EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, October 26, 1995

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[English]

The Chair: Order.

We welcome you all.

Have you had any order of preference among yourselves, or will we go with the list we have here?

Perhaps I should indicate that we introduced ourselves before the meeting started.

For the record, though, Andy, would you like to introduce yourself?

Mr. Scott (Fredericton - York - Sudbury): Andy Scott, for Fredericton - York - Sudbury.

Mr. Allmand (Notre-Dame-de-Grâce): Warren Allmand, Montreal.

Mr. McClelland (Edmonton Southwest): Ian McClelland, from Edmonton Southwest.

The Chair: Rey Pagtakhan, chair, for Winnipeg North.

Perhaps you could introduce yourselves first.

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Mr. Steve Mantis (Secretary, Ontario Network of Injured Workers Groups): My name is Steve Mantis.

Do you want our affiliation? How much information do you want?

The Chair: One line.

Mr. Mantis: And I'm representing the Ontario Network of Injured Workers Groups.

Mr. Jim Sanders (National Director, Government Relations and International Services, Canadian National Institute for the Blind): Jim Sanders, the Canadian National Institute for the Blind.

Ms Heather Delisle (Vice-President, Internal Executive, National Educational Association of Students with Disabilities): Heather Delisle, representing NEADS, the National Educational Association of Disabled Students.

Mr. Frank Smith (National Educational Association of Disabled Students): Frank Smith, also representing NEADS.

Mr. David Pollock (Executive Director, Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work): David Pollock, with the Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work.

Ms Lynda White (Past President, Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work): Lynda White, Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work.

Ms Sharon Irwin (National Child Care Mainstream Network): Sharon Irwin, National Child Care Mainstream Network.

The Chair: Thank you all.

Who would like to start? Toss of a coin? Chosen by the chair?

Mr. Sanders.

Mr. Sanders: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, committee members.

In representing the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, I bring comments that are based upon a history that goes back almost 80 years. Our main concern and our main interest is to have a renewed national strategy on disability issues, not based on the philosophical perspective but an economic one. There must be national leadership. There must be some centralized strategy if blind and visually impaired persons in Canada are to receive an appropriate level of service. Blindness is a low-incident major disability. Any regionalization or division is to either weaken or eliminate the possibility of specific needed services by blind people for economy-of-scale reasons and no other.

Let me give you a few examples and then let my colleagues continue with their comments.

Any decentralization - and I appreciate the fact that decentralization and devolution, which is a trend and it will continue - of certain services, leadership and strategy would be to weaken.... Perhaps two or three examples would help.

The CNIB national library for the blind, a production and distribution centre for audio and Braille material in English and French, produces and distributes more than a million items each year throughout Canada to blind people. That means a million items go out, and most of those million items are returned because it's a library. To have ten or twelve of these libraries across Canada producing books and distributing books would not make sense, and it would, of course, not be possible.

We do this totally independently and without any government funds. Be that as it may, it's an example of a service that could not occur or exist in a decentralized way. Each of the specialized services for blind persons, while the service delivery is decentralized, are relatively nationally organized: training programs for professionals, standards, methods, and in some cases very practical research and development. In the last fifty years, thousands of jobs have been made possible and created because of a partnership between the federal government, CNIB and in some cases the university sector. Back in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, for example, blind individuals were trained as dictaphone typists and worked professionally, and continue to do so, in business and industry in the public and private sectors. That was an initiative - an innovative initiative - by the federal government and CNIB.

From the 1960s through the 1980s, CNIB, the federal government and the University of Manitoba created the computer programmers' training program. That existed until recently, when technology made that no longer necessary. Hundreds of jobs were created. Many hundreds of blind computer programmers still work today. The federal government, the University of Manitoba and CNIB also experimented and created the physiotherapy program for blind persons at the University of Manitoba. Again, that program no longer exists today, but it was a Canadian-based training program that allowed innovative, very practical employment.

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There are many examples. Without a national strategy - and in fact more recently, there are no longer opportunities for experimentation, innovation, trials, or pilots because of a lack of national leadership and strategy.

It will not occur on a regional basis. There are simply too few of us to make it viable.

Those, Mr. Chairman, are my opening comments.

The Chair: Thank you so much, Mr. Sanders.

I would like to call on Miss Heather Delisle.

Ms Delisle: I'm going to pass this over to Frank, our executive director with NEADS.

Mr. Smith: First, I'd like to thank the committee for inviting us to participate today in this discussion on the national strategy and integration of persons with disabilities and the possibility of future renewal of this program, which ends after this fiscal year.

Certainly our members - post-secondary students with disabilities - across Canada have a clear stake in strong national programs and in a strong federal presence in the implementation of training, employment and education programs for people with disabilities in this country.

What are the principal issues facing our membership?

Let's look first at the statistics. As of a 1991 health and activity limitation survey, there were 112,200 post-secondary students with disabilities in Canada. That represents about 7.5% of college and university students in this country. Clearly, people with disabilities are participating to a greater and greater extent in post-secondary education and they're looking for opportunities for training and education that will lead to full participation in the employment market.

When looking at rates of employment, and certainly at employment in training initiatives, we've been a very large part of the national strategy over the last five years. Of working Canadians with disabilities, 48% were employed. For persons without disabilities, the percentage employed was 73%. Among individuals with a university degree, the percentage employed was 67% for persons with a disability and 87% for persons without a disability.

While the inequities are obviously great, people with disabilities who achieve a higher education are much more likely to be employed than those who do not.

At the same time, 21% of persons with disabilities reported that their education had been interrupted for long periods of time because of their disabilities and 17% enrolled in fewer courses than they would have had they not had a disability.

What does the future hold for our members?

Certainly with the implementation of the Canada health and social transfer beginning in 1996-97, and the human resources investment fund, we have an uncertain future.

One of the results of cutbacks in funding and decentralization and less money available in the provinces to cover the cost of the education of and social services for our members will more than likely be higher tuition fees on the campuses, and that will more than likely lead to inaccessibility for our members and an unaffordable post-secondary education in the future for students with disabilities.

Students with disabilities often have greater expenses because of their disabilities and are the most vulnerable to increased education or living costs while they are in school. With post-secondary education becoming more expensive, there is also the fear of large debt loads upon graduation. With these kinds of issues facing our members, there is a need for a strong national presence and the renewal of a national strategy that will benefit people with disabilities in the fields of education and training.

When NEADS conducted its study of financial assistance available to post-secondary students with disabilities, accommodating individual needs for the future in 1993, 44% of the close to 400 students who participated in the study indicated that their total income from all sources, including federal and provincial student assistance programs, was not sufficient to cover the cost of their education.

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With less funding from the federal government, the provinces will continue to cut the allotment to colleges and universities. We are already beginning to see this happen. The result will almost certainly be a decrease in spending on programs and services for students with disabilities, technical aids and computer equipment, renovation of inaccessible buildings, and facilities.

Certainly some positive things are beginning to happen, as well, with changes to the Canada student loans program and its assistance for students with permanent disabilities, which has a grants component, and a renewal of the forgiveness provision on repayment of loans for those who are not able to repay their loans. These kinds of things are positive national initiatives.

At the same time, many students with disabilities rely upon the vocational rehabilitation of disabled persons program, which was established in 1961 to help meet the costs of their post-secondary training. Currently the program is under Human Resources Development Canada. It is 50-50 cost-shared. After 1995-96, of course, the future of this program and its funding initiatives and opportunities is unknown.

Certainly this organization, since its foundation in 1986, has heard from its membership that there is a need for a strong national presence in the areas of access to post-secondary education, funding, and programs for training and employment opportunities. We look for some sort of support from the committee indicating that the federal government will continue to show strong leadership in these areas. Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much. I would like to call on Mr. Steve Mantis.

