Status of Women Committee on March 12th, 2009

[Carmela Hutchison]

AISH is the assured income for the severely handicapped. It's the same as the Ontario disability support program or DB2 in British Columbia.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

What is LICO?

[Carmela Hutchison]

LICO is low income cut-off. For a single person it's about $15,000. I apologize; I think it's about $32,000 for a family of four, but that's off the top of my head.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

I see.

The more I listen to you, Ms. Hutchison—earlier, you quoted all of these statistics—the more I'm convinced that while it's nice to collect EI benefits for 20 or 25 weeks along with medical benefits, do you not think that a more holistic approach would be preferable, one that takes into account the different aspects of life that are affected when a person becomes ill? I'm thinking here about assisted living facilities. Is it easy for you or for persons with disabilities to access assisted living facilities? Are there similar programs in place to help you access such facilities?

Regarding employment, Quebec has a program to help persons with disabilities find and keep a job. That's not always easy. Under the program, employers receive a subsidy that covers a portion of the employee's wages, so that they can keep their job for a longer period of time. Even with this program, it's hard to keep these persons employed long enough for them to qualify for EI benefits. After a while, employers feel that they are not getting their money's worth, even with the subsidies, because the work skills of the person with the disability are deemed inadequate, even when the output corresponds to the amount the employer must pay out of pocket. Would it be possible to develop programs to help persons with disabilities who can work to hold on to their jobs? Being able to work and to have a social life, instead of staying home and doing nothing, is very important, in my view, in terms of increasing one's self-esteem. Of course, it's important to ensure that these persons have access to EI benefits immediately when they encounter some physical problems, regardless of the nature of these problems.

I don't know where to begin. It's a very complex issue and there are so many problems that need to be addressed when a person suffers from a disability or from a degenerative disease. It's so complex that even I don't know where to begin. During economic hard times, everyone is looking for some help. The need is real, but where do we begin?

[Carmela Hutchison]

One of the learnings the Alberta government had when they did their cutbacks in the nineties was that it was a false economy to cut back disability benefits. Over time they enhanced them greatly, and I think that is one very important thing.

People with disabilities, inasmuch as we consume resources, are also economic drivers. One hundred per cent of our income gets turned back into the economy. Employment is provided when people are hired to assist us. Whether it's as an employment aid or as a personal care aid in the providing of disability supports, it all creates jobs. That drives the economy, so it's an important thing.

You've said so many exciting things, and I'm hoping I capture them all.

With respect to Emploi-Québec, I have to say that DAWN Canada has utilized that resource. It is a model for Canada. Everyone should be doing it across the country. What happens in Emploi-Québec is that a person comes in with a disability, and it's determined, perhaps, that the person who's working with a disability is 60% disabled. They will fund the salary to 60% of what we would be paying. This allows us as an employer an opportunity to hire somebody with a disability whose effectiveness might be reduced, but there's a saving on the salary end. It's an excellent program, one that would be lovely to have across the country. You are right that even with that program it is very difficult for people to accrue enough benefits.

The other thing you talked about was physical housing, which is also a huge issue. I know there are other government programs addressing housing; we just need more of them.

One of the things that are terribly important is the amendment of the building code, which includes features for disabilities, encouraging, at the minimum, visitable housing—that is, certain structures that allow a house to be modified over time. But really, it's accessible housing by percentage: every development would have to have a certain percentage of accessible housing. This is really very important.

I was lucky enough—I always say I'm a princess with a disability—to have a home, a husband, and a vehicle. We were told, with our home, that if we modified the height of the cupboards it would devalue our home and we might have to come up with more down payment. I didn't have the ability to come up with more down payment. So basically, now I have beautiful, accessible cupboards at 39 inches high. That is one of the impacts that sometimes happen from this.

We were misquoted on the elevator that needs to go into the house. Now I can't get to my basement. Funding for accessibility is as much of a personal issue as it is for any other public building where accessibility is an issue.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Patricia Davidson]

Thank you very much. We'll move on now to Madame Boucher for seven minutes.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you very much for coming here on such short notice.

My comments are somewhat along the same lines as those of Ms. Demers. This issue is very important to us. Quebec has many programs in place, as my colleague noted. You're from Alberta, I believe. Are their support programs in Alberta for persons with disabilities?

