Human Resources Committee on Oct. 2nd, 2018

[Carla Qualtrough]

I certainly am. I can tell you that the biggest compliment I've had since we tabled Bill C-81 was when a prominent member of the disability community looked me in the eye and said, “I see myself in this. I see the feedback I gave in this, and I really appreciate that. Thank you for listening.”

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Thank you, Minister.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Now we will move to MP Hardcastle, please. Welcome to our committee today.

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Thank you, and thank you for having me.

It's a pleasure to be here to advocate for Bill C-81, which has some meaningful amendments to it. I think we all celebrate the act.

To use our time effectively, I just want to jump in with the minister, who has really been a champion. I love the way, Minister, you just articulated that we wanted to see with this a profound change in how we look at or how we take a medical or prescriptive approach rather than a social and inclusive approach. That's the disability lens aspect of it that is so extremely important.

I see lacking—and this also came from the consultations—that we're not requiring federal laws or policies or regulations to be studied through a disability lens. I think maybe it's implied. I could make that argument on the other side, that it's implied, but I would make the argument that it needs to be articulated. This is our historical achievement with this national act. Although it does not bring us far enough to comply with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities—I will say it falls short of that—we can make amendments and bring it in that direction.

I believe, Minister, some of your comments were about government being nimble in reassessing and looking at this in the future, so I'm hopeful for that.

I'd like to hear a little bit of what you think the potential might be now for us to actually anchor this a bit more, this looking through a disability lens.

I notice that your title, Minister, includes “public services, procurement and accessibility”. Can you imagine if we had a federal directive to look through a disability lens for procurement? I just feel that if we're going to do this, we have some tangible ways that we really can anchor this just a little bit more. I'd like to hear some of your thoughts, your takeaways, what you are thinking we can move forward on and what some of the potential opportunities are for us to look at here with the committee.

[Carla Qualtrough]

Thank you, and thanks for your work on this file. It's wonderful to be working with you again.

One of the principles in the act—and as you all know, the principles are interpretive guidelines or how we are supposed to be looking at this law in the future—very clearly says that laws, programs, policies, services and structures must take into account the abilities and needs of Canadians with disabilities.

To me, that means that every time we put in place a law, a policy, a program, a service or a structure, we have to look at it through the lens of accessibility.

I do think that in specific departments.... I'll use my own because I think procurement is an incredibly powerful tool to address accessibility. We are establishing a centre or an office of accessible procurement with the idea being that the Government of Canada will not procure products that aren't accessible.

The Prime Minister has appointed a deputy minister responsible for an accessible public service, whose job is to prepare the Government of Canada to be an accessible employer and to offer services accessibly to Canadians. There are machinery of government things going on right now, in parallel with this legislation going through the House of Commons.

I would suggest absolutely that we cannot realize a barrier-free Canada unless the Government of Canada makes decisions taking into account the accessibility needs of Canadians with disabilities.

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Thank you.

Further to that, then, we have a situation right now in the absence of a national act. I won't get into it here—we all know the provinces that have their own disabilities act—but we don't have a national framework right now. That being said, these are great and admirable tenets for us to have, but what's glaring in this is that it's not required. It's great that we're doing this and that the minister's going to lead by example and that this new office will be trail-blazing, but these things are not mandatory for federal jurisdictions. What can we do to make the timelines more succinct, to bring some requirements in?

I want to say as well that the feedback I get from people living with disabilities is that they're used to having to work with whoever's in government. This is a vulnerable population that can't afford to make enemies, and they don't, but they're tired of waiting. We need some real teeth in this act, and we can't wait for them to get vocal about it. People are worn out from having to advocate for themselves and their family members already. It's up to us to beef this up and actually put some timelines in, to actually put some requirements in.

Right now, all of the wording is that you're “allowed” to do something. Nobody's required to do anything by a certain date. I feel as though we need to get our heads around that. Where does the minister see some opportunities for us to maybe articulate to these federal jurisdictions to get ready and that, more succinctly, this is going to be coming?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

We're actually way over time, but I'm going to allow for a very quick answer, if that's okay.

[Carla Qualtrough]

Thank you.

These are excellent questions. Again I can talk forever about this, so I'll keep it succinct, Mr. Chair.

The point is that we need to establish in the standards the timelines you're talking about. We need to set clear timelines. There are existing standards that are world-class within Canada and internationally that can be adopted immediately and then built upon. The expectation, I would say, is that right out of the gate there will be standards we can adopt. We don't have to wait for years of consultations in some areas. There are excellent website standards. Ontario has done phenomenal work in their standard creation, and we can adopt a similar standard at the federal level.

I would suggest that there is some incredibly low-hanging fruit that we can adopt very, very quickly.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you.

Mr. Ruimy, go ahead, please.

[Dan Ruimy, Liberal, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Thank you, Minister, for being here today, and thank you for your work on this file. It's been a long time coming, and taking into consideration all the consultation that needed to happen, I completely understand that.

You mentioned that 14% of Canadians have disabilities. I would add that they touch most of us if not all of us. I remember when a private organization offered a job to my brother, who has faced barriers all of his life. It was a simple job, but he got a paycheque, and I remember how he felt. That's what we need to be offering Canadians today—the opportunity to move forward and to feel good about themselves. That's why I'm so excited about this legislation.

