Human Resources Committee on Oct. 18th, 2018

[Donna Jodhan]

These appointments are to be ones that would be of value to this act. I believe that these appointments should be made so that persons with disabilities have a voice at the table and that the appointees will not be influenced by any outside or internal forces. It is very important for persons who are living with a disability—and I am vision impaired—to really feel that they are being heard and understood, because, as Professor Prince mentioned a little while back, there are so many barriers for us to face, not just artificial barriers, but attitudinal barriers, tangible and intangible barriers. Coming back to your question, sir, I think the appointments should be closely examined and take into consideration a lot of things that would determine that these appointments are legitimate and not just window dressing.

Thank you.

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

Thank you for that.

Kory and Shelley, would you like to see seats explicitly allocated to individuals from each disability community?

[Kory Earle]

Yes, absolutely, we would like to have a seat up there and have the voices heard.

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

Okay.

Do you have any thoughts, Shelley?

[Shelley Fletcher]

To have specific seats representing specific disabilities, is that your question?

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

Yes.

[Shelley Fletcher]

Yes, we would. We think it's important that each disability have representation as the experts on issues that arise around that specific disability.

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

Okay.

Does the public service have any input on the composition of the board?

[Marianne Hladun]

As we deal with anything, it does need to be from members of the disabilities community because—

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

Exclusively?

[Marianne Hladun]

Well, as much as possible.... The way the legislation is worded, it says “a majority of”, but you need to go above that mark. Just because it says “a majority of”, that doesn't mean 50.1% as much as possible. Persons with disabilities are very diverse, so that should be considered.

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

Okay.

Michael, do you have anything with respect to it? Yes or no?

[Prof. Michael Prince]

In a few countries.... I think it's Peru where they actually in the legislation enumerate by disability or types of impairment. They have broad categories, but they do that.

Another thing you might want to consider specifying in the bill is that the vice-chair or the chair be designated, or that they rotate. The Americans do that. Some other countries do that. So you name in positions. You build in not just a floor number, like a minimum of 50% plus one, but you identify certain key roles.

[Jutta Treviranus]

I do work in quite a number of countries with respect to regulation. Where there is representation of the high-incidence groups of individuals with disabilities and specific groups that have well-organized advocacy groups, what tends to happen is that there are always individuals with disabilities who are left out.

I agree completely that we require representation of people experiencing disabilities, but we also need to continually ask who we are missing and who has not had a voice at this table. Quite frequently, for example, individuals who are non-speaking and low-incidence individuals and are part of very small minorities do not get to speak.

Also, the usual groups frequently go from one consultation to another, resulting in consultation fatigue, and there is repetition of specific opinions. I think we need to be inclusive in how we include individuals with disabilities.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

MP Hardcastle, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much for your presentations, all of you. This has been a really thought-provoking discussion, and I'm glad we're having it.

I'm going to try to use plain language as much as I can, Mr. Earle. Thank you for that.

I want to go back to timelines and deadlines, because I feel that we started talking about it and then moved away from the real point.

On the day this bill is passed, nothing has to happen. Let's go back to that. That is the problem, isn't it?

What are some of the practical ways...? They're not the big-picture ways, maybe, but there are some practical ways for us to address that right now, aren't there? Maybe all of you can talk about what you would envision. Right now, on the day this passes, what should we be giving notice of? I'm not trying to hint around at an amendment, but I'll give you an example of what it could be.

We'll get to those amendments and that question afterwards, Marianne.

It could be that from the day this passes, everybody who is involved has 18 months to come up with a plan, or they have six months to formulate the advisory committee.... What kinds of deadlines do you think are most practical for our role here in the limited amount of time that we have to study this? What do you think we should be really concentrating on?

Who wants to go first? It looks like we have a few people thinking.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Go ahead, Donna.

[Donna Jodhan]

I think it is important for us to lay down a timeline as to when this advisory committee will be in place. I think it's very important.

The other thing that I think is important is that we lay down a timeline/deadline for people to file their plans. If we don't, it will be an open-ended process and people will just keep putting it off. Government departments will be told that they have one year to do this, and they'll wait until the eleventh hour to do it. Any entity would, if they're not given a timeline. I do believe in timelines/deadlines.

