[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
Tuesday, November 28, 1995
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[English]
The Chair: I should like to call the meeting of this committee to order and welcome Dr. Joan Cummings, Mr. Gary McPherson and Mr. Randy Dickinson from the Nova Scotia Disabled Persons Commission, from the Alberta Premier's Council on the Status of Persons with Disabilities, and from the New Brunswick Premier's Council on the Status of Disabled Persons, respectively. If you would proceed - perhaps I should call on Dr. Joan Cummings to begin.
Mr. McClelland (Edmonton Southwest): Mr. Chairman, perhaps we could introduce ourselves because Dr. Cummings is unable to see us. We could introduce ourselves so she would know who is at the table.
The Chair: Excellent suggestion, and would you start, please?
Mr. McClelland: Okay. From this side of the table, Ian McClelland from Edmonton Southwest.
Mr. Allmand (Notre-Dame-de-Grâce): Warren Allmand, from Montreal.
Mr. Maloney (Erie): John Maloney, from Erie riding.
Mr. Scott (Fredericton - York - Sunbury): Andy Scott, from Fredericton.
The Chair: On my right is Mr. Bill Young, the researcher from the Library of Parliament, and Mr. Wayne Cole, our clerk of the committee, and yours truly, Rey Pagtakhan, the chairman.
You may proceed, Dr. Cummings.
Dr. Joan Cummings (Chairperson, Nova Scotia Disabled Persons Commission): Thank you, Mr. Chairperson. Would you like me to recap again the background?
The Chair: Yes, please.
Dr. Cummings: We're here representing a group of premiers' councils or commissions - some of them are called commissions - across Canada and the territories. Our mandate as commissions or councils is to advise government on matters of policy affecting persons with disabilities, to keep government apprised of the needs of persons with disabilities, and to act as a liaison between government and various parts of the disability community, to act on issues as they arise at the community level and so on, to facilitate communication, partnership, joint action, and policy changes.
As a group we meet once each year, usually, to look beyond our provincial borders, to look at what nationally is affecting the community of Canadians with disabilities. This year that meeting was in Halifax, hosted by the Nova Scotia Disabled Persons Commission, and that's why I'm here speaking to some of the issues.
Our focus this year in Halifax was on the Canada health and social transfer and the meaning that might have for persons with disabilities - for their ability to access needed supports and services.
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We struggle. As members of commissions we do act on behalf of and with the entire disability community in our provinces. We do not represent a particular disability, but rather cross-disability perspectives, and we are attempting to bring those here today.
I think those of you who've been involved in other negotiations will recognize that with a community with needs as diverse as the disability community there needs to be a lot of negotiation and discussion among the various groups within the disability community. That's been part of our job - to facilitate at the provincial level.
At our council meeting in Halifax, talking across provincial boundaries also presented interesting challenges, because of course there are not only different needs for different disability groups - though there are common ones as well - there are different needs for different regions of the country. We understood very well what some of those around the constitutional table must have faced, as we ourselves tried to negotiate our various positions and come up with a common statement that we could all endorse.
We did do that, after two days of quite hard slogging of the issues. That common statement was distributed to all members of Parliament across Canada. It was distributed to provincial premiers and to a number of MLAs within provinces.
What we were hoping to do was to basically get some clear attention focused on the community of persons with disabilities in Canada, and that's what we're looking for your help and your leadership today in doing.
The statement itself was basically set out in three sections. The first section dealt with basic principles that we at our table had no trouble agreeing to, and we suspect you'd have none, because it was basic things like the inherent dignity and worth of individuals, the right of individuals with disabilities to participation in the decisions that affect them, the right to maximize their choices to full integration in community life, to full participation, and so on. These basic statement-of-equality principles are ones that I think we need not deliver here because I think they are ones to which we would agree.
The second part of the statement dealt with what we saw as issues and challenges presented by the Canada health and social transfer. What we started out with was a good look at what's happening to people with disabilities in our respective provinces and then what's happening to people with disabilities across Canada. I think Mr. Axworthy spoke with you on November 9. We were provided with copies of his notes that he brought in preparation for speaking with you. He will have pointed out to you that in 1995 - well, as of the last census actually - the lot of persons with disabilities in Canada is not a jolly one.