Mr. Mantis: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for inviting me here today to give you my two cents' worth. I figure that's probably what it's worth.

I represent the Ontario Network of Injured Workers Groups. It's a voluntary organization in Ontario. We have 36 local affiliates across Ontario. We are a self-help group. We're there basically to assist each other in dealing with the effects of disability caused through a workplace accident or disease.

I'm not here today asking for handouts. I'm here as a citizen of this country. I'm here as a taxpayer. As a citizen, I believe we have the right to give you our two cents' worth on how we should spend our tax dollars. We don't need more money. We need to be smart.

Let's talk about how the federal government, as an employer, wastes money.

You're the biggest employer in the country. You spend $200 million a year on direct costs to your employees because of disability.

The system that your employees have to go through once they become disabled on the job is horrendous. You send the message to them: ``Go away. We'll put you on a pension. We don't need you any more.''

Do you think that's a good way to spend your money - my money? I don't think so.

We've seen over and over that if you take a positive approach and start with the questions - what kind of workplace do we want to have, what kind of community do we want to have - then you can find solutions. If you start with the question, how can we save money, if you start with the presumption that there is no money and we have to find ways to cut costs, then you're going to dig a bigger hole, because those costs don't go away. If you don't recognize those costs of disabilities, then they just keep adding up.

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Employers end up saving lots of money when they put a program in place that says we value your contribution, we think you can make a difference, we'll do everything we can to bring you back to work, and we'll do everything we can to prevent disability from taking place because we have a responsibility, both moral and legal, to protect our employees.

We talk about a private employer, the Weyerhaeuser Corporation, the largest forest products company in North America. They've saved themselves 60% of their direct costs for disability. If you want to save some money, let's take the 60% of the $200 million you're now spending. That comes out to $120 million a year. Act smart; you have lots of resources.

I get emotional about this because what I see really scares me. We have a situation where the federal government is saying they don't have responsibility. They say it's somebody else's responsibility to set standards on how we want to have a community here.

Well, I'll tell you when I see the way we're going, I don't blame the people in Quebec if they say they want to go in a different direction, because it scares me. We're saying that those people most vulnerable to our society are expendable.

Right now we're at the end of the national strategy, which I think has made some progress. In all the rumours we hear and the actual cuts to programs, there will be no more concern about people with disabilities. The grants to voluntary organizations are going to be cut 80%. Are you taking an 80% cut in your salary? I guess not.

The plan is that the program that was referred to, the vocational rehabilitation of disabled persons, is going to be eliminated. We'll mainstream everybody. Everybody is now equal in our society. So disabled people will have equal access, right? Well, you go to the Canada Employment Centre in our community and they say: We don't know anything about disability. We're not capable of handling it. We're under-resourced. We can't do it. We feel bad, but we can't do it.

That's what mainstreaming is. We're talking about creating a society where the strong survive and for the rest, well, whatever happens, I guess that's just their own fault. I guess they must have somehow done something bad to deserve that disability, and now we're going to make sure that they don't have the opportunity to be full participants in our society.

I'm really looking for leadership here. Mr. Grose tells us that politicians aren't leaders. I guess we don't need you then if you're not able to stand up with some vision and say we want a community where we look after each other, where we support those folks who need help. That's usually on a rotating basis, because at some time or other in our lives we all need help. We need help getting over adjusting to new circumstances that put us at a distinct disadvantage in our society.

That leadership should come from this government and really from this committee. You guys are the ones who are suppose to be looking at these issues.

I guess my two cents is just about that. I'm sorry to say that Canada is going to be a much worse place because of it.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Mantis.

I think you alluded to one of our members. When I heard him pose the question earlier this morning, I thought what I was hearing was leadership in partnership.

I would like now to go to Ms Lynda White and David Pollock, please.

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Ms White: Thank you for the invitation to be here.

The Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work is a Canada-wide network of organizations and individuals. Our mission is to promote and support equal and equitable employment of persons with disabilities. We work at that through building partnerships, developing skills, sharing knowledge, and influencing attitudes.

As we look at individuals who work in the area of disability, there are some very fundamental values to which we and many outside the community of people with disabilities, and those of us who work closely with it, ascribe. Those are values that talk about full access and integration of people with disabilities in Canada to all aspects of Canadian life.

Those include aspects such as transportation, education, employment, recreation, housing, and communication. Those are basic values to which most of us as individuals ascribe in this country, and so should it be for everyone.

There has been some discussion of the talk of disability and some talk of increased moneys as being a question here at the table. Bruce Halliday, the chair of the previous standing committee, used to cite the figure of $20 billion as the cost of disability in Canada. There's certainly no need for more. Fiscal restraint and good, effective management should mean that we can spend less on some of those things if we work together.

One of our concerns is how national and regional allocation of funds will play out. There was some discussion earlier on care at home being much more cost-effective. While it's very valid, one of the things it misses is that it doesn't speak to the independence movement and the aspect of people who want to live independently being able to do so.

Some of the funding issues today, some of the things I hear.... This is where I wear two hats. I work at the Royal Bank in the area of employment equity and diversity management.

Actually, Mr. Allmand, I think you have some good experience in the employment field. I remember being before a parliamentary committee at which you were asking some pretty direct questions in the early days of employment equity.

In my other life, we work at employing people with disabilities. We also do a fair bit of support of community-based organizations across the arts, health, welfare - a wide range. We're the largest corporate donor in Canada, at $15 million in our budget last year.

One of the things I keep hearing is that if organizations are interested in employing people with disabilities, they should be paying for it. Well, in many respects we are, and my being here today is supported by the Royal Bank. I'm not doing some things in an office somewhere else.

One of the things I hear from our donations committee is that, because of the restraint at the government levels, there is greater and greater demand for corporate donations. It's becoming increasingly difficult to be able to maintain organizations that we have worked with over the years that are good organizations that we want to be able to continue to support and at the same time acknowledge new requests that are coming out of the cracks because of the restraint we're experiencing at government levels.

My cautions would be that we can't expect that the corporate sector, the private sector, in Canada is going to be able to pick up a large part of the gap, yet I think there is some expectation that this can happen.

We've talked a little bit about mainstreaming. One of the issues is that if we had mainstream legislation in this country, then we wouldn't be sitting around the table. I'm not suggesting that we should move to that immediately, although I know that bills have been put before the House before.

If we looked at it from the context of 15% of our population in Canada having some form of disability - and that number is going to increase as we age - then it would seem as if maybe 15% of every budget in every department of our government should be allocated towards disability issues. If we did that, then we would not have to have the special pots of funds. However, we're not there yet. We're not there yet within our corporate environments in Canada; we're not there, as we've heard, within the public service; we're not there in society in many ways that we might want to reflect.

I think we're in a state of transition. It is utopia for me that we shall get to a point where we won't have to have people around a table discussing some of these issues, where we shall have full and equal access.

We've got to look at how we handle the transition, how we can build some accountabilities into the system so that effectively there isn't a shutdown at regional levels, where there's great apprehension.

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We have to look at the inclusion at the ground level of people with disabilities in determining the direction we want to take as a country and as individuals. We need to be involving people with disabilities in each and every aspect of our determination. That is part of the leadership requirement of the government and part of what we're all about as we speak to you today.

David has a few more points to add to our discussion.

Mr. Pollock: At this point in the conversation I want to point out what in my mind is one key result indicator that I think Canadians and policy-makers ought to be expecting in terms of delivery systems that governments design.

A few days ago I was sitting around a table with some departmental officials, and the question about restraint and dollars declining was much a part of that conversation. But it seems to me that the dollars available to support people with disabilities today are primarily going to be allocated to those who are in the workforce or who have previously been in the workforce. You've probably heard this comment before.

