Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here with you today.
I'm the president of an organization based in Toronto called the Institute for Work and Health. We're an independent, non-profit, research organization. The name of our organization kind of says what we do. We're concerned about the ways in which work affects and harms people's health. But we're also concerned about and do research on the ways in which people's health impairs their ability to participate in work.
I actually was a member of the scientific advisory committee on veterans health that reported to the minister—I guess it was in December 2012—on the human health effects of depleted uranium. Dr. Pierre Morrisset was the chair of that committee and I believe spoke with you at hearings this past spring. It was an honour for me to serve veterans in that capacity and I hope our work was valuable to you in the standing committee.
I want to acknowledge, because Judy's quite a humble woman, that you have before you today a very talented public administrator in the broad field of how to accommodate people with disability and encourage their participation at work. She has had the history in the last 10 years in Ontario of designing and implementing some very substantial program reforms in the Ontario workers' compensation system, a story that I hope you have the opportunity to discuss with members of the standing committee.
I wanted to share three or four thoughts with you today. The first is if we as legislators—and I think this is a useful perspective to take—think back 40 years ago to where we were as a society in Canada in terms of our ability to provide opportunities to people with disability and think about where we are now, it's really important that we note how much progress we've made. Our streets and our buildings are more accessible. Our educational institutions are very good at providing educational experiences to people, children, and college students with impairments, disabilities and increasingly, our workplaces, whether they're public sector or private sector, are more aware and more capable of accommodating people with health impairments.
If we think back over the last 40 years, how did we get here? We got here in no small measure because you and your predecessors as legislators set some standards, both provincially and federally, about where we wanted to go as a society. And as we sit here today and think through our own personal experiences, we can all identify a family member, a colleague, a friend, whose opportunity to participate in valued social roles has been enabled by the way in which we've made progress in this country. There is, then, in my mind this specific context of the new Veterans Charter, reforms that were brought forward about 10 years ago after a fairly considerable period of thinking, talking, and discussing. I think the new Veterans Charter is among those kinds of reforms that are moving this country forward in terms of our ability to respond to the needs of people, in this case, the Canadian Forces veterans with disabilities.
Here's another thought for you. I'm a researcher. I like to look forward to significant public programs and be able to satisfy myself that the program administration is devoting sufficient resources to be able to say to you as parliamentarians or me as a citizen, we know what we're doing in terms of how our services are benefiting the beneficiaries. I have to say I'm impressed by how Veterans Affairs has devoted resources to measuring the progress of the new Veterans Charter. I think some of the components of that...for example, the life after service study has proven to be very useful and in its replication in future years will continue to be very informative in guiding Veterans Affairs and you in terms of the ways in which the charter services can be improved.
I have just two more comments. My organization has had the opportunity to collaborate with the research director of Veterans Affairs in Charlottetown. Over the last 10 years we've been impressed by the commitment and the talents of that group.
I'm going to return to a thought that Judy put on the table. In a sense it's a bit of a paradox but, the more we, as a research organization, look at this, the more we believe it's true. It goes like this. There is, I think, an enduring truth in the statement that for people who participate in paid employment, working is beneficial to their health. So, for those of us who return to work following a disability episode, or for those of us who return to work after a spell of unemployment, our health is better when we go back to work. It might perhaps seem paradoxical.
We have a stereotype sometimes that work is one of those things we don't like to do or it's one of those things that takes time away from things we do like to do, but it does seem to be an enduring truth that people's health improves if they have the opportunity to work. There are ways in which the design of the programs under the new Veterans Charter supporting Canadian Forces personnel in their transition from military service to civilian life represent to us really strong opportunities for that truth to be realized.
Thank you, Mr. Stoffer.