I think he will have pointed out to you that 60% of persons with disabilities live under the poverty line, and that many, many persons with disabilities - at a much higher proportion than of the population in general - do not have gainful employment.
He may not have brought it to your attention, but from our perspective much of the reason why many people don't have gainful employment resides in their inability to access necessary supports and services that bridge the access gaps, the access barriers, that exist for persons with disabilities.
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Without belabouring the statistics, we discovered very quickly that there were variations in those statistics around education, around participation rates, around unemployment rates, and around income. There were quite significant differences from one region of the country to another, so we were brought quickly to a recognition of how regional disparities are now - in 1995 and up to now - already affecting individuals with disabilities and others who are in disadvantaged groups.
We were concerned to bring into focus for ourselves that, if these clear disadvantages are there now, what will be the outcome of shrinking dollars and emphasis on budget cuts and on reducing the deficit? Perhaps an emphasis on this that is overshadowing and also a necessary emphasis on who is most unfavourably impacted by attempts to deal with the deficit.
As I said, we focused on the Canada health and social transfer because we felt that so fundamentally alters the fabric of Canadian social policy. What we as a group felt the federal role is in terms of providing leadership towards equality for all citizens irrespective of ability level and irrespective of where one happens to live in Canada....
Those two things guided most of our deliberations. Those are the stark needs with which we, at the provincial levels, and we who have disabilities work with the disabled community - the stark needs and the unmet needs that are there for disabled Canadians.
I told a story here earlier that I won't repeat, because I do not think it needs to be on record, of how I dealt with my statistics student. I will point out to the group so it won't be distracting to you that, because I do not see, I will be using my assistant, Gail Sampson, to prompt me and keep me on course so I do not go over my time allowance in making a presentation to you.
I said the first part of our statement had to do with principles. The second had to do with issues and challenges presented by the CHST. The third part of our statement had to do with recommendations we were making to you and other federal and provincial bodies that are charged with the responsibility for protecting the rights of vulnerable citizens.
On the Canada health and social transfer, when the social security reform agenda was announced, one of the lines in that really hit a chord with us. The best social security is a good job. We're very clear that for Canadians with disabilities, the jobs are shrinking. A lot of people now don't have jobs. High structural unemployment is a fact of life. It's not the fault of the individuals who don't have the jobs. It's a structural problem to which we need to apply widespread, far-reaching remedies.
We welcome the notion that the focus will be on getting people into jobs, but we ask from where those jobs are to come. Once again, it became so clear that the jobless rate from one part of the country to the other is quite different. In the poorer provinces, Atlantic Canada in particular, the jobless rate is very high, whereas it is not so high elsewhere.
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The higher that jobless rate gets, the more difficult it gets for persons with disabilities to compete on the job market. So the result of high structural unemployment obviously has a more negative impact on persons with disabilities. It wouldn't and it need not were the proper supports and services available to allow persons with disabilities to bridge the access barriers.
We see ourselves as a constituency that has a lot to contribute to Canada. We have a lot to contribute to employers. We have a lot to contribute to our communities. All we need are the tools. Those tools for us reside in necessary supports and services.
So why were we concerned about the CHST? Why were we concerned about announced cuts to unemployment insurance? Because we know the pressure that will place on provincial dollars to provide those services, and we know as well those pressures will be experienced at the provincial level and at the community level by having to compete with other - I'm sorry to say this - more popular causes. There are attitudinal barriers.
Disability throughout the country is not yet as understood as we, the disabled community, would like it to be. There are others better positioned. I don't mean better able; I mean better positioned to compete for shrinking dollars.
We want to assure ourselves of an equitable position in terms of those shrinking dollars. We want to assure ourselves that the now already serious disadvantage of persons with disabilities is not compounded by the CHST, which no longer preserves the national standards that were embedded in the Canada Assistance Plan, except for portability, which is the only standard that remains. As we know, even that is getting challenged as dollars get tighter provincially.