If we care about people with disabilities throughout the entire society.... If I were sitting in your position, I would be asking what moneys from what departments will be allocated to work with life training skills, with training programs and with educational partnerships to make sure that people who have disabilities and have not yet been in the workforce have an opportunity to do so.

It doesn't really resonate with me when someone says that layer's being cut out because of financial restraints. If it's a question of the pie shrinking, that's fair enough, but that doesn't alleviate us of the responsibility to reflect on the priorities within that shrinking pie. I would be asking what moneys, how much and what percentage of the total population in Canada who have disabilities and have not yet been in the workforce will be directed to programs to support them.

As far as I can tell in looking at this, a very high percentage is being allocated to those who have already been in the workforce. Yet if you look at the total number of Canadians with disabilities, I would venture to say the majority of those have never been in the workforce. That's the smallest sector. So you really need to look at that in terms of your priorities in allocating even shrinking resources.

Ms Irwin: I think it's appropriate that I'm last, because I'm talking about a group on whom the national strategy for the integration of persons with disabilities has had almost no impact, namely the very youngest children with disabilities in this country.

The major focus of my introduction will be the issue of including these children in child care programs across this country and what it has meant to those children, to their parents and to society at large.

Somehow, seemingly relegated to the sidelines of the national strategy for the integration of persons with disabilities was this population of very young children. A very few research projects were undertaken, but no pilots, no models, no comprehensive services, no reviews and no demonstrations.

It's not clear why this population was overlooked. Perhaps it's because they cannot speak for themselves; parents and caregivers have to serve as proxy voices. Perhaps it's because they represent very few person-years - zero to five as opposed to 18 to 65 when compared to the adult population. Perhaps it's because many of them are not even identified until they reach the age of three or four. Perhaps it's because they do not vote.

Whatever the reason that the population of very young children with disabilities was not a major concern in the national strategy, it's increasingly clear that it should be a major concern in any goals or plans that are developed now.

Economists, social scientists, researchers, advocates and parents agree the early years are the most cost-effective times to actively intervene in the lives of very young children to enhance outcomes. The often-quoted Perry Preschool Project provided us $7 for every dollar spent in terms of such factors as less special education, fewer teenage pregnancies, less school drop-out and more earning capacity.

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Enhanced outcomes for children is an important argument for better child care. It's also an important argument for federal leadership in ensuring that children with disabilities are included in child care programs that receive federal dollars or advantageous tax treatment.

A second argument for inclusive child care - and by the way, Steve, I want to change the name of our organization to ``inclusive'', rather than ``mainstream'' so we never get into that terminology problem again - and federal leadership in including children with disabilities in programs that receive federal dollars, or advantageous tax treatment, is the benefits for mothers and other primary caregivers of these children.

These women are grossly under-represented in the workforce and over-represented on social welfare roles, in large part because of the disproportionately less child care, more expensive child care, and more complex child care needs of their children with disabilities. These women are systematically ghettoized as other mothers access training and employment.

Many parents have said ``It's not the disability of my child that's difficult to live with, it's the poverty that follows from the lack of services for my child''. Many parents spoke to the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development about their difficulties in participating in the workforce while parenting a child with special needs and they suggested appropriate remedies.

There's a third important argument for inclusive child care promoted by federal leadership. Not only do children with disabilities benefit directly, but their non-disabled peers learn qualities of caring, understanding and valuing of human diversity in their early years; qualities they take into school and into society.

Research is beginning to support our contention that inclusion is directly beneficial to children without disabilities. In order to have a Canadian society composed of individuals who are comfortable with diversity in an increasingly global, multicultural world, we know that's best developed in the early years when children of diverse backgrounds and abilities play and learn together.

I want to move on to the current crisis in child care for children with disabilities. Despite the lack of legislation or conditional cost-sharing arrangements, many child care programs in Canada have independently moved to include some children with disabilities.

Sometimes they did it with funding assistance; other times without it. They've accessed additional training, modified physical environments, hired extra staff, adopted and adapted curricula and so forth. Child care programs that only recently felt challenged by a child with a mild disability are increasingly including children with more complex needs.

Children with disabilities are still disproportionately under-represented in child care programs, but the levels of under-representation have decreased. However, with the end of the Canada Assistance Plan, child care programs are increasingly concerned about their own survival. Will provinces continue to allocate money to child care at the same level, while more established programs such as health, post-secondary education and welfare vie for the same dollars? The likely answer is no.

Within that context of decreasing support and without an act for Canadians with disabilities that specifically includes child care, the continuing inclusion of children with disabilities in child care programs looks dim. Programs will, with regret, begin to turn away children whose child care is more costly, in an attempt to keep their programs alive. Thus, children with disabilities will increasingly be left out of child care arrangements; their mothers will be increasingly less able to engage in training or employment; and non-disabled children will lose the advantages that early association with children with disabilities can bring.

I have a couple of modest suggestions for federal leadership. While I would enthusiastically endorse and support an act for Canadians with disabilities, and do support the powerful suggestions of other groups that represent Canadians with disabilities, I'll restrict my suggestions today to three that are doable.

First, the red book commitment to expand child care in Canada through a federal expenditure of $720 million, cost-shared on a 40-40-20 basis with the provinces and parents, should be conditional on provincial agreement to expand opportunities for children with disabilities. The provinces would be accountable through bilateral targets and timetables.

Second, the dependant care allowance provided for child care to mothers involved in federal training programs and federally funded training programs should be doubled in the case of children with disabilities. This would permit the purchase of child care services where such services are demonstrably more expensive because of staff support, adaptive equipment and training.

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The DCA - dependent care allowance - money should be fully accountable and trackable through receipts from licensed and monitored programs. It should be providing tax-back advantages to the government and assuring that they're used for child care.

Thirdly, we recommend that a vigorous promotion and development effort be undertaken to assist child care programs in meeting the needs of children with disabilities. I suggest a variety of activities, such as mentorships, leadership training, capitalizing on successful sites, promotion of benefits of inclusion, fellowships and non-repayable loans to students in the field, and replication of existing successful programs.

Maintaining and increasing the level of participation of children with disabilities in Canadian child care is a social good and should be a social priority. Children with disabilities, their parents, and society at large are its beneficiaries. Gains made in this area over the past decade are at risk as the dedicated funding program provided through the Canada Assistance Plan to assist parents in need or likely to be in need with child care costs is absorbed into the CHST.

The federal government has an important role to play in maintaining the present level of participation and in assuring greater opportunities for very young children with disabilities and their families. We call upon the federal government to do so. Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you so much.

On that note, I would invite comments and questions from the members.

Mr. McClelland.

Mr. McClelland: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I thank all of the witnesses for coming here and sharing your ideas with us today.

One of the consistent themes I've detected that has run through this panel, the previous panel, and other panels has been a fear, almost a palpable fear, that through the Canada health and social transfer, persons with disabilities will be completely caught up in the backwash or will be completely overlooked as funding is reorganized or changed.

Putting ideologies aside, whether we agree with it or not, it seems to me fairly realistic to proceed on the assumption that there will be a continued devolution of power from the centre to the provinces in most aspects of Canadian society, whether we like it or not. It seems to me that if we are to maintain a country, our national identity will be based on values that we share from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. The leadership role that many of you have stated should be the purview of the federal government is to bring the regions together in the national parliament, to come to consensus, and to provide leadership from the centre.

In looking at this, it seems to me that one of the reasons that there is good reason for people with disabilities to be concerned is that persons with disabilities are not a discrete group. They are a group that's associated with gender, race, colour, etc. Yet for persons with disabilities, disabilities have nothing to do with these other characteristics. I wonder if you would comment on this.

