Very much so. There are a couple of things that I've done. I'm an advocate and I'm an activist. I started talking about this about 10 years ago. I went to a conference as a delegate and the keynote speaker didn't show up and they asked me to speak. The rest is history.
My message is one that was resonating. Tim Hortons, as a corporation, has done some great things, and you can talk about this, but they're like any other large Canadian corporation. It's very slow to make change. Where we have had some success is at the franchise level. Tim Hortons franchisees across the country have embraced the hiring of people with disabilities, more at the entry level, intellectual types of disabilities, people doing entry-level jobs.
We really need to move away from that. We need to look at our businesses critically, look at every position, and then fill those positions with people with disabilities.
In 2012 I was a member of the federal panel on opportunity for people with disabilities in the workplace. This was set up by former finance minister Jim Flaherty. We did come out with a report that resonated with the business community, but more importantly we were provided resources to start an organization called Canadian Business SenseAbility.
That's a membership-driven organization. It's based in Toronto but it's national in scope, and the idea is to bring in Canadian corporations as members and make them disability confident. We have 28 Canadian corporations now as members of our association, and that began right here in Ottawa with the former minister of finance. Of the 28 corporations, 16 are multinationals, and they represent 800,000 employees.