Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on Dec. 5th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Mr. Brunelle‑Duceppe has the floor for five minutes.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Paré, I'll quickly finish up where I left off earlier.

I want to understand something. When francophone parents don't have access to French‑language services, do they ever turn to English‑language services?

[Mona Paré]

Francophone families often turn to English‑language services. Obviously, this results in comprehension issues. Poor comprehension leads to poor service. The service may not necessarily provide exactly what the family wanted for their child.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

In contrast, do people in Quebec's anglophone community face the same challenges, as far as you know? This question may come out of left field.

[Mona Paré]

I can't answer that question.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you.

Mr. Faruqui, I'll now turn to the international scene. Canada funds programs for children living with disabilities from all over the world.

Are there any data on the percentage of these programs that are aimed at French-speaking children abroad?

[Naser Faruqui]

I don't know if I have the exact figures, but the International Development Research Centre has been supporting French-speaking countries for a long time.

At our Dakar office, we can respond to needs and see trends in this region. We also support a number of projects there. Around 50% of our budget goes to sub-Saharan Africa, and the West African region is well represented.

On the education front, we support projects related to teacher training. This training focuses on gender, equity and inclusion, and, above all, on issues related to teaching in bilingual and multilingual environments.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Cameroon could be a good example.

In Cameroon, several languages are spoken, other than French and English, but there are two official languages. I guess this is a good example to demonstrate how to work—

[Naser Faruqui]

It's a good example, yes, because it presents more challenges for students and, especially, for teachers. In addition, there's a kind of exchange hub to encourage educators to talk with parent groups and teachers, among others, to pass on their knowledge and feedback on what's working and what's not in terms of improving education. There are 21 West African countries participating in this program.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

There's no right or wrong answer, because we're here to take an honest look at the situation and try to make things better. Perhaps you won't have the answer to my question.

I'm thinking of the northern region. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, near Rwanda and Burundi, how difficult is it for organizations like yours to set up programs for children living with disabilities? Some territories are dangerous, and the safety of your employees and those working for your organization may be at risk.

[Naser Faruqui]

This is a very good question.

Our Knowledge and Innovation Exchange, the KIX program, is offered in 80 countries. A large percentage of the countries where there are such problems are threatened by war. Among the programs that are working well are those offered in Chad and Uganda, for example, countries where there are problems.

We do everything we can. Sometimes, researchers from another region or country study the situation in the neighbouring country, in order to ensure their safety as they conduct their research.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Thank you, Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe.

Now I would like to invite Ms. McPherson to take the floor for five minutes, please.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair

Thank you again to all the witnesses.

I'd like to dig a little bit deeper into how data is collected. We have already heard from witnesses on this study that the failure of good data has impacted the ability to implement good programming.

I will start with you, Mr. Faruqui.

What are the ways we can ensure that data is happening better and that it is more effectively being gathered? What are the barriers to that data being collected? What is stopping us from being able to gather that data?

I'll throw on one more as well. I've recently been reading about how women don't often appear in data. They're invisible in data, oftentimes. How can we ensure that it's not the case as we collect data with regard to this issue?

[Naser Faruqui]

It goes beyond the education field. Data is one of those things that just doesn't seem as sexy to focus on, but it's critical. When we're talking about kids with disabilities, just like you said with women, violence against women and other topics, if you're not collecting data on it, then the issue is invisible.

We have a specific focus, and some of our calls have focused on this issue of data around educational management information systems. Right now, as I mentioned, we're supporting UNICEF to integrate data on kids with disabilities into the broader data systems that they have on education. We're working to link things like health and education data. For instance, during COVID-19, doing that enabled you to identify where you might need to make specific interventions, where schools are closed and so forth, because of the data.

