Thank you.
Looking at the preamble and the purpose with respect to the legislation, I see there are values and principles that we would all in a free, positive and progressive democratic society support. I look particularly at the reference made that Canada, being a state party to the United Nations convention, “has agreed to take appropriate measures respecting accessibility and to develop and monitor minimum accessibility standards”. A little further on it's referred more effectively to the vision or the mission statement, which says:
...Parliament considers that it is essential to ensure the economic, social and civic participation of all Canadians, regardless of their abilities or disabilities, and to allow them to fully exercise their rights and responsibilities in a barrier-free Canada;
It's talking about right across Canada.
Yet when we look at this, we see the bill will only affect organizations within federal jurisdictions, including the federal government and federally regulated industries. As a federal government, how do we envision taking this set of principles and values and being able to ensure that we can, I don't know if “inculcate” is the word, but make that a principle, a vision, a statement that is going to be taken on by provinces, local governments, society, all of those things that are not contained within the regulatory provisions of this legislation?
If we're wanting to really change the intent and wanting to really change our country in a positive way around this with all of the things that are laid out here, what types of levers do we have? We often talk about the federal government wanting to use different methods to encourage or incentivize provinces and local governments to be more actively engaged. What do you see as the disconnect? How do we deal with that disconnect between that great set of values and principles and the application of those?