My feeling is that if persons with disabilities were not considered part of the disadvantaged group based on gender, race, and those sort of things, but had specific needs because of disabilities, it might be easier to focus on persons with disabilities to maintain income support and some of the other suggestions that have come from other committees.

Would anyone care to respond to that? Do you think there is any veracity to that suggestion, or do you think I'm totally out of sync with what is going on?

The Chair: [Inaudible - Editor]...the witnesses, I think, if I can accurately reflect your question. When you said ``versus the other disadvantaged groups'', you were specifically -

Mr. McClelland: With respect, Mr. Chairman, the witnesses can determine to answer on their own. They don't need you to interpret what I just said.

The Chair: I would like to guide the witnesses, and if you can disagree, Mr. McClelland, to that.... You say ``with reference to other disadvantaged groups''. I would like to know, for clarity of responses, whether you are referring to it insofar as employment equity is concerned or whether you're referring to other matters.

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Mr. McClelland: I was thinking primarily in terms of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the inclusion of groups based on it.

The Chair: Fair enough.

Would you like to comment on that then, Mr. Mantis, and then I'll speak to Mr. Sanders, and then Mr. Pollock.

Mr. Mantis: We have to start with what Mr. McClelland started with as well, which is the devolution of powers. From your perspective you might think that's a good thing. It is a choice that the government makes.

The government has the ability to choose a variety of paths. We see that this is the path that the government is choosing. It is not the only path. It is not the only way to go.

As a matter of fact, if we look to Europe, which has very strong national programs, with the creation of the European economic community they are putting forward national standards that are international ones.

So we have choices here. There is not only one way to go.

We're seeing these various countries - they're all independent - coming back and asking, ``Which countries have the highest standards that we can emulate, because we want to be a community that values the human being and the human spirit''. I think that's number one.

If we start looking at how we compare to other disadvantaged groups, then we're on a road that leads us to breaking apart. I want to live in a community where we come together, where we do not break apart, and the actions you take have a significant impact on that. You have choices.

I, for one, say look to the human being and the human spirit. How can you support the emphasis on that in a financially responsible mode? Let's know where we're going before we start saying who deserves the most here.

Mr. Sanders: I believe that the comments and questions get to the heart of the debate. Decentralization and devolution on one hand are a philosophy, an ideology, but they are occurring. It is our job, for both people in the field, in the industry, and you as our federal leaders, to ensure that whatever happens will be handled in the best interest.

I opened by saying that blindness is a low-incident major disability and, unless there is some recognition of economy of scale, some programs will not occur and others will never develop. That having been said, there are many reasons why certain services should be available and delivered on a very local basis.

In fact, the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, a federally chartered and registered non-profit organization, continually balances national, regional, and local interests. The key and the area in which I would ask each of you to work with, monitor, advise, and, in some cases, push the policy-makers at the federal level is the definition of ``disability''.

For blind people it's not a medical problem; it's a technical one. Therefore any medical approach or format will not serve us well.

Secondly - if you could really keep this in mind when you're asking those questions - there is no such entity as ``the disabled''. My needs as a blind person have nothing to do, nothing in common, with no exception, with somebody who uses a wheelchair, somebody who is deaf, or somebody who has a learning disability.

Only a blind person needs to know and receive materials in Braille. Only a blind person needs to learn how to travel independently using a white cane or a guide dog. Those are very specialized services.

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Policy-makers at the federal level have said to us - to me personally in the last month - that they think the disabled can be more appropriately served on a local basis through a common centre for the disabled. They couldn't be more wrong. Locally delivered? Yes. But it must be knowledgeably delivered by those who know me and who can respond to me as a blind person.

The danger in all of this is to mix philosophy with practicality and reality. As policy-makers are working, please ask them to put aside philosophy and really think long and hard about what it means.

When there's uncertainty, please ask those of us who have experience in the field to test out the theory, because in some cases decentralization will be the best thing that ever happened. In other cases, it will mean the end of what we know and have come to expect in Canada as citizens.

Mr. Pollock: Mr. McClelland, you won't find me an advocate for a lot of things about the Catholic church, but there's a principle from Catholic doctrine that talks about the principle of subsidiarity. You may be familiar with that. I think broadly it speaks about the notion that human decisions, social decisions, should be made at the most local level where effective decisions can be made. The cardinal words are ``effective decisions''.

I think at the federal level there are a number of non-negotiables that policy-makers ought to be watching for as the devolution occurs. I think we've had reports of very ineffective - and I think Steve Mantis made reference to this - use of some of the CE centres across the country that are terribly user-unfriendly in terms of use. For example, we need to be conscious of establishing alternate sites.

In the organization that I represent, we're developing a new technology that we're calling a wide area network, which allows people with disabilities to create résumés and then have a piece of software that gets into the hands of employers. We're trying to get that out across Canada.

With a number of these technological innovations it's terribly inefficient and uneconomical to try to have a small non-profit organization have to negotiate many regional agreements for the same kind of technology that you don't want to duplicate from one place to another.

You need some mechanisms through which, at a federal level, you can bring together the key regional actors for appropriate synergy and appropriate planning, even if the final financial decisions are devolved outward into the centre. You're going to find very good ideas in pockets of the country and disasters in others, and you need some go-between mechanisms to make sure there are those conversations about what ideas are fruitful and what are not.

You really have to avoid any kind of dogmatic pendulum swing from one side to the other. Always be asking yourself these questions. What are the non-negotiables? What are the principal values? What are the mechanisms you have to maintain to allow for efficiency and to maximize your overall objectives? That's kind of a warning, I guess, about balance and looking for the appropriate mechanisms.

I think it means that in any federal funding arrangements you should not devolve 100% of the funding. There is going to be a need for national projects as well as for some that work at the local level. I think you need to be asking bureaucracies within your departments to make decisions along those lines.

Thank you.

The Chair: Mr. Grose.

Mr. Grose (Oshawa): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'd like to thank all the guests for appearing here today. Lynda, I'd like to say it's especially nice to see you out of the office. My experiences with your people in the office have not always been completely satisfactory in my other life.

I want to get to the leadership thing, Steve. My constituents sent me here to listen to leaders of various groups, disciplines and businesses, and in concert with my colleagues decide what could or should be done and try to get it done. In that regard, I look at you as a leader. If I were the leader, you'd be listening to me rather than me listening to you. That is what I meant by leader.

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Sharon, having little experience with children with disabilities, I got the impression you said these children are lumped in with other programs. You talked quite a bit about day care and other things. Is there no specific program aimed at such children, or no agency doing something specific for you? Are you always lumped in with something else?

Ms Irwin: If we want to see what Canada will look like when everything is devolved, looking at child care programs and early intervention programs as they currently exist might be a short cut or a crystal ball way of looking at what everybody's programs will look like when they're ultimately devolved.

It's a fragmented, confused mess characterized by lack of standards, lack of principles that are in effect from one province to another, and lack of any clarity about service for families and young children.

To answer your question specifically, there are some very early services. They mainly grow out of hospital settings where kids are identified as having biological or established risks. Those tend to be called infant development or early intervention programs.

They really connect with the family and not with the family's employment needs or the child's needs at a slightly older age for social experiences. That's one band. Those are scattered and at high risk of disappearing. Some of them have already been given their walking papers for the end of December.

They never were an entitlement, even for an identified population of kids with a particular level of type of disability. They were there for some kids, but not for all kids.

I called the second area I talked about child care. We now try to use that as a phrase to mean nursery schools, pre-school programs, day care programs and after school programs - that whole category of programs children are in when their parents are, for the most part, elsewhere.

