Human Resources committee  First of all, education is going to be massive. If you look at all the people with disabilities who are participating in the workforce today, only 7% are working for large corporations, 93% are working for small to medium-sized businesses, and there are significant reasons for th

Human Resources committee  Yes, that is absolutely crucial. The cornerstone of my success in hiring people with disabilities has been community partners. There are nuances that come with hiring a person with a disability. Every disability is different. Every disability is a spectrum. It can be a little ch

Human Resources committee  That's a difficult question. I would say not really. There are some very good programs out there whereby people with disabilities have had mentoring that has led to full-time work or to a job or pre-training—whatever you want to call it. After a 20- or 25-week program, the candid

Human Resources committee  It's actually very important and there are a number of reasons for that. One of the things that we've discovered over the years is that people who have disabilities, when they get out of school—even if they came out of university—are lacking in soft skills. When they come into th

Human Resources committee  I would like to answer the first question. That is, you talk about the stories and that you've heard them for many years. You have, but you haven't heard them from businesses. You've been hearing them from the sector. Business owners want to hear from business owners in a peer-to

Human Resources committee  Your original comment about quick service restaurants, or fast food restaurants, bringing in people from other countries through the foreign worker program is a very good one because in Alberta we do have issues. Even in my business at Tim Hortons we have problems finding staff,

Human Resources committee  Thank you. I'll back up a little bit. As Cameron mentioned, the unemployment rate for people with disabilities is 47%. That's actually a StatsCan number. We know the real number to be much higher than that, so the significance of this problem is much greater than one may think.