Human Resources Committee on Oct. 4th, 2018

[Jessica McDonald]

The operations of Canada Post are legacy systems. As well, they're complex in terms of sorting and getting parcels and mail out to customers. We need to and do work very closely with the union in terms of making any alterations to how that works.

One of our most important steps will be working collaboratively in terms of employee suggestions as to how things can work differently, but as well in terms of agreeing on a supportive workplace that more successfully includes people with disabilities and can also work for all.

I have only been at Canada Post since December, so I can't speak to the last two years, but my vice-president, Susan Margles, could add to this. In the time that I have been here, there has been, as I've said, a tremendous effort, because it is one of the pillars of my mandate letter to address accessibility.

Bringing in and asking for the support of people with lived experience to help us understand the correct changes to ensure that we're delivering in a way that is accessible for all is something that we are 100% focused on. It has been an area of great attention for me since I've been here.

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

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you.

MP Ruimy is next, please.

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

Thanks to all of you for being here today and helping us go through this important piece of legislation.

I'm going to start with you, Ms. Landry. We've been hearing that anywhere from 50% to 60% of the complaints that are being heard are disability complaints. I have a couple of questions on that. Do we have a sense of what those complaints are? Are we tracking this so that we're able to understand how this legislation can impact those complaints?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

I have a reminder, folks: Keep your pace nice and slow. We have a lot of time.

[Marie-Claude Landry]

Yes. Overall at the commission, disability complaints usually make up between 57% and 60% of all the complaints we receive. About half of these are related to accessibility. From 2008 to September 2018, the commission received 4,171 disability-related complaints.

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

When we talk about accessibility, do we know if those complaints are about infrastructure or technology?

[Marie-Claude Landry]

It could be employment, services, transportation, communications, accessible buildings.

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

Is that information available to us? Would we be able to see a breakdown—without intruding on privacy, of course?

[Marcella Daye]

We know that 81% of them are related to employment, 18% to services, 8% to the physical environment, 1% to transportation, and just less than a half of one per cent to communications and technology.

Those data that we gather, however, are not as rigorous as we could have in our system. Our system isn't well designed to pull out relevant data that is well connected to the areas outlined under this act, and we look forward to building a more robust system to come back and report in more detail.

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

Do you feel that this legislation can and will help to address some of those complaints?

[Marie-Claude Landry]

As my colleague mentioned, we need to have the proper tools to report on that specifically, and this is what we are doing. The Canadian Human Rights Commission is working to make sure that we will be able to report on that with the appropriate tools, and for that we need appropriate funds and appropriate resources.

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

Thank you.

[Marie-Claude Landry]

The funds at the Canadian Human Rights Commission have not been increased for 14 years, and that's a challenge we're working on.

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

Okay. Thank you.

Do you want to add something?

[Marcella Daye]

I would.

We don't know the impact of this bill on that portion of our complaints that deal with accessibility. Our first instinct might be to say that because accessibility will be dealt with more proactively, those complaints might go down, but the very wide consultation process and the engagement of people with disabilities in this country may counteract that intuitive guess. People with disabilities in this country are very engaged, and they may bring more complaints to us because of a growth in awareness.

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

Thank you for getting that on the record.

Ms. McDonald from Canada Post, from what we just heard, you have 50,000 employees. I can't imagine how you begin to try to move forward. Could you quickly tell us? You are being proactive already, and from your testimony, you're saying that you're trying to address a lot of these issues. How do you see this moving forward?

Specifically, we talked a little about timelines, but the timelines were for when we implement the legislation or the regulations. How do you see implementing what those regulations could be and how would they apply to your organization?

[Jessica McDonald]

As I said in my opening remarks, we have a tremendous amount of work to do. Stated another way, we have a tremendous amount of opportunity in this area.

As you say, with 50,000 employees, we have a great representation of people with challenges at work. The legislation in its intent addresses what I will call—as a civilian, not a professional expert in this area—mental health issues and non-visible disabilities.

