Mr. Speaker, I recently met with JoAnne Durham and Ron McBride, two individuals involved in Leading Hands of Canada, an organization designed to break down barriers between employers and employees with hearing loss.
In Ontario alone there are at least 85,000 persons with hearing loss. The need to provide training and support programs for such individuals as well as their employers is enormous. Often employers will look the other way from a potential employee with hearing loss because of various misapprehensions about the suitability of persons with hearing loss to maintain gainful employment, a lack of tax incentives for employers, and other factors.
With $17.7 million recently axed from literacy programs, there is a pressing need for the government to take a leadership role in providing educational and training opportunities for those who are without the tools to function at home, in the community and in the workplace.
The right to be treated equally has been sacrificed at the altar of those who can only think in terms of money, those who know the cost and price of everything, but the value of nothing.
I call on the government to reinstate funding for literacy programs--