Within those, in the 1970s, you did see special programs for kids with particular disabilities. There were a number of them run by the associations for community living. There were a number of them run by child development centres for kids who mainly had physical disabilities. There were a few programs for kids with severe visual impairments and for those who were deaf.

Most of those were part-time programs that were seen as educational programs for very young kids. The match between that two-hour program and family needs for the whole day, because most mothers needed to be in the workplace, became less and less a good match as more and more mothers of young kids went into the workplace.

Most of those programs no longer exist. They have been absorbed into the community. The day for a child who spends two hours at that program is characterized by a whole lot of time putting on a snowsuit and waiting while somebody takes him or her to the next place.

We see days where kids are somewhere from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m., and then they wait and go somewhere else from 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., and then they go to a third place and a fourth place. Nobody even knows whether, by the end of the day, they had a good night before they got to their first setting in the morning. We want to get rid of that and have something a lot more seamless that also speaks to the needs of kids to be in a community. We don't have that.

Mr. Grose: Thank you. I think you very adequately answered what some of the other witnesses would probably have answered if I'd asked them the question about their particular interests. Things are not aimed; it's a sort of a scattered approach.

Mr. Scott: In addition to the crystal-ball quality of the situation that has been put forward, I think there is also a warning for all of those who would believe that because of public sympathy or public support this is the one community where ultimately, somehow, things will be attended to. I can't imagine anybody who would have more public support than the children Ms Irwin is speaking to.

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Because government hasn't shown the leadership necessary to identify the need, support it, nurture it, and put programs in place, we see what happens when good intentions are not coupled with good public policy. It's an important message that's brought and that we need to be reminded of: we cannot allow ourselves to think that some confidence in the rightness of something necessarily means it's going to happen the way we would like it to happen.

I'd like to explore a little bit the issue of national standards. We've talked of devolution. To some extent I'm of the opinion that we have a problem of definitions in some cases. We use words such as ``devolution'', ``national standards'' and so on. Things scare people that shouldn't and things reassure people that shouldn't sometimes.

I'll ask the question; it's a simple one. It isn't necessarily a bad thing, particularly in the area of delivery, that some programming could devolve to local communities. That in itself is not inherently bad. Am I correct in assuming that?

Let the record show a number of positive nods.

The second thing, though, is in doing that, we have to distinguish between devolution and abdication. Is that also a shared thought?

Let the record show a thumbs-up. We're on a roll.

I think it's important that the language of this debate be clarified, because I don't think there's nearly as much difference in people's thinking as there might be perceived to be, by virtue of uncertainty about definitions. I participated in the social security review last fall and was amazed by how two different groups from different parts of Canada could view exactly the same thing in totally different ways. Then I found out they don't view it differently at all; it's just that the words they use to describe what's happening are different words.

I would hope we will be very cautious about our language and those kinds of things and that we make very clear that local delivery, with attention to national vision.... I'll avoid using ``national standards'' just because it's a loaded term. I'll simply say the national government has an obligation to present a vision to the country.

The previous group spoke of social audits. We have to have something to audit. We have to have some vision to compare things to. What is it? Is it the best in the country? Is it the worst in the country? Is it what the country deems to be appropriate? If it is what the country deems to be appropriate, who can do that but the federal government?

I guess there's no question in that, but the chairman said earlier this is a round table, so I took him at his word. If anyone would like to react, I'd be very interested.

Mr. Mantis: You touched on important concerns. In order to really move forward we have to ask where we're at. I feel your comments were right on.

When we talk about the role of the federal government, we have to ask what is happening now. We see that we're coming to the end of the national strategy for the integration of persons with disabilities. What is taking its place? Well, seemingly, nothing.

There is no commitment from any level of government that says they want to ensure that people with disabilities will be full participants in our community. We started with a ministry. We had a minister who was responsible for those issues. That was combined with the new HRD. Then the reorganization within HRD took place and the issue of folks with disabilities kept on falling lower and lower, until now we see that there will be no people with a clear mandate to work on these issues.

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If we want the federal government to be proactive at all, we have to see commitment from the top. You'll see this in any workplace program. If you don't have strong commitment, it's not going to happen. You have to have standards or practices. I'm not sure what words you want to use, but I think we want to have a vision. We want to have a vision that goes into some detail, which includes the participation of the individuals who are in the program, in the design and evaluation of those programs.

I think our programs have failed in many instances because the outside experts said ``We know what's best for you; we'll look after you''. In fact, they haven't worked very well. I think we need to have within our structure an organizational structure that says these are the people who are responsible to carry this agenda forward. There is no one.

So when we say we're scared, there are reasons that we're scared. We see that the concrete factors that influence whether or not people with disabilities are going to be on the national agenda are all disappearing. We see it concretely at the local level, where programs that have been funded through the federal department no longer have funds. People with disabilities generally have to rely on the Consolidated Revenue Fund for dollars. They're not on UI. Well, those dollars are all going somewhere else. The programs that assisted those individuals into employment are gone.

These are not just fears that come from nowhere. This is from seeing exactly what the federal government is doing and putting two and two together out there. It's a sad situation.

The Chair: Mr. Sanders, do you have a comment?

Mr. Sanders: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

National vision, yes. National leadership, yes. National strategy, yes. Local service delivery, as local as possible, yes. Let me add to the list, at the risk of repetition: specialized local service delivery.

I think the system has worked very well. To a great extent I have the ability to be here today. I have had the opportunity to be employed for the last 28 years and to travel and work in different parts of this country because there were those skills and services that I needed as a blind person at that time. I think the system has worked extremely well. I have faith that the system will continue to work.

We're at a very uncertain and, to a great extent, murky time because of the evolution of devolution and decentralization. My fear is that the needs of disabled persons are not fully understood or appreciated.

I will leave with two examples. One province in this country has already taken the generic model and applied it. A highly trained, highly skilled professional social worker or direct service worker will meet and greet, provide warmth and comfort and whatever to all disabled persons in that particular area. The problem is that it stops with professional warmth and comfort and is rarely translated into concrete action. It's a model that simply doesn't work.

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Although the federal government is not responsible for education in this country, we can look at what is occurring with what has become known as mainstreaming individual disabled persons going to their local school. The buzz phrase is ``We want individuals in the least restricted environment''.

I remember participating more than twenty years ago in the debate of segregation and centralized schools for the blind versus integration and decentralized or mainstreaming education. We thought we were really smart people. We made the biggest mistake of our lives twenty years ago. Blind children today generally, unless they're lucky enough to be born in a specific city of Canada, are growing up illiterate because there is no availability of Braille and there is no access to specialized services.

That's not an emotional comment. Today children are graduating from high school and university illiterate. They come to me and say: ``Can we work for you and have a computer that speaks or has large print?'' They cannot sit down at a table and read notes, because they don't have a computer with them. I have my notes in front of me in Braille.

We've lost the policy battle on education. I do hope we don't lose the policy battle on rehabilitation and social services.

Thank you.

Ms White: I'd like to pick up on a few of the comments that have been made.

We have models for how we decentralize some of our services. In corporate jargon, in the world I live in when I'm not doing CCRW work, we're dealing with some of the same issues. We're looking at an organization that operates in every province of Canada and we're going through the same kinds of decentralization.

What we're trying to come to terms with is defining the core values of the organizations and defining the things we will not negotiate across our organization, which ensure we have a consistent face across the country so that people who are our clients know we have some basic values and integrities for the way we will treat them and the way we will treat people within our workforce as well.

The models certainly exist in the private sector today. They exist in the government, with things like health care and the private plans that some of the provinces have been trying to put in place, and there have been some controls on that, very clearly. They exist in organizations like those represented by each of us sitting at the table.