We also were concerned about the federal role in providing the leadership that it has through programs like CAP. None of us would argue that CAP was perfect; it wasn't. It had its own inflexibilities. It had its own problems. But it did embody certain notions. It embodied the notion of services and supports being provided based on need. It embodied principles like the right to services based on need so that wherever you happened to live in Canada, you could be assured you would not fall below a certain basic minimum. Your budgetary requirements were taken into account in terms of what services and supports, including financial supports, would be available to you.
It embodied a number of principles that we now, with the CHST, need to find new and very creative ways of re-enshrining in whatever our forward-looking strategy is. We do need and feel we do need a national strategy and national leadership on these issues.
I'm going to stop for a minute and just refresh with Gail some of the points I did have under CHST.
One of the things the budget speech emphasized was that the CHST is an interim policy. That word ``interim'' is used. Mr. Martin has used that. We would hope that's a meaningful word. We would hope there will be some way to ensure that dollars that go to the provincial level for supports to persons with disabilities are earmarked for that. We also hope they can't go into a black hole and they can't get lost when this very rough struggle for survival of many people with many real needs gets on the agenda.
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Basically, those are some of the concerns we had about the Canada health and social transfer. What will it mean for the federal government's role in taking leadership in assuring equality and social justice for all Canadians? What meaning will it have in first encouraging and then seeing that some national principles are established and enforced with respect to social service dollars and that they don't get gobbled up by other competing priorities at provincial and local levels? So those, without repeating, are some of our concerns about the Canada health and social transfer.
The final section of our statement had to do with recommendations we were making. Of those recommendations we're for, the first one is asking for some principles to be enshrined in a nationally led - perhaps not implemented - strategy for sure and equitable treatment of persons with disabilities from all parts of Canada.
I'm going to just get Gail, if she would, to briefly read out some of these principles we want included, and I'll speak briefly on some of them.
Ms Gail Sampson (Assistant to Dr. Cummings, Nova Scotia Disabled Persons Commission): Accessibility based on need.
Dr. Cummings: That, of course, was what the Canada Assistance Plan did include, and without that principle it's very difficult to see how we can enable persons who do want to be productive and who do want to be integrated - persons with disabilities - to cross those access barriers, to get beyond them and get involved.
Those needs are there, and the services need to be there to meet those needs.
Ms Sampson: Adequacy in relation to need.
Dr. Cummings: I think that speaks for itself.
Ms Sampson: The right of appeal.
Dr. Cummings: This was also something we felt was quite important. If individuals out there in the real world, where some of us, when we go to round tables, including our own board tables.... The people who are out there in the trenches are finding it very difficult. Persons who are denied what they consider to be necessary supports and services do need somewhere to go if they are denied those. Just the idea of due process is so important, particularly to persons in marginalized positions.
Ms Sampson: Accountability and full disclosure on the part of all levels of government on the distribution and use of CHST funds.
Dr. Cummings: What we were getting at there is finding some creative ways.... When the CHST is turned over to the provinces, where will the accountability and the visibility be for knowing exactly how those dollars are spent and for ensuring that an appropriate proportion of those dollars does go to income supports and the social services?
There are creative ways. Perhaps one of those would be, instead of having a CHST, to have CHSTs with proportionate amounts assigned or defined for education, health and social services rather than one lump sum just to protect, because the social services group is where the most vulnerable of the citizenry are involved - those who are consigned to positions of dependence and who need those supports and services very badly.
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Ms Sampson: Meaningful and ongoing participation by persons with disabilities in the development and evaluation of social programs, funded in whole or in part under the CHST.
Dr. Cummings: I think that one speaks for itself, too. Later on we'll get to that in terms of the national strategy - the involvement of persons with disabilities in evaluating the services they're getting.
When we sit around with our constituency, they come up with wonderfully creative ideas about how this could work better for them. Those voices need to be heard, and we need to come up with imaginative and creative ways of hearing those voices, hearing those ideas, and translating those ideas into policy solutions that are nationwide in scope.
The second of our recommendations is that we need to continue a national strategy for persons with disabilities, keeping those issues on the political agendas and on the economic agendas of the nation.
