Evidence of meeting #127 for Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was accessibility.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bobby Morrissey
Thank you, Mr. Long.
Ms. Bérubé, you have the floor for six minutes.
Sylvie Bérubé Bloc Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses for being here. I think their presentations were necessary.
As we know, there are non-visible disabilities. Personally, I've been representing the riding of Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou since 2019. I wear a black and grey jacket, and I sometimes wear glasses. That's my look, and it belongs to me.
My question is for all three witnesses. What barriers do your clients face when dealing with the federal government?
Accessibility Educator and Policy Strategist, Level Playing Field Incorporated
I'm sorry. Is that question for me?
Accessibility Educator and Policy Strategist, Level Playing Field Incorporated
Oh, thank you.
It's lack of specificity. There are too many loopholes. There's too much missing and out-of-date information.
If you follow the building code as it's written right now, you will not create an accessible building. That's surprising for a lot of people to hear, as we've been working on it. The building code's lack of alignment with the Canadian charter and the human rights code means there's a significant liability gap between the minimum requirements in the building code and the human rights code, so fixing legislation would be the number one issue for our clients.
I'll pass it off to Amanda.
National Director, External Affairs, March of Dimes Canada
Thank you for the question. It's something the March of Dimes has as a priority—identifying those barriers and working to dismantle them with the federal government over the last several years.
I think the biggest one we hear about all the time is access to government programs and services. The disability tax credit is the gateway to many very helpful financial security programs. That tax filing is also a barrier we've found. A lot of barriers have to do with trust in government to empower, enable and facilitate organizations like mine and many others you've heard from over the last several meetings, and I think we'll hear from them again, later in the hour. It's such a challenge to take up the benefits and the programs and services that are available to people.
We know this because accessible services are being worked on. We see it at the CRA. We see it at Service Canada. They've identified this need and this barrier, but progress is very slow. In Ontario, if you are a single person with a disability who is receiving provincial disability income support and you file a DTC, it's worth over $1,850 to you to do that in federal- and provincial-level benefits. That's about a month and a half of ODSP in Ontario.
Breaking down and dismantling the barriers people have—we enumerated these in our “A Benefit without Barriers” report—are very important parts of enabling accessibility to public programs and services.
Chief Executive Officer, Wavefront Centre for Communication Accessibility
For my communities, I think it's just being able to access and use the language of their choice, whether it's a sign language or being able to have assistance through closed captioning, etc. For a deaf individual, calling Service Canada is very limited.
Also, I shouldn't say just Service Canada: Calling any department within the government can be quite challenging. In going to visit a Service Canada location, there are a lot of barriers to audio accessibility or to being able to access a sign language interpreter. Just being able to interact with the government in the language of choice or in an environment where you can communicate continues and will continue to be a struggle.
Bloc
Sylvie Bérubé Bloc Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC
This question is for all three witnesses.
You said earlier—and we know this quite well—that it's not easy for a person with a disability when it comes to available services and accessibility. I know some people. I represent the riding of Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, which is one of the regions of Quebec and the second in Canada where people with disabilities experience the most significant impacts in terms of service delivery and accessibility. The impact is quite clear. We also know that there is a problem with inclusion.
I wanted to know what priorities you would suggest to the federal government in this matter.
National Director, External Affairs, March of Dimes Canada
I'll take that first.
Our priorities are to speed up the accessibility of our federal programs and services. I'm sure that every MP in this room has had the experience of people with disabilities coming into your constituency offices and having issues with accessing federal programs and services that are important to day-to-day life, whether it's getting a CRA account, tax filing, getting a Service Canada account or accessing the disability tax credit.
We already know what the barriers are and we know what to do to dismantle them. This is a question of will. It's not a question of “Oh, my god, we need more information” or “We don't know how to do it.” We absolutely know how to do it, and it takes will on the part of the government, ahead of standards being introduced. We can't wait for standards for that. We know what to do now, and frankly, it's a matter of will.
Liberal
NDP
Bonita Zarrillo NDP Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'll start by saying that I am a middle-aged woman who has reading glasses that I will put on and off throughout my intervention today.
I have to thank witness MacKenzie for those comments about already knowing the barriers and also the question of will. We've had these discussions over and over again, and I really hope that the witness testimony today and what comes out of this report are truly acted on.
There was a lot of talk about housing. My first question is going to be for witness Kurdi around housing.
I appreciate all of your work and the comments. You've come to committee before. I wonder if you could debunk this myth that it's more expensive for housing to be accessible for all.
Accessibility Educator and Policy Strategist, Level Playing Field Incorporated
Thank you very much for the question.
It's a pleasure to be back here today.
I think, to be fair, that there are some concrete costs. I don't want to try to shy away from that, but because we think about inaccessible design as just a choice rather than discrimination, we're erroneously failing to have the right kinds of conversations about right-sizing spaces and right-sizing costing.
We're not looking at the life-cycle cost. It might be less expensive and take less space to build in a discriminatory housing manner, but in the long term for our society and for individuals, the costs are enormous in health care costs and renovation costs. We cannot continue to pretend that we don't have an accessible housing crisis.
To Amanda's point, we know exactly what needs to be done. It has been in our standards, in the wings. We have great accessibility built environment requirements, many of which, when our designers and contractors are trained how to do them, will not add excessive costs or any costs. Many of the things we can do right now, today. Remember that accessibility is not just about manual wheelchair users. There are lots of other types of disabilities that we're not addressing. We're doing a very poor job for hearing loss, for vision loss and for people with environmental sensitivities, autism or dementia.
We know what to do, so it's not necessarily a matter of cost. There might be a 1% difference, but the better trained our professionals are and the more experienced they are, the more we see those costs drop away. It's a better investment and a better sustainability plan if you don't have to build something and then tear it apart to fix it again.