Our government and Status of Women Canada provide substantial support to women. I was in Montreal on Friday where it was announced that Action des femmes handicapées de Montreal would be receiving $285,340. Quebec women with disabilities are forging partnerships. Often, when a person is disabled, resources are scarce. We try and help these women. The aim of this project is to improve their management, leadership and entrepreneurial skills so that they can start their own business or micro-business, identify the challenges they face and devise some positive, long-term solutions. This money will be used to organize a variety of activities such as workshops on business networking, financing, management, new technologies—because that's the wave of the future—, promotion and marketing. Women with disabilities will also be introduced to some mentoring activities. Disabilities in this case can be visual, mental or physical in nature.

Do you think this kind of funding could help other women with disabilities? When this type of direct assistance is provided to women, do you think it opens up employment opportunities for them?

[Carmela Hutchison]

I think these types of programs are all very important. Certainly, across the country, I can point to the opportunities fund as one other resource that has been used country-wide. There is supported entrepreneurship and there is also supported employment.

The supported employment programs that I'm most familiar with are SPHERE-Québec, and the BUILT Network, which has six project sites across Canada. It's a seven-week training program for mentally ill people that has been highly successful, exceeding all of its targets. The program covers customer service training and some rudimentary computer training, and it helps people to manage their mental illness in the workplace.

All of these resources are extremely important in helping to develop women's ability to become more economically successful. From the experience of the National Network for Mental Health—which is not only for women, but for men as well—supported employment has been more successful than supported entrepreneurship, simply because the struggles and stresses of managing one's own business when one has a disability, and without other backups.... If you are a sole proprietor, it can be somewhat of a risk. So more people there supplemented their incomes rather than getting off the system altogether.

Having said that, I also know there was a federal program for training people in web design. I know a woman from B.C. who is starting her own web design business from home, and she is having some success with it. It's in the building or start-up phase, but is coming along, and she is getting contracts.

I hope that helps.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Patricia Davidson]

[Inaudible--Editor]

[Carmela Hutchison]

Well, I certainly think access to assistive technologies is also extremely important, and that's one thing we really need to make sure of. With these assistive programs, the dollars need to follow the person. And these programs should be needs-tested as opposed to income-tested, because you sometimes find people who really could benefit from them and become productive, but if their incomes are too high, they won't get access to the program.

So I think that if we're going to follow the principles of universal health care, all disability and medical supports should really be needs-tested rather than income-tested.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

The federal government can help you. In Quebec, women are fortunate to have access to a range of programs. Are you as fortunate in Alberta? I'm not very familiar with that province. Could you tell me more about the support programs in place there, particularly for women with disabilities?

[Carmela Hutchison]

In Alberta, there are certainly disability-related employment supports. There is nothing for women specifically. The ministry for women there has been placed under the Child, Youth and Family Enhancement Act, so it's not even its own ministry anymore. That is of particular concern to those of us in the province of Alberta because we don't have our own ministry for women, and that makes it very difficult for disabled women in particular.

However, what do exist are disability-related employment supports. There's also access to the federal programs we've been talking about throughout our time together here. Also, there is the ACE program, the Alberta community employment program, which used to be jointly administered between the federal and provincial governments, and then it went to the provincial government. It was different from Emploi-Québec and less helpful to us, because when we were using the program as an NGO we couldn't promise permanent employment and, therefore, sometimes didn't get workers. Another time, when we had actually done a hiring process and had two highly qualified workers, they ended up being cherry-picked out of our program. They were told, no, no, you guys can work full-time, and they were put into that stream and out of ours.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Patricia Davidson]

Thank you very much.

Now we'll move on to Madam Mathyssen, for seven minutes, please.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

It's wonderful of you to come back and provide your wisdom to this committee. It's good to see you again.

I was quite interested in your solutions and your additions to what was proposed by the Caledon Institute. You mentioned a guaranteed annual income. Now, there are those who would say that's too expensive, that Canadians wouldn't support such a policy. How would you respond to that? What would you say to them?

[Carmela Hutchison]

While I know that it's a controversial issue, I think it still bears consideration.

