Finance committee  Hello, everybody. The Council of Canadians with Disabilities is an organization of organizations. We have a number of national organizations that are a part of our makeup that include specific disability groups. Then we have provincial organizations that are cross-disability and

Finance committee  I guess I would start by saying that I think there's a major problem in the way in which we approach programs for employment. I agree competencies are more important than actual degrees and those sorts of things, but I also think that in a typical employment program for people wi

Finance committee  I'm sure there probably is. There's a possibility of giving tax credits to the businesses, particularly for some of the things I talked about and the need for accommodation and those sorts of things. I'll use screen readers as an example again. If somebody is visually impaired

Finance committee  First off, I tried to stick primarily to federal issues, because this is a federal government. Typically, the provincial government is responsible for any disability pension that people get. Money is provided by the federal government. Obviously there would need to be an agreem

Finance committee  Sure. For folks who are living on reserve, there's money that flows through the AFN. For folks who are not living on reserve, it's a different story. They're not getting money. They're often living in much more poverty. The supports just aren't arriving. When you look at the way

Finance committee  Okay. From a federal perspective, some of the costs in the north come from the federal government. It's important that the federal government look at health care from a broad perspective and look at people who are living in poverty and who don't have access to some of the medical

Finance committee  Hello, everyone. Thank you for inviting me to talk. I'll make it quick so that you can move on. Who are Canadians with disabilities? When we speak of people with disabilities, we are actually talking about people with impairments who are disabled by the environment and type of s

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Hello, everyone. My name is James Hicks, and I'm with the Council of Canadians with Disabilities. We also want to thank you for allowing us to come and talk about what we feel are some of the issues around elections and people's understanding of leaders' debates. Just so that y

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I can try to answer some of that anyway. I think it depends on what social media platform you're using. If you use one that's primarily visual, my guess is that it does not include any text in the background that people with visual impairments would be able to use. If you're tal

Procedure and House Affairs committee  From the perspective of CCD, number one, as we said, is that we have for years sent in questions about disability. They have never been included. There has not been a question about disability on any leaders' debate ever, and it would be nice to see that happen. I think it's rea

Procedure and House Affairs committee  You're talking about the leaders' debates, but all kinds of things go on during elections that the same rules apply to, so if debates are going on in other places, it may be necessary to look at an exemption of any costs related to adaptation so that people with disabilities can

Procedure and House Affairs committee  You've done a really good job at summarizing everything and pulling out the salient points.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Hi. I'm James Hicks. I'm with the Council of Canadians with Disabilities. I want to read for you something that was said by the Prime Minister: ...I will expect you [as Minister of Democratic Institutions] to...bring forward options to create an independent commissioner to org

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Okay.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Sorry, I'm not quite sure I heard exactly what you were asking for.