If we have a national identity, we are not going to compromise ourselves by not having some basic values in operation wherever we may operate. What we're looking at here are some things that are very key and integral to the way we operate so that we can bring it down to the community level, so that we can make it happen where it needs to happen with the professionalism that enables integration.

You could look at the vocational rehab program, where 40% of the funds are allocated for education, as an educational opportunity, which is within provincial jurisdiction, or you might look at it as employment, and that could lead you in very different directions. Do you want to have some core approaches to how a fund like that would be administered and devolved if that were the case?

The Chair: Before I yield the floor for the second round to Ian, I would just like to pose a question to the students' group. How does the revamped Canada student loans program incorporate the needs of students with disabilities, in terms of both the guidelines and the granting mechanisms?

Mr. Smith: The new Canada student loans program is quite unique in the sense that previously the program did not really recognize that students with disabilities were facing different types of funding and access issues than were other students.

The Canada student loans program has been, since the beginning, a loans program. It didn't make any allowances for the extra period of time that many people with disabilities need to go through a college or university program. It didn't make any allowances for the extra cost of post-secondary education to many students with disabilities.

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Another thing about the program, of course, is that it had a very small amount of funding available for part-time study. In fact, about 1% of the money allocated in any given year would be given to students in part-time programs of study.

As we know, with all students who are participating in post-secondary programs across the country, there seem to be fundamental changes going on because of the conditions in the workforce and the economy and family situations. Most particularly, because of disabilities, many students in this country are choosing a part-time route.

The new Canada student loans program benefits students with disabilities in a number of different ways. My understanding of the way the program will work most effectively is that it will work in tandem with the VRDP funding. There are certain types of funding and services that are better handled by a program such as VRDP than by a student aid program.

Having said that, though, the new Canada student loans program provides grant and loan funding for students with all types of disabilities. It recognizes the extra cost of disability. It funds special equipment and it funds tuition. It funds a variety of different things that students with disabilities will require to complete their programs of study.

However, a number of students with disabilities will continue to fall through the cracks because, for example, a major part of the new Canada student loans program that benefits students with disabilities is that special opportunity grants of up to $3,000 are available per school year in federal assistance.

If you consider that there are about 112,000 post-secondary students with disabilities in this country and that the ceiling in federal funding is around $3,000 per student, then this program will benefit between 2,000 and 3,000 students per year. In a province like Saskatchewan, for example, that might be 60 or 70 students. That's not a lot of grant funding available to students to pursue their studies.

We recognize that some provinces have their own provincial grant programs and that many provinces are choosing to top up the amount of subsidy that's available through the Canada student loans program and its grant component. At the same time, if VRDP programs and support go by the wayside, then the advantages realized through the Canada student loans program, its grants and the assistance available for students with permanent disabilities, will not take up the slack or put students with disabilities on an equal footing with those who do not have disabilities.

Certainly there's a need for strong federal programs, a strong Canada student loans program with provincial student loans and grants thrown into the mixture, and a strong VRDP program that recognizes the need for vocational rehabilitation and training funding and the ability to allow for the extra cost of disability in both the VRDP and Canada student loans.

The Chair: I just want to be sure. You indicated that there will be students who will fall through the cracks because of the magnitude of the number of people who will need the support and the fact that the maximum limit of support is $3,000 per student. Therefore, from your statement I assume that you have information that the maximum budgeted amount will not answer for all these students. Am I right in that inference?

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Mr. Smith: Yes, that's a very good point.

Essentially we have found in the work we've done through our organization that somewhere between 44% and 50% of students with disabilities in this country find the funding and support they receive from programs that are available to assist them to go to school, including federal and provincial student assistance programs, is not sufficient to cover the costs of their education. In most cases, if you want to put a dollar amount on it, it's somewhere between $1,000 and $3,000, and then of course there are all sorts of goods and services in addition to the financial cost that also need to be considered.

So anywhere between 40% and 50% of post-secondary students with disabilities in this country at any one time are not receiving sufficient funding and support to support the costs of their education.

If we look at this issue in terms of economics, it makes good sense to provide funding and support to students with disabilities in a strong national student aid program, because the statistics prove that if the funding is available for people with disabilities to pursue higher education, then they will be participating in the workforce at about twice the rate they do if they have secondary education or less.

So, certainly from an economic perspective, it makes good sense for the federal government to be investing in the future of people with disabilities through these types of programs. The amount of funding spent is very small relative to the benefit to society and to individuals with disabilities who are receiving the funding through these programs.

The Chair: I promise Ian I will ask a last question and then I will yield the floor to him. This is an issue I'd like to get clarified and that I think the committee would like clarified as well.

Of course, there's a limit to the available funds for grants. We know that. We heard earlier from all of you that we can do more with what we have, or perhaps we can do more without asking for more, because of the fiscal restraint. Let's assume that for the moment.

If you were the minister in charge of the program, would it be possible for you to deliver the best you could with the amount of resources available, or would the ultimate answer really be to increase the amount of funding resources available?

I'm posing the question to you, Mr. Smith. Imagine yourself as the minister responsible for the program. How would you address the dilemma?

Mr. Smith: That's a very difficult question, to say the least.

It's important to look at allowing the opportunity for these programs to evolve, change, recognize the new fiscal realities, work within the funding that's available and all of that kind of stuff.

We found from surveying our members and working with our membership that it's very true that the programs we have had in place for the last twenty years or so, with the types of modifications and improvements that have happened to the Canada student loans program being considered as well, have worked very effectively for people with disabilities in allowing them the opportunity to go to school, despite the fact that many students indicate there are funding shortfalls.

Any minister looking at these types of issues in the future will know for certain, when looking at the number of people with disabilities who are participating in college and university programs and the rate of employment of those people once they graduate and move into the world of work, that these programs as they have existed have worked quite effectively. If you put people with disabilities in a situation where they have an opportunity to receive some assistance through federal and/or provincial programs, most particularly in the form of grants, the funding spent will be very small relative to the benefit at the end of the road.

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I think Heather can probably speak better about this than I can. She's currently a student.

Ms Delisle: I've been sitting here listening to Frank and everyone.

When I look at the grant money that's come down to students I'm familiar with, I don't think there's a clear understanding that when a student with a disability is in school, because of the time it takes that particular student compared to a - excuse the term - non-disabled student, there isn't an opportunity for a part-time job. For example, being visually impaired, it might take me ten minutes just to read a page of material.

Access to transportation to education is another issue altogether, where you may not be able to even attend a part-time job to pick up that slack. I see peers working in the bookstore or selling coffee down the hall, making a few extra bucks. As well, education takes longer with a disability at times, because if you're going part-time you don't have that networking with peers who are taking two or three classes with you.

Clearly, having funding coming in for self-directed education as opposed to pre-arranged rehab programs certainly is going to give people what they want. I don't think very many of us would have gone through a university or whatever program and expected to work at something we really didn't want to do, not after putting that many years into it.

I'm not sure if I've really answered the question.

The Chair: You have.

Ms Delisle: The need for loans and grants is unquestionably there. I don't think there are enough. Off the top of my head, I can think of a number of students who have had to leave because they just couldn't cope with not having enough money and really having no other access.

Often, as well, you'll get a number of students like myself who have been in the workforce, who are older students, who don't have parents to fall back on. Women with disabilities who have children and are in an education program have another issue altogether of who's going to cook when they're studying for exams. It just goes on and on. Clearly, there's room for more grant money.

The Chair: I will beg the indulgence of Ms Irwin because I promised Mr. McClelland some time.

Mr. McClelland: No, that's fine. Go ahead.

The Chair: Okay.

Ms Irwin, please continue.