Minister, can you talk to us about why it's so important that Bill C-81 establish a framework for addressing issues facing persons with disabilities rather than incorporating standards directly into the legislation so they can be implemented immediately?

[Carla Qualtrough]

The framework established through this legislation will allow for a very technical standard to be developed. Imagine a scenario down the road where counter heights will be dictated through standard. You can imagine that putting that in law would be incredibly clunky, for lack of a better word. We don't even know the hundreds of standards that will result over the years as accessibility changes, and as our expectations change.

I'll use curb cuts as an example. Historically, the idea was that you put a ramp down at the end of a sidewalk to go across the street, and that was the best way to accommodate someone with mobility aids. If we had enshrined that in law, that wouldn't have been very helpful moving forward. What we learned in the north is that when it snows and rains, puddles happen at the edge of the curb. They've raised the crosswalk so that it's just flat across. The standard up there might be that it's flat across instead of a curb down that results in a big puddle when it snows.

That's the kind of evolution that happens as our thinking changes and our expectations for inclusion evolve. That's the kind of nimbleness that CASDO and the standards will provide by not having it in law.

Can you imagine going to the floor of the House of Commons to change a section of an act because the curb cut thinking has evolved? Imagine that across every aspect of federal jurisdiction. It would be incredibly onerous.

[Dan Ruimy, Liberal, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Thank you. I agree with that.

I think that disabilities have been changing and evolving throughout the years. To put something in legislation that clearly might not impact everybody could be very onerous, and it could take a lot of time to get that changed.

Can you explain a little more about the need to create a new government entity rather than using existing entities—a lot of people are asking these questions—such as the Canadian General Standards Board?

How will the Canadian accessibility standards development organization, CASDO, be different from other government entities?

[Carla Qualtrough]

Thank you. That's a really important question.

We looked around the world when we were designing this model, and we saw that we needed to ensure that citizens with lived disability experience were involved in the decision-making and the creation of the standard.

Incorporating it into an existing organization or structure risked watering down the impact of the disability voice in all of this. This is modelled after the United States and other countries that have gone down the same path but earlier. We have learned from them that we needed to have lived experience as a fundamental part of the decision-making governance structure of this.

That's why we've put in this act that the board of CASDO has to be more than 50% people with lived experience. You have to live it.

[Dan Ruimy, Liberal, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Thank you.

Before I came to Parliament, I had no glasses and was able to read pretty well. I'm finding now that I can't, that—

[Carla Qualtrough]

Welcome to my world.

[Dan Ruimy, Liberal, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

—I need to wear glasses.

I bring that up because, for me, that's my own little experience with it being more difficult for people being able to do their jobs. They're certainly capable of doing their jobs, but we have to be able to allow for the different disabilities out there.

I look forward to moving forward with this. Indeed, I think we owe it to every Canadian who has faced a barrier to make sure that we get this right.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

MP Morrissey, for six minutes, please.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Madam Minister, I have a couple of points. There is no reference in here to the impact of an aging demographic in Canada on disability.

Does your department have data on what that dynamic and demographic change is going to do, and how this legislation will positively impact that?

[Carla Qualtrough]

I think that's a reality that we are intimately familiar with. We know that disability rates are estimated at around 14%. I would say it's a little higher, but let's go with 14%. Within 15 years, including Canadians who are elderly and with mobility impairments, that's anticipated to go up quite significantly, to over 20%.

One of the reasons we've moved away from the language of a “Canadians with disabilities act” to “accessibility” is to include the broadest range of people in this act. It isn't necessarily about your diagnosis or condition or illness, or whatever is going on in your life; it's about removing the barrier you are facing to being fully included, whatever that is.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

It's of age.

[Carla Qualtrough]

Whether you can't see, and if you're elderly and now you use a mobility aid, you, too, are going to be impacted by this law.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

I want to go back to an earlier comment you made regarding the economic impact on the Canadian economy. Was it $28 billion you referenced?

[Carla Qualtrough]

What the Conference Board has estimated is that by fully including Canadians with disabilities in the workplace, those who can work, and accommodating these individuals, there's an estimated 1.3% to 1.9% growth of GDP, which is $26 billion to $38 billion annually. It's very significant.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Those are very significant numbers. It's startling.

Could you give just a brief example? If you don't have it, it's fine.

Take me into a particular workplace, if you know of that, and just show us, if you can.

[Carla Qualtrough]

I'll give you an example. There's a group in British Columbia called the Presidents Group, which is a group of CEOs from major companies. They have completely recognized the economic potential that we're talking about today. Vancity credit union can show you, and can tell you, how hiring more inclusively has impact at the bottom line quite significantly, whether it's being able to address labour shortages through this untapped labour pool or creating a culture of diversity that results in more innovative solutions. Let me tell you, Canadians with disabilities are some of the most innovative people you'll ever meet because the world wasn't built for us and we figure out very quickly how to innovate.

Tim Hortons was mentioned. YVR is an incredibly inclusive employer and service provider, and as such, Canadians and people with disabilities deliberately travel through Vancouver because their needs are going to be met. I didn't even talk about the accessible tourism market, which is a multi-billion dollar industry because people need to go somewhere. It's not just about the individual who doesn't have money to spend. It's about those of us who do.