I think that those two things, the advisory committee and the time limit for filing plans, are important. If those are not put in place, and if, for example people are not told that they have 18 months, let's say, to file a plan, they'll keep postponing it, and finally it will just get put on the back burner.

Thank you.

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

I don't know if any of you have something to add, but maybe we can move on.

Ms. Lamba and Ms. Hladun, I was very intrigued by your presentation.

Right now, what we have is a disconnect and potential conflict. It's not just a disconnect, but a potential conflict.

I'd like to hear a bit more about how you think we should be approaching that. You discussed some of the sections with the Employment Equity Act. How can we make sure that we're including those provisions throughout...or do you have a specific approach that we should be taking, like the Treasury Board? Is there an example of something we should be following?

[Seema Lamba, Human Rights Program Officer, Negotiations and Programs Branch, Public Service Alliance of Canada]

I'll start, and then Marianne can add to it.

There have been references to Ontario, Nova Scotia and Manitoba. They don't have employment equity acts, so the accessibility plan kind of makes sense. It doesn't make sense in the federal realm, because we have the Employment Equity Act, which has timelines and requirements that are very concrete about what should be in an employment equity plan.

To be clear, employment equity is about representation, promotions and retention. It is about getting people in, but it's also about removing barriers in the workplace. Sometimes people confuse that. They think it's about numbers, but it's not. It is about a cultural shift.

Our thought is to strengthen and make amendments to the Employment Equity Act. It hasn't been amended since 2002, so we have recommendations on how to make it better around accountability. Enforcement is a really big issue, and I think it is for this new legislation as well.

It just needs to be strengthened in the Employment Equity Act when it comes to employment. I'd point out that under the Employment Equity Act, the federal contractors program is also there. It covers that broader group as well, contracts that are coming in related to services and goods for the federal public service.

With regard to the conflict, the Canadian Human Rights Commission is also required to do audits on employment equity. You have this group already monitoring employment equity plans and things like that, and then you have this.... There is that sort of conflict, even though there's the accessibility commissioner and all these other things.

Treasury Board and the Public Service Commission are central agencies and in an ideal world they would be responsible, as employers, for the federal public service for the employment equity. They do annual reports to Parliament on employment equity. There needs to be more strengthened mechanisms.

I want to point out that the task force on diversity and inclusion, which I sat on, points out that employment equity is still very important. It's still a priority.

Our fear with this legislation is that the thought might be that we don't have to worry about employment equity anymore and we just have to do this. It's going to cause some tensions.

As we suggested in the beginning, the amendment is to take the employment piece, strengthen it into the Employment Equity Act, do the Employment Equity Act review, and strengthen areas around there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

Next is MP Hogg, please.

[Gordie Hogg, South Surrey—White Rock, Lib.]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Treviranus, I think you had some comments that you wanted to make, and I'm happy to give you a few minutes to provide those comments.

[Jutta Treviranus]

It was just a very quick comment regarding the issue of an aspirational deadline.

I think that gives an inaccurate impression, because it implies that there is some point where accessibility or inclusion is complete, that we can know and will know everything that needs to happen to make Canada accessible. This is a moving target—not to imply that this means it's difficult—but I think what we need to focus on more are the deadlines for the specific process steps and then additional deadlines as we move along, as we become aware of things that need to be done.

We are in the process of reviewing the AODA, and certainly if you were to ask us what is everything we need to do by 2025 to make Ontario accessible, you would get very, very different opinions. Also, there's no way to anticipate all of the barriers that will arise between now and 2025.

[Gordie Hogg]

Thank you. I'll be sharing a little of my time with Ms. Sidhu.

Contextually, we've talked a lot about culture. When the minister introduced this and came before us, her issue was that we have to get moving now and do something as a country and move this legislation forward. She commented about the need to have something legislated and in place. We're hearing a number of issues and concerns, which I think are all valid and important within that context. These are issues about the effective change of culture and how we effect a cultural change, which is crucial to ensuring that the personality of the legislation and our country is accurately reflected.

I'm interested contextually in terms of where we sit today with other OECD countries and others that are looking at accessibility. Where would Canada sit within that framework? Are there other jurisdictions that have pieces of legislation that might be informative, if not directive, in terms of being able to assist us?

If anyone or everyone would like to respond to that, I'd be delighted to hear it.

After that, I'd like to move on to some of the accountability issues.