We're not saying we should continue the national strategy. You folks are much more aware at this point than we are of what the overall evaluation of the national strategy has been as it existed - the five-year national strategy. In fact, we would welcome anything you might feel in a position to tell us about the kind of input you've been getting. We all have our own views of the national strategy. We know there were some strengths in it and some limitations in it. So we're not saying a repetition of the national strategy, but we are saying a national strategy - a creative national strategy - needs to be ongoing for persons with disabilities, and we're asking for your support and your leadership to accomplish that.
The third of our recommendations.... We were quite pleased to hear Mr. Axworthy's indication that the vocational rehabilitation agreement, the VRDP agreement, will be extended. It was due to expire. There's no indication as to how long that will be.
We're also very clear, however, that this focuses very much on persons with disabilities being employed. We still say employed at what, in the context of high structural unemployment? Even with good supports and services, it's going to be very difficult unless there is a job creation strategy in tandem with a program such as a strong, enhanced, vocational, refocused VRDP program.
The other recommendation we did make was that, in turning money over to the provinces, the federal government does need to preserve some way in which it can realistically provide leadership in terms of the national strategy for persons with disabilities and for the social services in general.
A decline in turning over spending power to the provinces in favour of tax points will undoubtedly diminish the federal role in this respect. One of our recommendations was that the proportion of transfers that are in the form of cash transfers not be diminished from what it now is and for it to at least continue so that there is some way in which the federal government can realistically involve itself with the provinces and the community in coming up with a creative national strategy.
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In terms of Mr. Axworthy's presentation, which is his seven-point strategy, there were some parts that are quite helpful, particularly some of the issues around dealing with inflexibilities or disincentives embedded in the disability portion of the Canada Pension Plan.
We are hopeful that incentives to employment can be built into the disability provisions of the Canada Pension Plan. We are aware, however, that there is growing concern about the continuing viability of that because of the numbers of persons who are disabled and on the Canada Pension Plan.
There's been a lot of discussion about whether some persons are inappropriately in receipt of Canada pension disability benefits. We have to ask ourselves why? If this is so, why is it so? If it's so, as we experience it on the ground, it's so because, at the ground level, there are not other services or provisions in place or other ways in which real needs can be met.
The provinces can no longer afford it. The municipalities in a province like Nova Scotia can no longer afford to provide income supports to people who are jobless and who can't compete in the job market, so they're getting bounced onto the Canada Pension Plan.
I'm certainly not saying that I don't think the disability community is exploiting the Canada Pension Plan. I think there are some problems with the Canada Pension Plan that don't reside within the pension itself, but within structural unemployment and other issues that reside in the structural fiscal conditions we face, which is the inability to put disability supports and services in the hands of those who need them.
We were pleased to see some things, like Mr. Axworthy's statement. He said that two objectives of that are to enhance employability and independent living. Those are two objectives we certainly can subscribe to in his seven-point strategy.
There are no new dollars, so we ask where are the dollars going to come from to do that after the Canada health and social transfer rolls in, when, already in 1995, we're faced with a position in which, even without some earmarked dollars for those purposes, really serious needs at the community level are not and cannot be met? Where will there be a distributive force in leadership come from to assure that these needs are met, so that the laudable objectives in Mr. Axworthy's seven-point strategy can come to pass?
With those introductory comments, I would like to pass it over to Dr. McPherson. Gary is going to fill in where I haven't been able to go.
Following that, Randy will have a few words.
Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Cummings.
Mr. Gary McPherson (Chair, Alberta Premier's Council on the Status of Persons with Disabilities): Joan has given you a perspective of our national meeting. I'm going to make some comments from our vantage point in Alberta.
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I first want to talk about the national strategy, which I think is an important part of your agenda today. I'm going to talk about some of the strengths and weaknesses from where we sit.
One of the obvious strengths was that the national strategy provided an awareness and a visibility by putting some focus on disability. It also gave people with disabilities hope that issues would or could be addressed.
The third obvious benefit was that it did seed some activities that may have lasting effects or impacts.
For example, in Alberta, aboriginals with disabilities are really at a disadvantage in society anyway, but on reserves they're even less of a priority. There was the creation of an aboriginal disabled society that has brought some focus, energy and cohesiveness to a group that gets very little attention. So I think that seed money provided some benefits so those problems can be highlighted and addressed.