Ms Irwin: Mr. Chairman, I just wanted the opportunity to address your question from the perspective of child care. If we're talking about what to do with the funds, the best thing that could be done for child care in this country would be to take the child care piece, if you will, out of the CHST block. The indications are very, very clear that if it's part of that package as a very junior program, as a national program that didn't quite happen, it will disappear, and that will be to the great detriment of children with disabilities and their families as well as other people who use child care.

The Chair: Mr. McClelland.

Mr. McClelland: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I address this primarily to Miss Irwin; however, others may wish to involve themselves. I believe very strongly in the notion of integrating special needs children and disabled children into the school system wherever possible. Obviously it follows then that it would follow through in the pre-school area as well. I think I speak for the vast majority of people who feel this is a worthwhile social endeavour and it's the right way to do it. If we're ever going to have a change in values in the country, that's the place to start.

The problem is that I have had indications coming to my office of repercussions, because what we have done is taken children who were in situations where there was care provided and put them into the school system without any attendants. All that's done is put increased pressure on the teachers to look after the situation.

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Do you have any experience there? What can we do, as a society, to ensure that kind of thing doesn't happen? Is it possible to get volunteer teachers' aides or something? May I have your thoughts on that?

Ms Irwin: Oh, I'd love to address that question.

We're all talking about the difference between dumping and inclusion. The vision we had - and Jim Sanders spoke very eloquently about the mistake we made twenty years ago, when we thought it was the right way to go - was that all the resources being spent in segregated programs would be transferred to community-based, inclusive-education programs. It wouldn't fall into a black hole of administration and it wouldn't be an excuse for shrinking dollars; it would be better spent and carefully crafted in its expenditure in a system that would give everybody a chance to develop those values you're talking about.

In many places that hasn't happened. Kids have gone back into classrooms at the same time that the classroom enrolment has gone up and the classroom assistants who were around the year before have disappeared. That is not the vision any of us are talking about, and that is not our shorthand for community-based programs that include all children at the child care level, either.

I heard last week of a program in Ontario that was considering integrating, or closing the doors of its segregated program. I've spent twenty years promoting this inclusion gospel, and I heard myself saying, ``Don't do it now. Quietly do some reverse mainstreaming, quietly include some kids from the community in that program, but keep those dollars where you can see them until we get through this period.''

The Chair: Mr. Maloney.

Mr. Maloney (Erie): Our mandate is to review the national strategy. We've heard from previous witnesses that we really haven't had a national strategy over the last five years, but we've had really positive benefits in some areas. It would appear to me that we have a nice new ship with empty holds and no rudder.

Can you provide us with some direction specifically? What can we do to change the situation? Do we need a disabled secretariat? If so, who should sit on that? Do we need a social auditor to monitor what's being done federally, provincially and locally? Can you give us some direction? Where should we go? How should we get there?

Ms White: Francine Arseneault stated it very eloquently this morning, when she talked about inclusion and consultations.

The national strategy, without doubt, had some benefits, but it lacked a strategy and it lacked the consultation up front, including people with disabilities at an early stage, as we've all talked about, in determining where things are going. The consultation needs to also address the best means of delivering it at government level, whether it's a disabled persons' secretariat or whatever. Going back to the grassroots....

As a strategy is evolved with inclusiveness, it's a matter of how it's communicated. Communication was not effective at all in the last go-around. People knew there was a strategy, but they had no idea, really, what it was for. They knew there was funding available in a number of different places, but they had no idea what was going on with a lot of those dollars. If there had been some accountability in the system....

That's my last point on this piece: accountability in evaluation. This is jargon we're all hearing in the corporate world these days too. You have to have reasons to spend the money: ``You'd better show what's in it for me and what you've accomplished with the dollars you have''. That's where we've fallen down with the strategy, as much as there have been some very good things coming out of it.

If we had been able to have had a clear strategy with consultation and strong communication around what it was all about and how it would be administered and evaluated, people would have bought into it and would have been much more positive about it than they have been.

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Mr. Pollock: To supplement that last response, as we move more and more to the area of partnerships with a variety of social players, such as community groups, private enterprise corporations, small business, and trade unions, in various pieces of work, that it's always exciting to have innovative pilot projects available to try out.

At the end of the day, they should be grounded; there should be some money set aside for the kind of thinking about how to make the connections so that after government funding disappears at the end of a project, other players are going to pick that project up and make it work, make it self-sustaining or, if it's not to be self-sustaining, to negotiate in advance what small moneys from government might help that project to stay alive. It's a kind of conceptualization so that we don't just try a lot of things really quickly simply because it has to run from March 31 to March 31.

Sometimes when you're developing new relationships in a community, it takes some months to build face-to-face trust relationships. Sometimes it's important to think of projects in terms of phase 1 and phase 2 so that even if you're not assured of the dollars, in principle the philosophy is there that the thing would be continued into another phase.

It's very frustrating to always have to work within an artificial time line, which may make no sense in terms of your actual ability, to develop that project to ripeness simply because of a calendar year and then have government departments rushing to get rid of funds at the end of the year so they can maintain them for the next year. Those time lines are very tricky pieces and I think they need to be examined.

The point I'm trying to make in particular is that we need to do some good thinking about how pilot projects get handed off and grounded in the communities. The round table discussions about those projects should happen at the initial stages and not at the tail-end of the project.

Mr. Sanders: There are many legacies of the national strategy that we can point to. Most of them are documented in the human resources development review. We can look to that.

``Strategy'' may be a little -

The Chair: May I interrupt? Have you seen a copy of that report yet?

Mr. Sanders: I've only had a chance to review the first few pages because I just got back to my office. It's also being produced in Braille and sent by courier tomorrow, which I was pleased to hear about today.

So no, I haven't reviewed it, but I have participated in many long hours that would accumulate into days expressing my opinion and that of our organization through our personal and direct involvement. I can point to many good examples and legacies.

``Strategy'' would be stretching the definition a little bit thin. However, I think the sincere attempt was to pull it together as a strategy. We do need a national strategy in terms of a vision.

I was involved, along with many others, in advocating for the establishment of both the Status of Disabled Persons Secretariat, which is now folded into Human Resources Development, and this standing committee.

In my opinion, the standing committee has met or exceeded the optimism and the expectations I had. Without this standing committee, there's no one left in Ottawa with whom I can speak and discuss a national vision on a national basis. I'm continually referred to the regional office or to the specific province. None of you have said that today. You must continue your work and you must continue to fight to be a committee. When you go we have nobody left.

Mr. Mantis: I think participants earlier and this afternoon have laid out a number of steps, which you've heard reinforced over and over again, that we need to take.

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I think my little two-page presentation to you captures some of those steps. I think the one that both Lynda and David referred to is...the methods that have been used to assist in pilot projects or new initiatives have diminished the success of those initiatives.

Having played these games with the funding agencies, I know it's ``wait, wait, wait, until we have the new guidelines for this year, because the government has new priorities''. Then it's September and it's ``get in your application really fast and get the money spent by March 31''. Well, I'm sorry, but we're not supermen. We have a lot of strengths, but we cannot perform magic.

The key word we've heard so often is ``partnership''. Put your money where your mouth is. Partnerships aren't run that way. In a partnership, we sit down together and plan out a strategy, a work plan. We have certain responsibilities and you have certain responsibilities, so let's carry it on. Then we evaluate on a regular basis and make sure the steps we've agreed to actually take place.

But that approach is seen to support special interest groups. That's now a dirty word here in Canada. It shouldn't be. I happen to be in a special interest group. I happen to be a person with a disability, and I'm not going to hide that fact. We can play a key role in making our community a better place to live, but we need to do it in partnership, and that partnership sometimes comes in the form of dollars - not big dollars, but we're poor people. Of our members, 60% live below the poverty line. We don't have a lot of resources.