Thank you.
NDP
Bonita Zarrillo NDP Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC
Thank you so much. Again, that addresses the culture change and that ableist idea.
How can something like the bills that the federal government brings forward better address the cultural shift that needs to happen around ableism in this country?
Accessibility Educator and Policy Strategist, Level Playing Field Incorporated
I think anti-ableist training or at least ableism awareness training and bias training are obviously a great idea across the board. They challenge the mistakes and the misunderstandings that people have. They give voice to people with lived experience for certain, but I wouldn't want to be spending a lot of time or a lot of resources. I want to make sure that anything we do does not delay changes.
The recommendations David Lepofsky gave you earlier this week are bang on target. We can enact those and, I would add, invest with our colleges and universities. They have no money right now to retrain the faculty who are creating the programs that are training the next generation of barrier busters or the people who are going to get us to 2040. Year after year, we're getting graduates who don't know any better, who are making all the same mistakes and have all the same biases and, unfortunately, ableist standard practice drilled into them from day one. We could make a huge difference in that kind of education, but I'm not saying that other types of education are not useful.
NDP
Bonita Zarrillo NDP Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC
That's such an important point. Thank you so much.
I'm going to move on to Ms. MacKenzie.
You talked about this basically free labour that organizations like yours offer society. I wonder if you could share how that really impacts the work that you do and what kind of culture change needs to happen there.
National Director, External Affairs, March of Dimes Canada
It's really interesting, and I appreciate the question.
First of all, the companies in the private sector that are doing accessibility plans and progress reports have this expectation that an organization or a person is just going to consult for them for free. We are all very familiar with the requirement to pay for consulting services. It's not rocket science for companies to think that maybe they have to pay the people they're asking to review their accessibility plans.
It astonishes me, frankly, every single time, and I know it shouldn't; I should be used to it by now. This is a real cultural problem when we're expecting people with disabilities in organizations like mine, like Thea's and like Chris's to just give free advice on accessibility plans and their progress reports.
I think the solution to that problem is an amendment to the legislation or a regulation that requires those who are doing those plans and reports to pay for consulting services. My understanding is that the Canadian Human Rights Commission has developed a schedule of what those payments could be, and I think we could start to use that as a guideline and probably update it for 2025. It should be a requirement.
We all pay for consulting, and I'm not sure why this would be any different. It really is demoralizing to think, from a cultural perspective, that anyone would think that a person with a disability should not be compensated for their expertise, because that's what it is.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bobby Morrissey
Given that everybody went well over their timeline, I want to be fair to all.
I'll conclude a round by giving two and a half minutes to each of the parties. If nobody objects strenuously to that, we'll begin.
Conservative
Tracy Gray Conservative Kelowna—Lake Country, BC
Mr. Chair, I think we should stay with the normal protocol, and it's also based on how many members are at the table. I think that both we and the other parties should have more time.
Conservative
Scott Aitchison Conservative Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to say thank you to the witnesses for being here. My name is Scott Aitchison. I'm the member of Parliament for Parry Sound—Muskoka in Ontario. I'm wearing a light-grey suit with a light-blue shirt and a dark navy tie. I have very greying hair.
I have a question specifically about housing. This is for Amanda MacKenzie.
I'm sure you're familiar with OASIS, Ontario Agencies Supporting Individuals with Special Needs. They have reported that people with developmental disabilities across Ontario face wait times for affordable housing that are 10 times longer than the average for people in Ontario.
You spoke a little bit about the program that March of Dimes operates in renovating space. I wonder if you could speak to that issue more broadly, and not just for persons with developmental disabilities. Could you speak specifically about the wait times and about how long it takes for people to find attainable and accessible housing?
National Director, External Affairs, March of Dimes Canada
I'll speak from some personal experience here. I had a little brother, Graham, who passed away a couple of years ago. He had both intellectual and physical disabilities. When he was a teenager, my parents started to worry about what his housing situation would be, not wanting to require either my older brother or me to provide housing and care for our sibling. Of course, I would have been happy to do so, but it was a situation that we ran into.
We were connected to Community Living Toronto. The wait times were outrageously long. He would have been a senior before he had the housing and the supports he needed. Instead, my mom was an incredible advocate. She got him an apartment through a special program called Lights, connected to Community Living, and put together basically an independent situation outside of the wait times we had.
There are those options available, but they can be expensive. They can be difficult to put together with the funding situation. I saw that first-hand. I think a huge part of the issue is around the supports that are needed for people with intellectual and other types of disabilities in housing. In their housing, we provide our clients, our service users, with many, many different types of supports. The wait times are lengthy. It's because we don't have the housing stock—either the accessible housing stock or the affordable housing stock—to deliver reasonable housing in a reasonable time.
Conservative
Scott Aitchison Conservative Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON
Thank you very much.
I'll pass the rest of my time over to MP Gray.
Conservative
Tracy Gray Conservative Kelowna—Lake Country, BC
Thank you very much.
Thank you to all the witnesses for being here.
I'm Tracy Gray. I have shoulder-length blond hair. I have a black blouse and a light-blue blazer.
Amanda, I'm very sorry to hear of your loss, and Mr. Sutton, it's good to have you here today.
I have just a little bit of time here, and I'd like to ask Easter Seals Canada a couple of questions.
Easter Seals Canada is well known nationwide for camps that provide an accessible summer experience to many young Canadians who otherwise wouldn't have the chance. Given the cost of living crisis that Canada has faced with regard to the cost of fuel, transportation and food, how have increasing costs impacted Easter Seals' ability to operate summer camps?
