Canada summer jobs can go with the school boards and work with their co-op programs and go into the high schools. That would be really good because that's where those high school students are going. It's the same with the university boards. There are different points also. You have all the government agencies for neurodiversity and all those for autism. If you have an identification, you usually have a support somewhere. If there were a training summer job—for example, one level lower than the $4,200 you give per person, so we would give about $2,000—so that we can start training people out of high school and mentor them a little bit more...because we can't pay them the same amount, that minimum wage. If there's a training program that leads them into summer employment.... All the government agencies have different mandates on how to train people with disabilities for jobs, but when you get there, there's not enough training with the employer to keep the sustainability.
I'm neurodiverse. I was a teacher and it was a horrible job for me. I had to follow a lot of rules all the time and I was terrible at it. I am so grateful I did not get fired, but I also couldn't live there and stay there because there were too many rules for me. Those are the kinds of things our neurodiverse youth face when they are leaving high school. Where do they go? How do they know how to work anywhere? For people with disabilities, there is a piece missing in this transition. They can stay in high school until they're 21, but you hold their hands there. They are supported continually, and parents are involved. When kids turn 18, they are adults. You can't do anything for them. You can't talk to them. I have parents call me, but I can't talk to the parents, even though I should, because the kids are neurodiverse and can't make their own decisions. There's a piece missing in there, and that's the piece we need to address if we want to use disabilities.
There is also ODSP. I work with ODSP. There's funding of $3,600 per person with ODSP, but it's the same thing. I get that for six weeks. I can't afford in either of my businesses to continue employing people I have to continually train. It takes up too much time. We need a piece in there. We need a better training piece. There's a lot of money here and there are a lot of kids here. There's a missing piece.