good morning, Minister. Thank you so much for coming this morning. I just want to thank you for your incredible leadership and advocacy of those living with disabilities.

My eyes were wide open to the challenges and barriers faced by people with disabilities on this HUMA committee. Several months back we interviewed a couple of gentlemen, Mark Wafer with Tim Hortons and Randy Lewis with Walgreens. We talked to them, learned from them, and heard from them that their organizations' employee turnover dropped, absenteeism dropped, productivity increased and morale increased.

In my own riding of Saint John—Rothesay, there are two organizations in Key Industries, run by Christine Evans. Then there's CCRW run by Joan Mallory and Misti Denton. They work with people with disabilities daily. They help integrate them into society. Again, you see the wonderful opportunities that are there that Bill C-81 can certainly help with. Unemployment rates amongst people with disabilities are upward of 80%.

The bill itself, Bill C-81, signifies the largest advancement for persons with disabilities since the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Could you tell the committee how this will fundamentally change the relationship between the federal government and persons with disabilities? Why is the bill necessary, in your opinion?

9:05 a.m.

Minister of Public Services and Procurement and Accessibility

Carla Qualtrough

I think what you're referring to at the beginning of your question is what I've come to think of as the untapped economic potential of the 14% of Canadians who have disabilities. Savvy, innovative, progressive, thoughtful and clever businesses, like the ones you mentioned, have figured that out. We know that including Canadians with disabilities is a game-changer in terms of the economic benefits.

The Conference Board of Canada has estimated that, if we remove barriers and accommodate Canadians with disabilities, you're looking at $1.3 to $1.9 billion annually of economic growth. That's significant.

We know that there is improved loyalty, less absenteeism and all the benefits you talked about when we remove barriers. That's the game-changing aspect of Bill C-81. It puts the onus on the government to remove barriers to inclusion up front for Canadians with disabilities. That is a fundamental shift in how we approach accessibility and disability rights in this country.

9:10 a.m.

Liberal

Wayne Long Liberal Saint John—Rothesay, NB

I've seen it time and time again in the riding that organizations seem to understand the potential, but, in going from understanding the potential to actually enacting and hiring people with disabilities, there seems to be a gap there, a lack of preparedness, I guess, or maybe fear of the unknown.

Could you speak to what we can do? What will Bill C-81 do to alleviate that?

9:10 a.m.

Minister of Public Services and Procurement and Accessibility

Carla Qualtrough

Bill C-81 is focused on removing barriers. The idea is that, if I can get into your building, I can shop there, I can work there and I can participate meaningfully in whatever is going on there. I can access services there. The idea is that we are going to remove the obstacles to inclusion before discrimination happens. That is a real key, as I've said, a shift to a proactive approach from a reactive approach.

9:10 a.m.

Liberal

Wayne Long Liberal Saint John—Rothesay, NB

Minister, you've conducted extensive consultations across the country prior to drafting the legislation.

Can you tell us what you heard from stakeholders and industry as to what they wanted to see in the bill?

9:10 a.m.

Minister of Public Services and Procurement and Accessibility

Carla Qualtrough

I sure could. I could spend the rest of the hour telling you what we heard. Fundamentally, it came down to the shift in the conversation that we—as Canadians with disabilities—would like to see, away from the medical model of “We need to take care of these poor people” to a more social or human rights model of “We are contributing, valued citizens with rights and responsibilities of citizenship, and we have something to offer that should be valued.” That's a massive change in the conversation.

I've been handed a note here. I apologize, Mr. Chair. I said $1.3 billion to $1.9 billion. It is 1.3% to 1.9% of GDP a year for the economic inclusion, which is $26 billion to $38 billion a year. I apologize. I think that's a big difference. I had said “billion” instead of “per cent”, so I want to put that on the record.

9:10 a.m.

Liberal

Wayne Long Liberal Saint John—Rothesay, NB

Minister, you're comfortable that the stakeholders' feedback was integrated in the drafting of the legislation?