If we're going to really be involved in a consultation in a meaningful way, we have to have the support of organizations that represent people with disabilities.

The Chair: I'd like to interject.

Were you all consulted respecting the evaluation of the national strategy? It is about to end. If you were not, let the committee know, for the record.

If you have seen the draft report of this review, does the report reflect the views you inputted into that review?

Mr. Mantis: Our organizations have not been involved in that process. We have not seen any reports. I think the last time we were asked about what we thought of the national strategy was three and a half years ago.

Ms Irwin: We were only asked at the end what we thought about it. There was a sort of discussion on a goal-setting process for further developments of a national strategy.

Very young children and organizations that reflect their interests were not part of the planning process or the players in the five-year strategy.

The Chair: Mr. Sanders, you were consulted, were you not?

Mr. Sanders: Yes, on an evaluation, and we were asked for comments and recommendations for a renewed strategy.

No one was consulted on its development, of course. Our organization was consulted right across the country, as was I on an individual basis. As I said, I was eating, sleeping and breathing it for awhile. I just haven't finished reading the report yet.

Ms White: I personally provided an evaluation, and my comments are very consistent. The reason I was asked personally is I bridge a number of different organizations of and for people with disabilities, as well as coming from the other end on the employment market and trying to integrate people with disabilities there.

CCRW provided some verbal feedback as opposed to an actual brief.

The Chair: It is now about 2:05 p.m. Question Period started five minutes ago. With the indulgence of the witnesses, we can go as late as 2:15 p.m., which is the start of Question Period proper.

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Members, I will understand if you have to excuse yourselves. If not, we can proceed with the questioning.

Mr. Maloney, would you like to proceed further? Would anybody else? I would like to seize every opportunity.

I will excuse the members.

Ms White, you spoke about basic values that ought to be non-negotiable. What are they insofar as persons with disabilities are concerned?

Ms White: I think that's a point for consultation of and with people with disabilities. I think very often in the community of people with disabilities you find an apprehension on the part of an individual who may be able-bodied or may have a disability about speaking on behalf of people with disabilities. No person purports to be able to speak on behalf of people with disabilities. I would take you back to the consultation process.

However, I think what governs the whole piece is full integration and access against some of those things I talked about initially. If we don't have transportation we can't get people to education. If we don't have education we can't get people employed and they won't have access to recreation and some of the communications issues that we all expect to be a right within this society.

If we don't get that right, we will constantly look at people with disabilities as being a drain on our economy instead of an input into our economy. People with disabilities want to be an input into our economy and that's what will better our country and our fiscal situation.

Mr. Pollock: I have one other comment, and I echo those of my friend Ms White.

This is for the next time you're looking at federal regulations in relation to private insurance corporations. Rigidity is one of the problematic values. I suppose flexibility is the opposite. Here are a large number of people who have one disability or another who would like to work and who would actually take jobs and lessen the social burden if they weren't terribly afraid they could never again receive insurance. The categories of insurance are often very rigid. Those categories determine a person to be either totally disabled or fully-bodied.

Of course, the truth is that it may range between those two. I think there is a federal role in exploring with the insurance companies of this country whether more flexibility could be built into the system to avoid some of the fears and anxieties that persons who would otherwise take employment would have. That's another value I would lift up into the conversation.

Mr. Sanders: Let me add to those values. Disabled persons don't come in bunches like bananas. We're individuals and have some commonality within a specific disability and none among all. Value number two is that we are not sick. We don't need medical doctors. In most cases we need skills or access to community services that will allow us to live within society.

Ms Irwin: Whatever you do, don't leave very young children out of any new national strategy. We know that the kids who have grown up together in good, inclusive, child care programs are measurably and markedly different - in terms of several factors - from kids who haven't had the experiences of being in an environment that includes kids with a variety of abilities and a variety of cultures. These kids tend to be more tolerant and even celebratory of differences. They're more flexible in their problem-solving skills. They're at least as cognitively ready as kids who are segregated from kids with disabilities.

To paraphrase somebody else, I had a dream last night...on the airplane. I had to fly while the big speeches were happening. I didn't have a little radio that I could use. I transferred in Halifax and the plane also stopped in Montreal. This is what happens when you travel from Cape Breton. When the people in Montreal got on the plane I scanned the faces, hoping I would get some indication of how the speeches had gone. I couldn't read them very well, and I hoped the person who sat next to me would talk, but the seat was empty.

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Then, like most of you, I ran for a television as soon as I reached Ottawa and watched it most of the night. When I got up this morning I turned it on again to see if anything had changed. Then I felt I'd better work on my final draft for you.

The draft, the message I'm trying to bring to you from the world of inclusive child care, really is that when kids get this at the very beginning they grow up to be a lot more respectful and comfortable, and they value differences. I really believe proactive inclusion practices from the very earliest years would have brought us to a position where we wouldn't be worried about that referendum tomorrow.

If we get another chance, maybe it'll bring us to one where everybody in this country will be a lot more comfortable with differences.

Thank you.

The Chair: I think you have certainly touched the biased interest of a pediatrician.

Ms Delisle.

Ms Delisle: I will speak to the question on values. I'm not speaking for all persons with disabilities. I'll speak for myself, although I don't think my values in my position as a person with a disability are any different from anyone else's values.

I value a comfortable lifestyle, an education, access to that education and eventual access to a job. I can't think of another Canadian person who doesn't share those values.

I don't think it's as much a question of values as it is of access and overcoming the barriers. I won't go through all those attitudinal, physical lists, but I think something happens sometimes when we start to get around a table like this and we start to pull out these strange differences. Some are very much commonalties. That's what I want to throw in.

The Chair: In a lighter vein, we have called this a round table although it is a rectangle in design, but that's the nature of the rooms here.

Here's what occurs to me. Here is a national committee of Parliament for persons with disabilities. You have come from some provinces. Has there been any regular consultation or input on your part or on the part of the provincial governments as committees of the provincial legislatures?

Have you made presentations to them? One of the problems that we face here with respect to the student loan program is that when you design a federal program, the Canada student loan program, then provinces, wittingly or unwittingly, wisely or unwisely, would release the responsibility from certain programs that they had funded beforehand. An example is the vocational rehabilitation program for students with disabilities. You have a greater need if the provinces take over the responsibility for whatever reason. Now your needs cannot be met by the student loans program on a national level.

Are you aware of these kinds of situations and have you brought these to the attention of the provinces as well?

Mr. Smith.

Mr. Smith: I think that's always a concern. Certainly when you have a situation such as the one we currently have in Ontario with the provincial government, there's a real concern that you will have students receiving funding through the national student aid program while at the same time having their VR funding cut off to an equal level provincially. Or they may not receive the same amount of provincial student assistance they received in the past.

I think it's quite clear that in the way this program has been designed there's a need for continual monitoring of what's going on in the provinces. There's a need for continual emphasis on national standards. It's particularly difficult in the area of education because of course education is a provincial responsibility.

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There's a need for a national standard and national direction to say, with programs such as Canada student loans and VRDP - whatever ends up happening to that particular program, whatever we end up calling it - these are the standards by which we measure these programs and that students attending colleges and universities across the country will be eligible for funding under these programs at the same level, no matter where they live throughout the country.

With the devolution of programs and funding and the fact that the federal government is working to decentralize its role in these types of programs, there is a very real fear that students in one province will be in a more advantageous situation than students in another province will be.

The Chair: I would like to adjourn the meeting. We must have special permission from the whip to go beyond Question Period, which is starting about now.

I know there is still a lot of interest on your part, and on the part of committee members, but I would like to thank you on behalf of the committee for this very productive input. If you have any additional comments, please submit them to the committee.

On that note, thank you again. I adjourn the meeting of the committee.