moved:
That:
(a) the House recognize that,
(i) Article 24 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which Canada signed in 2007 and ratified in 2010, states that signatories “shall ensure an inclusive education system at all levels and lifelong learning directed to enabling persons with disabilities to participate effectively in a free society”,
(ii) according to the Global Education Monitoring Report, in low- and middle-income countries, approximately 50% of children with disabilities are estimated to be out of school,
(iii) a 2021 UNICEF report found that, compared to children without disabilities, children with disabilities were 49% more likely to have never attended school; and
(b) in the opinion of the House, where the federal government spends money on education, domestically or internationally, clear consideration must be given to the maximum inclusion of people with disabilities, including people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Mr. Speaker, it is an absolute pleasure to be here.
This is usually a place where we have very passionate debates about things that there are wide-ranging opinions on, and sometimes those debates can be hotter than at other times. I think that this time of year traditionally is a time when the temperature outside is hotter and maybe things in here get a little bit hotter as we are moving towards summer. However, my hope is that today we can have a conversation that is every bit as passionate as the ones we usually have in here, but where we are able to maybe find a little more common ground.
I will give a little bit of context. My daughter is 23 now, and she just finished her second year of law school. She was six when I got elected, so it has been a while. When she was 13, we did an interview with her brother Jaden, who has autism, when Jaden was 16. He is now 27 years old. When Jenae was 13 and Jaden was 16, we did an interview with Steve Paikin on The Agenda.
Steve knows me and my kids well, and he did not give Jenae a heads-up that he was going to ask her a really tough question. He just said, in the middle of the interview, to 13-year-old Jenae, “Jenae, I'm going to ask you a really tough question right now. Are you ready for it?” She said that she was, and she steeled herself. He asked, “Do you ever sometimes wish that your brother was ‘normal’ like every other kid?” Thirteen-year-old Jenae, without hesitation, responded, “Well, honestly, since Jaden was diagnosed with autism before I was born, I don't exactly know what a ‘normal’ brother is like, so Jaden kind of is my normal, having autism.”
Steve asked, “You like him just the way he is?” Jaden was just smiling there the entire time, looking at his sister, whom he loves deeply. Jenae answered, “If he didn't have autism anymore or was cured or something, he wouldn't be the same as Jaden is now.”
Obviously, Jenae, being three years younger than Jaden and growing up in the same house, has not known a life without Jaden, as she referenced, so her “normal” has always included Jaden, for her whole life. However, when I am speaking to students or groups around the world internationally, or whatever the case might be, I always use it as an opportunity to draw a connection to the school environment that they both grew up in.
They went to a kindergarten to grade 12 school, so they went to the same school for their entire basic education lives. Obviously, Jaden was a few years ahead of Jenae. Jaden was fully included in a regular classroom, and that was right from the time he started. He had a full-time aide working with him. His needs are such that it was really important for him to have that full-time aide. In some circumstances, it might work a little differently; the needs might be a little different, as every kid with a developmental or intellectual disability is in a different circumstance.
Because the school made the decision to include Jaden in that school, certainly his life was better, his educational experience was better, and he will be more prepared to participate and be able to contribute his skills and abilities because of having been included in that school. However, for every other student who went to that school with him, their normal included Jaden. Their normal included life with somebody who had autism, somebody with a developmental disability.
Surprisingly, when we talk to those students afterwards, to a person, they say that their life was better off because of that experience in school and getting a chance to work with Jaden. Their experience since they left school has also been better, when, for example, they come across somebody who thinks a little differently than they do, maybe not even with autism or a developmental disability, just somebody who thinks a little bit differently. We all know people we can think of when I say that. I guarantee that everybody can think of somebody in their life who thinks a little differently than they do. However, because Jaden had been included in a regular classroom, their lives were better, and they were better prepared to come out into the world.
The motion has some preamble that is really easy to skip by, but I will focus on just a couple of things in the preamble that I think are really important at a global level.
The second point in the preamble reads, “according to the Global Education Monitoring Report, in low- and middle-income countries, approximately 50% of children with disabilities are estimated to be out of school”. This is not about developmental disability or intellectual disability and being included in a different part of the school. They are out of school. Approximately 50% of children with disabilities are out of school.
Point (iii) in the preamble says:
(iii) a 2021 UNICEF report found that, compared to children without disabilities, children with disabilities were 49% more likely to have never attended school
We are not talking about them dropping out later in their teenage years or whatever the case is. We are saying that they were 49% more likely to have never attended school at all.
The action statement in the motion says:
(b) in the opinion of the House, where the federal government spends money on education, domestically or internationally, clear consideration must be given to the maximum inclusion of people with disabilities, including people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
I am going to explain this a bit because that language is very deliberate.
First of all, regarding “where the federal government spends money on education”, in Canada, obviously we get into jurisdictional questions, and much of the funding for education domestically is provincial. However, the federal government does spend money on education. I think particularly of indigenous communities, for example. We have a lot of work to do there. What the motion says is that as we have those conversations, we need to consider people with disabilities, particularly people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
I have had great conversations. We have some fantastic leaders in the disability community. I think of conversations I have had leading up to this point with Neil Belanger and Ken Robertson. We have an up-and-coming researcher in Alberta named Grant Bruno, who is doing some fantastic world-leading work on these issues. That is one important component.