One of the largest stressors that come for people being productive and for people who are trying to achieve employment.... I'd like to sort of quote MLA Alana Delong. She and I worked for quite some time on the low-income review committee. She said that they found that the best way for people to come off the system was to slowly, slowly come back and to have as few bumps as possible. I think she's very accurate in that. Having a guaranteed annual income for every citizen would mean that people are not stressing that they are going to lose every single benefit they have. A lot of things happen. For example, if someone is sick and still wants attachment to the workforce, if that person reduces work hours with the employer, what immediately happens is that if he or she then has to go on long-term disability, the full-time employment the person started out with is lost. He or she will lose that full-time benefit, and the long-term disability carrier will only pay the reduced rate.

That's one obstacle right there. People work until there's nothing left. They stay longer when they maybe should have been on disability or maybe should have been on reduced hours. Then we have a situation where people can't move in the system because they're going to lose their medical benefits, they're going to lose their extended medical benefits that provide for other disability support, or they're going to lose the job itself. That also poses other problems.

If there was a guaranteed annual income, people would feel safer because they would not lose that base. I think we'd see a whole lot of creativity and different things happening.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

You said in your testimony during the last Parliament that disabled women make significant contributions to the Canadian economy. Could you please reiterate what you told the committee in regard to the important contributions made by disabled women?

[Carmela Hutchison]

If I miss something, please add it to the record. Certainly, first of all, women are half the family. They're making a lot of the purchasing decisions for the family. There's a larger proportion of single-parent families, especially among disabled women. Again, the major dollars spent are being decided upon by women with disabilities.

As I've said over and over, look at people with disabilities as economic drivers. Look at us as customers and potential markets, because there's a whole array of everything from government programs to job creation. One thing that doesn't go away during economic fluctuations is disability. Whether the market is bull or bear, I am as disabled as I was the day before and the day after. Therefore, that's something that's constant in our economy.

Again, the more we're seen as drivers of the economy and drivers of industry, the more it certainly makes good economic sense to provide supports. If you're looking at an economic stimulus package, then rebuilding some of the closed hospitals and filling the nursing shortages and medical personnel shortages makes really good economic sense.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

We know that with the EI benefit comes a training component, for some people at least. Are disabled women eligible for EI training, or are there problems in regard to the disabled securing that training? Are there any barriers you could describe?

[Carmela Hutchison]

I haven't really seen a lot of barriers posed through the system of EI training. I would think that the barriers are systemic and related to the lack of supports with respect to things like child care, accessible transportation, and provisions of those basic supports and health benefits. If a woman has to take all day in order to maintain her home and her children, then there isn't energy left over for work.

I thank you very much for the fact that I'm allowed to travel here with an attendant to help me with my disabilities. If I had had to pack my own suitcase and drag in my own luggage, I wouldn't have had an opportunity to be dressed appropriately. When my scooter got off the plane and they had dismantled the battery case, if my husband hadn't been there as my attendant to fix that, I couldn't have gotten to the ground to fix it, and I would have been stranded at the airport without a mobility device on very tight timelines. If you translate that into a work situation, then a woman who doesn't have those kinds of supports is not going to be able to show up for a job.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

I take it that, beyond coming here, travel is very expensive and challenging for you, then.

[Carmela Hutchison]

It is always very expensive, and the challenges are constant. I think that's something that also really needs to be looked at. In the NGO sector in particular, it is very difficult because some of the national organizations don't have the budget to provide attendant care.

In the workplace I think that is also important, because again, attendant care isn't something that is easily or readily available. It's a definite gap in our—

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Patricia Davidson]

Thank you very much.

We'll now move on to Madam Zarac, for five minutes, in our second round.

[Lise Zarac, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

Ms. Hutchison, when you start collecting EI for a disability, are you penalized for the first two weeks also?

[Carmela Hutchison]

Yes. And that's one thing--thank you. Elimination of the waiting period is essential.

There was one other...[Inaudible--Editor]...and it's because we, as employers, didn't understand that if a person had utilized their whole sick bank before going on EI, then they automatically had to have the waiting period, whereas if they even had just one day in their sick bank, then they didn't have to have the waiting period. But we should eliminate that waiting period.