Think about the diversity of challenges that people may have in the workplace and about how the workplace can contribute to those, about the more standard way in which some people may look at disabilities in the workplace, and about addressing the physical disabilities, an area where we also do put attention but can put more attention. There's just a tremendous diversity of understanding that we need to gain inside the organization about how we can better support employees in a very demanding field of work.

As you may be aware, we have tremendous change happening in terms of what it means to be a delivery company that had been focused on letter mail and is now on parcels. When it comes to either physical or non-visible challenges, there's a lot more we need to understand so that we build future systems in a supportive way for employees.

That is where there is a tremendous amount of collaborative work needed with our employees. In order to bring out the discussion properly, it's my view that we need better processes of talking with our employees and understanding how they feel today. Introducing employee surveys, for example, is something that we need to do more of. Changing the language inside the organization in terms of how we refer to disabilities and how we respect people's challenges is another area.

People with disabilities are under-represented in our workforce. We need to understand if we have exhausted the efforts of ensuring that we provide appropriate accommodations, but we must also appear to be a welcoming employer for people who could be very productive employees and great contributors if they were supported in the right way.

Obviously, this is a very broad question. When I talk about our physical infrastructure, we have a tremendous amount of work to do there. When we talk about the organization itself—its culture, its processes, its understanding of its employees, and its employees' level of confidence that the workplace is supportive and will adapt—that's also an area where we have a tremendous amount of work to do.

The key for me as interim CEO is the immediate hiring, which is under way, of a director of accessibility policy. That's key for us in terms of having a champion and somebody with the responsibility to drive all of this forward and ensure that we're not missing any opportunities and can report back on very specific progress.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

MP Falk is next.

[Rosemarie Falk, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

Wonderful. Thank you, Chair.

I want to thank you all for being here and sharing your experience about what's currently going on.

My first question is for the Human Rights Commission.

In Bill C-81, the accessibility commissioner is responsible for compliance and enforcement activities. How does the role of the accessibility commissioner differ from the current powers of the human rights commissioner?

[Marie-Claude Landry]

The accessibility commissioner will have the specific mandate to audit and to receive complaints. There will be a specific mandate.

I have a broad mandate to receive applications and complaints and to do promotion and education under the Canadian Human Rights Act. The accessibility commissioner will be specifically focused on the accessibility act, with the specific mandate he or she receives through the act.

[Rosemarie Falk, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

Thank you.

The legislation provides the accessibility commissioner with the powers to enter a place to verify compliance and to prevent non-compliance. This is a very broad power. Is there a risk that the proposed compliance mechanisms would infringe on the freedoms that are guaranteed in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms?

[Marcella Daye]

Could you be a bit more specific about which freedoms you might be thinking would be infringed?

[Rosemarie Falk, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

With the "power to enter", in clause 73: : Subject to subsection (7), the Accessibility Commissioner may, for a purpose related to verifying compliance or preventing non-compliance with any of sections 47 to 49, 56 to 58, 65 to 67 and 69 to 71 or any provision of regulations made under subsection 117(1), enter any place, including a conveyance, in which he or she has reasonable grounds to believe there is any record, report, electronic data or other document, or any information or thing, relevant to that purpose.

I'm interested in the process. Are we going to see the accessibility commissioner going into places, taking data, or doing whatever could happen? I'm interested in the process, and whether the process would infringe on a person's charter rights and freedoms.

[Marcella Daye]

I'm not a lawyer, so I don't think I can answer that question completely, but I can give you my brief insights.

First of all, the characterization of that body of activity is more akin to an auditor, who would be more likely to make an appointment to come into an organization and be guided partly by communications with that organization in order to gather information. I'd say it's less a SWAT team and more an inspector.

Those kinds of powers are not unusual. Health inspectors or building code inspectors have those powers, and where they are legal and appropriate and they meet the mandate of the legislation, they are generally permissible. Does that help?