Then the motion says, of course, “or internationally”. The federal government just contributed over $80 million to Education Cannot Wait, an international organization that does fantastic work in refugee camps, war zones and those kinds of places. It is an organization that I have had the chance to do a lot of work with. As we are pursuing that work and funding education, we want to make sure that people with disabilities are included.
The motion talks about “maximum inclusion”. I use the words “maximum inclusion” because we want to make sure we are having a conversation in which it is really easy to get into wordsmithing and to get into some important debates about what full inclusion looks like and what inclusion looks like broadly. My view is that whatever the level of inclusion we are at, we can do more. We can move to maximize what inclusion looks like.
In Jaden's case, he was included in a regular classroom, but some schools that do great work might have an interactions classroom, where there may be six, seven or eight kids with a developmental disability or an intellectual disability. They are in a separate classroom, maybe because their support needs are so significant. Those schools might be striving to include those kids as much as they can in field trips, lunch, recess, phys. ed., musical theatre or any kind of art program they have. We can imagine a world of opportunities, and ultimately, maybe the goal is to move them to a regular classroom with proper supports. That might be the goal there. “Maximum inclusion” is meant to allow anybody to get a vision for where they want to go with it, depending on their point of view and the work they are doing.
The motion then says, “people with disabilities, including people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.” It is really important that we have disability-inclusive education, but oftentimes many advocates in the world of developmental or intellectual disabilities say that even in inclusive education conversations, people with intellectual and developmental disabilities are excluded or are left behind. The language is designed to create a bridge so that we are working on both and are not leaving anyone behind in the conversation.
This motion comes at a really interesting moment. It is actually a really great moment, I think, for this motion. While it is a motion and some people might think a motion is non-binding or has a bit less action to it in a sense, I believe the opposite. I believe it allows us to have an important conversation on the floor of the House of Commons. We can vote on it as members of all parties and hopefully pass it, and then we can point to the motion as being a driving force or guide for us as we do the important work we do on education.
The timing is important because, in September, the UN General Assembly held the Transforming Education Summit, with a broad approach and countries coming together on the important issue of education, something that both the former Conservative government and the present Liberal government have supported. There was a specific note that came out of it called “A Call to Action to Ensure Inclusive and Equitable Quality Education”. That was at the UN General Assembly.
Coming up in June, there are the annual meetings on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Those annual meetings will take place next month. Governments from both sides of the political spectrum have been supportive of the convention over the years, so that is an important opportunity. Then at the end of June, Special Olympics are happening in Berlin. Around Special Olympics, Tim Shriver, the chair of Special Olympics and the son of co-founder Eunice Kennedy Shriver, is putting together a global education summit, where they are going to talk about these very issues at a global level. This is a real opportunity for Canada to play a leadership role.
I do want to point out that, in the world of international development, there is a lot of conversation about the hardest to reach and leaving no one behind. These are important concepts in the world of international development, particularly in the education context. When we think about people who are vulnerable, we try to avoid some of the debates that we have, as we do not want to play one group against another group. However, one thing I would quickly remind folks of is that, as we work on, for example, education for people in refugee camps and war zones, those kids would be incredibly vulnerable if they are living in a refugee camp or a war zone, but any one of those vulnerable kids could, on top of their vulnerability, have a developmental, intellectual or physical disability, and then they would be even more vulnerable.
We talk about girls' education, and we rightly we talk about girls' education. There are tens of millions of girls who are not in school right now who should be. When we think about girls' education and the vulnerability around that, particularly in some parts of the world, we have to recognize that any one of those girls could also have a developmental, intellectual or physical disability, and then we have even more vulnerability.
As we build our systems, as we build the structures and the programs at an international level to tackle these issues, we need to make sure that we build those systems to reach that girl, maybe in rural Africa, who is 13 years old and dealing with maybe an early forced marriage, in some countries, and the stigma of having a disability on top of that. If we can reach that girl with an intellectual disability in rural Africa, we can reach every girl along the way. If we can reach a little boy in a refugee camp or a war zone, who is six years old with a disability, if we can wire our hearts and our systems to reach out, find that boy and make sure that boy is included in the education systems that we set up, we are going to reach everybody along the way as we are doing that.
I will finish with a story. I was in Tanzania about eight years ago, and I came across this group of teenage boys. They were intrigued by my iPad. I showed them a picture of my daughter and one of the boys said, “She's nice”, in Swahili, and I agreed. My daughter is very nice. Then I showed them a picture of Jaden, and I explained through the interpreter that he has autism and what he is like. The boys were riveted to my words as I was explaining what Jaden is like.
One of them, who had been quiet up to that point, looked me straight in the eye and said, again in Swahili, “I like him. He's beautiful. I'll pray for him.” This was unprompted. With just a bit of understanding, that 15-year-old boy's heart became attached in a very special way to another young person with autism half a world away from him.
This is the time for us to have this conversation. There is a world of impact we can have if we not only have the conversation, but then also activate that conversation. I look forward to the opportunity to hear members from all parties weigh in on the conversation.
