Mr. Speaker, I am happy to speak on the motion before us today.
I want to recognize my colleague from Montcalm for her contribution to the human resources and skills development committee.
I also want to recognize and commend my colleague from Brant for bringing this motion forward. As he indicated, we did a study on this particular area, and I think there will be some good things that will arise from the study. However, he has been a long-time advocate for persons with disabilities, and I want to recognize his contribution to the committee as well as the equity he holds in his opinion on these matters.
My younger brother had cerebral palsy, and my mom was the advocate in my household. The challenges we have now are certainly different from the ones she would have experienced and come up against in trying to raise into adulthood a young handicapped son in the 1960s. As well, my two sisters both work at an adult workshop, CAPE Society, in Glace Bay. One sister is a director, and she has been there a number of years, and as well my sister Darlene has probably been with CAPE for 20 years, so the issue of physical and intellectual disabilities has been part of our kitchen table talk for a lot of years.
I think if this motion could be deemed as one thing, it would certainly be a step in the right direction. The Liberal Party will be supporting this motion.
Ensuring the rights of persons with disabilities are protected from discrimination or respected to be given an equal opportunity to provide for themselves or their families is something that the Liberals have always fought for. I am proud to be a member of the party that gave Canada the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that guaranteed “equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination...”. This was given to individuals in Canada with mental and physical disabilities.
I am proud that our party was also responsible for the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Employment Equity Act. These important pieces of legislation created rights for persons with disabilities, but we need to do more to ensure Canadians with disabilities have equal opportunities to employment to provide for themselves and their families.
Part of the solution is having a rounded approach to the issues that most affect persons with disabilities, such as poverty, transportation, housing and a long-term employment plan. As I indicated, we are in the throes of concluding a study on employment opportunities for persons with disabilities. Several witnesses spoke to the points of poverty, transportation and housing, and they said that enhancing opportunities of employment for persons with disabilities cannot be discussed in isolation of other policies or barriers that act as disincentives to work.
Dr. David Lepofsky, chair of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance, said:
Don't think about employment in isolation. We've got to tackle the barriers across the board. Transit, education, and employment must all be tackled together. The same barriers hurt in all contexts.
Laurie Beachell, the national coordinator for the Council of Canadians with Disabilities, spoke about a long-term employment plan. She said:
We would call on the Government of Canada, and on [the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development] specifically, to develop a five-year strategic plan to address employment needs of people with disabilities. One-off single-issue one-community measures will simply not get us where we hope to be.
The problem has never been that we do not know enough about an issue to do anything. More so, it is about political will.
The panel's report brought to light startling myths about employing a disabled person. In 57% of cases there is no cost to accommodate disabled persons. Sometimes we hear employers saying that the costs around accommodation are too great. In 37% of the cases, the average cost of accommodation is below $500.
We find from the report that just below 800,000 working-age Canadians with disabilities who are able to work do not work. We also know almost half have post-secondary education.
We are failing as a society, and there is a cost to us all, economically and socially.
The panel's report challenges employers to lead. We have received great testimony. It has been indicated that Tim Hortons has really seized this challenge of growing its workforce with persons with challenges. We recognize that Tim Hortons has taken on big issues before, such as with smoking. The Liberal government at the time stepped up and did so much to ensure that laws were in place and advertising around smoking in public places. However, Tim Hortons stepped up as well, ahead of most other restaurants, to try to accommodate some smokers. It had the smoking rooms first and then just banned it outright.
We know that real substantive and effective change has to come from the federal government as well. We heard some real ideas to help persons with disabilities. One area that was brought up a number of times was EI.
Carmela Hutchison, the president of the DisAbled Women's Network Canada, said:
People with episodic and chronic illnesses often do not have enough time to qualify for benefits. There's a lack of flexible supports for chronic illnesses not deemed severe enough. Very often we see people who are struggling to maintain employment while undergoing cancer treatment, or they have MS and again they're struggling. If they take a lighter schedule, then their funding for their disability is cut to that lighter schedule. Other people have talked about being considered too disabled for one program or not disabled enough for another.
Laurie Beachell, from the Council of Canadians with Disabilities, said:
EI has a real problem with those people who have episodic disabilities, mental health concerns, MS, those people who are well at periods of time in their life and can work, and then cannot work at certain times.
One program that my colleague had talked about was the youth employment strategy and the skills link, in particular. Back before the government took power, that skills link program portion of the youth employment strategy had accommodated 32,000 Canadians with disabilities. Now it accommodates 12,000. It is one thing to have the programs, but at one time these programs served more and they should going forward.
I want to share with the House and the member for Brant that the Liberal Party will support his motion. We hope the government sees this as a call to action and moves on these recommendations.