Human Resources committee  I think you hit right on the issue. If I could have my way about it...what I've observed over time is that the future is here, it's just unevenly distributed. I see different programs in different places. If I could put them all together, they would be along as follows. What we n

Human Resources committee  There's some money involved in this. The problem, at least in our experience in the United States, is the way the agencies are organized. First of all, the disability community competes. We've broken it up. You have people who work with autism, people who work with deaf people,

Human Resources committee  We have a lot of that in the United States. Based on results and not just.... We use 90 days. Agencies don't get paid unless the person has been on the job for 90 days. Where we fall short is that when that 90 days comes up that person loses all the occasional supports. We foun

Human Resources committee  That would be ideal, but they have to be able to do all the things to find, help train, and help show the employers the model.

Human Resources committee  Most certainly. The social safety net is so hard to get into that they're afraid of losing it. In our case, we were paying $17 per hour. When you pay a living wage, that helps people to get off of it, but working part time, entire families were facing.... It's an issue. We just d

Human Resources committee  Of course. We wouldn't have done it otherwise. All these big companies that have done this haven't been doing it out of charity. They come and see for themselves that it's not only just as good, it makes it better because of this cultural impact.

Human Resources committee  Its the same problem we have in the U.S. Even if someone decides they're open to the possibility, it's very rare in the United States that somebody can say, “I'll understand your jobs. I'll find you the workforce. I'll train them. I'll help them transit at no extra cost to you.”

Human Resources committee  That's what we need somebody to do, the federal government to do, to say that if you'll just be open to the possibility, we won't let you fail. But it has to be soup to nuts. Understand the jobs, find the workforce, help screen, and support on the job.

Human Resources committee  I was told Ottawa is really beautiful at this time of year.

Human Resources committee  Surprisingly, one of the companies that did this is a large company called Meijer that works in six states. About two years ago their CEO called me and said they were going to be opening a place on the border of Illinois. He didn't know how close it was to us but he said he would

Human Resources committee  He's the only one in the house who works.

Human Resources committee  When we started, we didn't know anything about this, so we acknowledged that. That was very important. But again, we said we want to be the most efficient, cost-effective, and inclusive, so anything that gets in the way of that, we'll do. By the way, what did our accommodations

Human Resources committee  Any time you try a new program and you want to change procedures, there's a secret word we use. Call it a pilot, and then you can do anything. Our average accommodation was $15 and it was paper and pencil. Mostly it was trying to help the person. We had a technology called ATP—a

Human Resources committee  Thank you. As you said, I was the former senior vice-president of logistics and supply chain at Walgreens. Part of my responsibilities were 20 distribution centres, fulfillment centres, to service our 8,000 stores across the U.S. and Puerto Rico. In 2003, we began planning a new