Human Resources Committee on Oct. 22nd, 2018

[Jewelles Smith]

I would like to see 100%, and I think that diversity can be represented. It's not a checklist. It's looking at the composition of a group and understanding that our population is quite diverse. It's not just having people represented, checking off that we have one deaf person, one person using a wheelchair and one person with vision impairment. Looking at diversity and looking at access and knowledge would be really critical.

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

Thank you very much.

Mr. Estey, do you have anything you want to contribute to that?

Wait...okay, sorry.

[Steven Estey]

Thanks.

I communicate with captioning. I'm deaf, and it takes a second or two for it to come up on the screen. It's not that I'm not paying attention.

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

My apologies.

[Steven Estey]

Jewelles has made the point quite clearly, I think. She has talked about diversity in the disability community and the discussion we've had since the bill was tabled around the representation—the number of people and the percentages on these boards, and so on.

We started off looking at it by saying that 50% plus one would probably be okay, but there's been a real push by some members of the community to have a higher level of representation, and it goes particularly to the diversity of the disability experience and the concern that if you only have 50% of the people, then you may not have a wide enough perspective on a particular issue. We want to ensure that's the case here. As I understand it, that's the rationale.

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

Thank you.

Ms. Collier, would you comment?

[Barbara Collier]

I would agree with two-thirds, and the reason is that when we talk about communication access, we're talking about a very diverse population. People who have been born with a disability that makes it very difficult for them to learn language and literacy are very different from people who have had a stroke and have had language. You can't have one or two people represent the whole diverse population of communication disabilities.

We would support absolutely that you need representation on the standards committee of people with lived experience, but you also need representatives of the disability organization that can speak to the larger scope of things, because people with communication disabilities are not necessarily speech language pathologists with masters and Ph.D.s in communication disabilities. You need both.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

MP Hardcastle is next, please, for six minutes.

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

Thank you very much.

I'd like to go back to Mr. Estey and Ms. Smith. Can you talk a little more about the real operational independence of the new agencies? There was concern about that independence in reporting to government, and perhaps they should be reporting directly to Parliament.

Would you talk about the independence of organizations like CASDO, the accessibility commissioner, and the chief accessibility officer?

[Steven Estey]

I think our preference would be for a mechanism to be put in place for direct reporting to Parliament because of the whole independence issue. We certainly would support that approach and a revision to that effect.

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

Ms. Smith, on the independence of the new offices, would you like to see reporting to Parliament?

[Jewelles Smith]

We would very much like to see that.

We feel, to some extent, that the way Bill C-81 is currently set up, with a number of fractured reporting systems, might be problematic. We've dealt with a couple of those organizations as the disability community, and we've had multiple barriers. It's important to have that arm's-length reporting in order to address some of those barriers and challenges, and also to set up a fresh mechanism that wouldn't necessarily operate under the mandate of the current government, but rather under the mandate of the disability community.

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

Thank you.

Ms. Collier, can you elaborate a bit on your concern with regard to entities, organizations or jurisdictions that would be exempted right now under the proposed bill? Do you have any concerns that perhaps we should look at amendments, or at least allow for an appeal process, or that decisions have to be provided when exemptions are made?

[Barbara Collier]

I'm hoping I understand your question. Are you asking about the CRTC exemptions?

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

Yes. The CRTC—

[Barbara Collier]

I would apply the generic communication training and information to all jurisdictions, especially the CRTC and transportation. They would be included in this on how to communicate with people and what their barriers are.

I can speak a little about some of the concerns for the CRTC.

First, I need to say that we have never surveyed people with speech and language disabilities. We have no data to research that population and the barriers they face, so what I'm telling you is anecdotal.

They say that there are message relay services available to people with hearing loss. They say that they are available for people who are speech impaired. People who have dysarthria—slurred speech due to cerebral palsy or a stroke—are saying that the operators have no training in how to facilitate speech-to-speech for them, so they don't use it.