Another obvious one concerns several transportation initiatives, not just in Alberta but nationally, such as aircraft boarding systems, intercity buses, and those kinds of things that were a result of the national strategy.
There are some areas that could have been strengthened or that might have been a little weak. I would just like to mention them. There didn't appear to be a national or cohesive vision guiding the strategy that might have made it a little more effective. In some areas, the outcomes may have been a little bit more clear. For example, we need to be clever enough and able to learn from the training and employment opportunities or projects that were funded so we can build and use that as a base for doing something constructive in the future.
I mentioned that there wasn't really a cohesive vision among the various departments involved. If I recall correctly, of the $158 million for over five years, 7% of that money was already in the system. All the national strategy did was bring some visibility to that money, and maybe made a reworking of it in some cases. Then there was an additional 30% over five years that was used. I might be wrong with the figures, but that's my recollection.
A lot of that was project money. So what about when the five years is over and the project money runs out? We had some good projects and some good initiatives. The lasting benefit, though, is what we're all interested in at the moment. So that's why I think we need something a little bit more long lasting and in which seed money can grow.
We have made some gains. There's no question that there have been some gains. I think we can learn from the national strategy. I think we need to have a national strategy. A real problem is that the money and gains that have already been put into projects, like transportation and the residential funding program for housing, will be wasted if there's not a continuation in some form.
Look at all the good initiatives in the area of transportation, for example, in Alberta, and the gains that have been made with the private sector to provide transportation opportunities for disabled Albertans. I'm sure that in other parts of the country, if we don't continue with the infrastructure that we've begun to build, that money will all have been for nought. We will not and cannot achieve employment and integrated social and economic policy if we don't continue to support that infrastructure requirement.
That's a real danger and another reason that a national strategy is very important, at least from our perspective.
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When the minister was here he talked about establishing a working committee. I think he's to be commended on the fact that he's consulted with some of the national organizations in the non-profit sector.
I think it would be wise for the Government of Canada to consult a little bit more broadly, because the disabled community, as Joan mentioned, is not a homogeneous group; it's somewhat diverse. We need to be able to ensure that we get as many representative viewpoints included as we can.
I know there's nobody in this presentation today who was involved at all in the creation of the national strategy the first time, but I think if we're going to continue on that track, it's absolutely imperative that we expand it.
Our role, for example, is to advise our provincial governments of policy programs and legislation affecting all types of disabilities in our provinces. I think it would be opportune to have some of that input reflected in any kind of national strategy, in addition to the mechanisms or the system that's currently in place.
I think the idea of the working group, or whatever you want to call it, has some merit. I think two years is too short a timeframe, based on our experience in Alberta. We had a legislative mandate with a ten-year sunset clause. It takes quite a while to do anything meaningful, and you certainly won't do it in two years. It's got to be something longer than that.
But such a group needs some independence in order to influence more than one ministry or minister, and it needs to be free to offer unpopular recommendations. So it really should report to a very high level and it should have some flexibility to go in and work with whomever they need whenever they want. Otherwise, it's not going to be as effective as it could be.
Leadership is important. It should involve not just one minister. The social security review was a very high-profile initiative, but people with disabilities were a very small part of the green paper. That has now been shelved.
I think there's a real danger right now of disability falling right off the agenda and off the table nationally. I think it's really important for us to bring it back, because we could create more problems than we're going to solve if we don't do this with some sort of wisdom.
I am going to leave you with a brief synopsis of some concerns from Alberta that we think affect Canadians. I'll leave that for the record with Mr. Cole. Let me highlight just what they are.
Labour market polarization. The shift toward a strong economic agenda and a much more limited social agenda, coupled with the emergence of more part-time, contract, and low-wage employment is creating a market of fewer good jobs and more bad jobs. The economic disparity that will result will impact people who are already disadvantaged to a much greater extent than other Canadians.
The second point of this is that tragic choices will have to be made as health and other social programs and services are rationed to balance budgets. Disadvantaged individuals inevitably find themselves cut out entirely, relegated to the lowest priority in society in which wealth and productivity are valued over other forms of distributive justice.
In the area of community exclusion, Canadians with disabilities are threatened by the restructuring and devolution of powers. The care and support offered by the welfare state is fading, and government advocacy of individual rights is declining.