What's stopping it? I think part of it is a tendency that we all like big ribbon-cutting ceremonies with projects that have infrastructure where it's very visible what you're doing. Indeed, as I said, it's less sexy, but it's critical. I think that that's one of the things that's stopping it. It may be that some of the systems themselves, the actual software and so forth, need to be better integrated and made more efficient so you have open systems that are transparent that people can access and so forth. Those are some of the obstacles, but it's an absolutely critical issue.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

When we are looking at a situation where we have very limited funds available, collecting data is a resource that requires resources. If you have limited funds, perhaps organizations choose to devote those funds to that inclusive education rather than the data. Is that possible?

[Naser Faruqui]

I think that's possible, but for a long time we've had open data for development programs. One of the benefits of all of these technological changes that we're seeing is that it's a lot cheaper to set up systems for collecting data using innovative methods. The idea of doing these big surveys and doing everything by hand and getting them into the systems, I think, is not as challenging as it was before. That's maybe a hopeful sign for better use of our scarce dollars for education.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

That's wonderful. Thank you very much.

I see that we have some colleagues online who would like to contribute.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Ms. Abualghaib, go ahead, please.

[Ola Abualghaib]

On the data element, it's really very critical to understand that there are two sets of data that we really need from the country level to give us an understanding of the landscape on disability and access to inclusive education. We know that things are improving quite a bit at national levels from the programs we're supporting across the globe when it comes to formal national data, which is the national census.

The use of the Washington Group questions has been taken on board more now with many governments. However, we are still lacking that administrative data, which is the school system data that gives us an understanding of the annual performance and what we are missing in terms of the inclusion of children with disabilities within that.

There is also the risk in many countries that there is another set of data that's completely missing, which is special education schools. Unfortunately, I would say that the biggest failure of the system is that we are not capturing that in the more mainstream data.

To your point about investment versus reality, the only thing we see working at the country level is collaborative effort. Usually working on data and disability and education and other access to services is a sketchy approach and usually goes in silos. We need to make sure that Canada's support is highly recommended on data more broadly and make sure that it is captured collectively at national levels so there is a deeper understanding of the reality on the ground for children with disabilities.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Abualghaib.

I would like to invite Mr. Zuberi to take the floor for five minutes, please.

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Witnesses, I'd like to ask if you can elaborate a bit upon how poverty accents the challenges around disability and education.

I'll open it up to any witness who can give us some detail on this question, so feel free to jump in.

[Ola Abualghaib]

It's definitely very essential. The point I was making at the beginning about looking at disability from a comprehensive cross-sectoral approach is that the impact of poverty is highly influential in terms of families' decisions of where resources should go. Unfortunately, in many cases, the drop of opportunities for their children with disabilities to go to school is the one to be prioritized.

The reason is that we know that in many countries the social protection systems are not inclusive to disability more broadly. The benefits system is not adjusted when there are members with disabilities or children with disabilities in the household who need those additional funds; disability is never considered. The high cost of transport of assistive devices is not covered by the benefits system in the country. All of that is considered and, unfortunately, has a high impact on parents' choice of whether to bring their children to school or not, especially in remote areas or in situations of conflict.

Thank you.

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

In addition, just as a follow-up, aside from poverty, would you say there are one or two key issues that accentuate the problems when it comes to this study?

[Ola Abualghaib]

One key thing is to know that we know what needs to happen at the national level in order for systems to be inclusive of children with disabilities. Article 24 was clear. There was a clear, technical global understanding of what is needed.

What we are missing are three elements. One is the political commitments from governments towards it. I believe that Canada can play a major role on that. The second one is the investment. The third one is increasing the capacities of all stakeholders, including teachers, ministers and officials who work in the system. Without those three things, unfortunately, all that we are discussing today we continue to lack.

We know that evidence is still missing, but we know that we have enough knowledge that the system is failing children with disabilities. As I said, with no further investment, with no looking at it from a comprehensive approach, and with delay, no matter what commitment comes on board in development or humanitarian contexts—looking at the well-being and access to services of those children with disabilities, specifically education—we will, unfortunately, come back to this discussion again a few years from now not having achieved the thing that we are all here today to achieve.

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you.