It's also not known; it's not marketed to them. We could see an enormous opportunity to expand that service for people with speech and language.... Smart phones are being used more and more by people with disabilities. We have people in long-term care facilities who need phones in order to leave the hospital and live in the community safely. The problem is with the cost of the phone and with the switch access to the phone, because they can't operate it with their fingers, and there's no funding for this.

Also, I'm hearing it's the data plan and the plans for telephone use that may be there for Internet. I'm not an expert on this, but I'm hearing there are major concerns in keeping up with the technology, specifically for people with communication disabilities who are not deaf or hard of hearing.

It's also transportation, across the board.

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

Ms. Smith, can you give us some of your comments with regard to concerns about exemptions?

[Jewelles Smith]

We're concerned that the exemptions will result in continued barriers for individuals with disabilities. We have dealt with the CRTC and other groups that would fall under some of these exemptions for decades. Whenever there's an opportunity for them to have an exemption, they choose not to move forward with the mandate of accessibility. We feel very strongly that this act should clear a path to remove those barriers and to address the issues that are not that difficult.

As my colleague has just mentioned, there are opportunities with smart phones. There is training available, and a wealth of research showing that these exemptions should not be there and that a barrier-free Canada is possible. We just have to decide to do it as a nation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

MP Sangha, you have six minutes, please.

[Ramesh Sangha, Liberal, Brampton Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much, everyone, for coming here and giving this input.

My question is to Ms. Smith. You're talking about the Canadian accessibility standards organization. I know this is going to be a very exclusive type of organization that is going to make better standards and bring changes into the regulations.

You talked about the difficulty of complaints, and you wanted some sort of reforms. What type of reforms are you looking for to have a better complaint process?

[Jewelles Smith]

In the current way that the bill is written, the complaints can come forward in many different ways. I know that the government has so far been pushing for a “no wrong door” approach, but we're concerned that individuals will have a complaint and not know who they should go to, or go through the wrong door, and possibly it could take two or three years to resolve an issue.

What we would like to see is that CASDO be responsible for developing the regulations and that the reporting of any complaints go through one organization. Whether that organization has individuals underneath—for example, the Canadian Human Rights Commission, and then potentially several individuals underneath who would manage complaints—people would know where they go when they have a complaint about federal accessibility. It wouldn't be that you might go to the CRTC for this complaint, and you might have to call Service Canada for that complaint, or you might have to call a specific airline for another complaint: there would be one place for people to call and have their complaints directed, one organization to develop the regulations and to provide a disability lens in the writing of those regulations. I don't mean any disability lens; I mean a human rights disability lens.

I would also like to see work on the intersectionality that I know government has attempted to do through the gender-based analysis plus, which has not been very successful for the disability community, which is why we strongly feel that having one organization responsible for the complaints and for the management of regulations is critical: it's so that across the board we have equal access and a clear understanding of barriers and what accessibility looks like.

Thank you.

[Ramesh Sangha, Liberal, Brampton Centre, ON]

Second, when we are looking for a barrier-free Canada, and we want it now and we want things to follow as soon as possible, why are you looking for a five-year timeline?

[Jewelles Smith]

Canada has done a lot of work in several of our provinces on accessibility and disability legislation. We also have the example of numerous countries around that world that have done this work already. We're not reinventing the wheel. We have great examples. We also know of some of the challenges and issues that have occurred during the consultation process over the last two and a bit years. The government has gathered much information on accessibility that works in other countries and in our own. We feel that setting up extremely long timelines will just result in our perhaps not living to see a barrier-free Canada.

[Ramesh Sangha, Liberal, Brampton Centre, ON]

Do you think a five-year timeline will provide better resolutions than immediately taking action now?

[Jewelles Smith]

Where we can, immediate action is critical. There are things that are easily done right away. We're saying five years for the regulations and such to be fully set up within the new organizations that are being developed.

We know there is some work in setting up a new department. We understand there is some work in setting up and reviewing regulations and making sure provincial and federal don't misalign and that there won't be problems in that sense. We also want to hurry along the process. We don't think it needs to take 20 years. Whatever is possible, we would love to see it done within a year. We're also recognizing that government has an election coming up too.