One very successful example in the employment area, which relates to social infrastructure, is an initiative we're undertaking, with federal government support, in partnership with the Canadian Autism Spectrum Disorders Association, so for people with autism. We identified 20 communities across the country where the piece of infrastructure that's missing is the bridge between employers—the demand side—and the supply of labour. So much of the federal role, when it comes to employment, has focused on the supply side—another training program, a provincial government fund, employment support programs, all of which are fine. The problem is there's a mismatch between the employers, who are looking for people, and the diversity strategies to hire people with disabilities and people in the community where they are. This initiative, called Ready, Willing and Able, built the bridge. It's the social infrastructure between employers and employment support agencies. This initiative gets people with disabilities hired. We go to employers to generate, work on, and help them execute their demand, and then we link up supply in the community. In less than three years, we've had 2,000 hires. The cost per job for the federal government is half of any other federal disability employment program.
This is what I mean by “missing pieces”. We need the federal government to finance that infrastructure, because, as we get employers in local communities that are interested in hiring people because of this demand-side strategy, they say, “Well, you know, we have our national employer.” We now have almost 10 national employers. Costco is part of this, and because we're able to work on the employer's side, they're hiring in communities across the country. If that had been divided up among 13 provincial-territorial strategies, it wouldn't have worked. You need the link between local communities that feed into national infrastructure so you share lessons and you share information laterally. You'd need a massive federal and interprovincial conference to try to design this. Rely on communities to link up, share best practices, and build the infrastructure they need across the country. The example of local community hubs is ideal.