Madam Speaker, when Tim Hortons franchise owner Mark Wafer hired a young man with Down's syndrome named Clint, he probably did not realize that it would turn out to be one of the best business decisions of his life.
Clint did all the same tasks as his co-workers and made the same money with no government wage subsidy or workplace tokenism. He arrived early, left late, and refused to take breaks all day long. Mark has since hired over 200 employees with disabilities just like Clint, who together made his six Tim Hortons locations among the most profitable in the legendary chain.
There are a million Canadians with disabilities who work, including 328,000 with severe disabilities. However, many people with disabilities do not have jobs. What is stopping them?
In many cases, the government is. Programs like income assistance, housing, drug benefits, and others are clawed back when people on disability get jobs. With these clawbacks plus taxes, often the harder people work, the poorer they become.
For example, a minimum wage-earning worker on disability in Saskatchewan who goes from part-time to full-time work actually sees his take-home pay drop. Stats Canada reports that 84,000 Canadians with disabilities who are able to work do not, because they fear they would lose income if they did.
Mark from Tim Hortons said one of his best workers had to quit because he would lose $10,000 in medication assistance if he kept working, so Mark asked an official with the Ontario disability support plan what the best way to get off of disability was. She said, “Die.”
Policies that cancel out people's wages signal that their work has no value. That is not true and it is not right, and we can fix it. The opportunity for workers with disabilities act would require government at all levels to allow people to earn more in wages than they lose in clawbacks and taxes.
The bill knocks down the welfare wall and makes work pay, because there is dignity in labour. Ask Walgreens vice-president, Randy Lewis, the father of an autistic son. He hired over 1,000 workers with disabilities at the company's ruthlessly competitive distribution centres. These workers profited the company, and the jobs freed people from poverty. To quote Lewis' book:
Also on the team was Derrill Perry, a forty-nine-year-old-year old man with a developmental disability, who had been employed in a workshop where he was paid less than a dollar an hour.... On the day he earned his first Walgreens paycheck, he handed it to his mother, and she began to cry. He used part of that paycheck to treat his parents to a dinner out—first time to pay the bill at a restaurant.
Lewis met Derrill's parents at the company's open house. He writes:
When I reached out to shake Derrill's dad's hand, he pulled me in for a hug and whispered in my ear, “Thank you. My family is finally safe. Now I can die knowing they'll be all right.”
Within a year, Derrill's father died. Derrill was the sole support for his mother—his salary more than either of his parents had ever earned.
By passing the opportunity for workers with disabilities act, we tell the Derrills, the Clints, the Marks, and the millions of others who work or want to work that we will never count them out again, that they matter, that they have worth, that there is treasure in each and every one of them. While for the longest time we understood that they needed us, we now know that we need them too.