With devolution, service delivery will reflect community choices, as well as core services. Individuals, families and communities are expected to fill the void of social responsibility left by a shrinking public sector. The voluntary and private sectors may be unaware, unappreciative, or even hostile to the plight of some individuals or groups.
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We are past the point where people with disabilities are content to accept mean charity as a substitute for education, employment, housing and transportation, and of the opportunity to participate fully.
Government cannot abdicate its role unless and until other stakeholders understand and accept their roles in this new world order. Your interest and influence are both necessary and appreciated. No level of government can afford to balance its budget on the backs of the most vulnerable members of society.
If business and the free market are to benefit from lower employment costs, including health care, they must accept that they have a dual role: the creation of wealth and the redistribution of wealth.
Thank you for the opportunity to present. I'll turn it over to Randy Dickinson.
Mr. Randy Dickinson (Executive Director, New Brunswick Premier's Council on the Status of Disabled Persons): After listening to the two previous presenters and the outline of the issues that they've brought to your attention, coming as the third speaker, I'm reminded of the story of Elizabeth Taylor's ninth husband who was commenting on his wedding night. He said, I know what I have to do, but how do I make it more interesting?
So I'm going to try to present to you a few other aspects of the dialogue on disabilities issues that we think come under your mandate.
I'm coming here today wearing a number of hats. I also am a consumer and I'm a volunteer with a lot of organizations that are involved with persons with disabilities. I'm a professional advocate. I work for the premier's council in New Brunswick. I'm a Maritimer and I'm a New Brunswicker. But I'm coming to you today really with a message as a Canadian, as a taxpayer, and as a concerned citizen, looking to our national government to provide some leadership, looking to the national government to take on and maintain a responsibility to ensure that Canadians across the country who happen to have a disability are not thrown off the table and left in the residual heap because there's been a change in direction and a change of responsibilities.
I think one of the first things I would like to suggest for your committee to examine and review is the very fact that it is still not clear in the minds of Canadians.... Do we have a federal minister who is specifically and legally anointed as the minister responsible for persons with disabilities? I know that Mr. Axworthy has presumed that his mandate has been continued, but I'm not sure that reference has been confirmed legally to ensure that cabinet has a formal recognition that it is necessary and important to provide that sort of centre point for disability issues within the decision-making process of government.
I also think it's important for this committee to examine the possibilities to ensure that when federal programs, policies and directions are developed and continue to be implemented, whether we talk about the CHST in particular or a national strategy for persons with disabilities...just the ongoing responsibilities of the federal government's programs and services and budget, to ensure that there's been consideration for how this impacts on Canadians with disabilities, whether or not it will be supportive, whether or not it will create cross-purposes. When one department is doing something with certain criteria and certain objectives, will that be contradictory to what other departments are doing in terms of their policy program, the criteria for eligibility, the selection of program priorities and how funds are allocated? I think that's been lacking.
I'm very pleased, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, to have the opportunity to be here today and to help perhaps provide some different perspectives on disability issues and the agenda, and, as Gary and Joan have mentioned, to remind you that there are different voices out there in the Canadian milieu who have active participation and disability issues, who have active ideas about how we can be looking to the future, not where we've been and not what's been wrong with the system, but how we make it better and how we ensure, at least, that we don't slide backwards in time to when persons with disabilities were seen as charity cases and not as citizens with the same needs as everybody else.
We also want to ensure that if indeed there is some kind of structure presented down the road as part of Mr. Axworthy's deliberations in terms of our working group on disability, we ensure that there is a connection to the policy-makers and the program delivery people at the provincial level, because although we are looking to the national government for that direction and that input, it has to have a partnership with the people who were involved in the actual distribution of those resources when it comes to the front lines.
I'm not talking just about premiers' councils and national non-profit organizations. I'm looking to other partners in that system if we're going to make it work. That includes, for example, the business community and labour organizations, who all have to be involved, particularly if we're going to move the agenda forward in the employment area in terms of opening more opportunities for people with disabilities and to ensure that public policy and public resources at all levels are connected together to meet the same vision and the same framework.
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I think the national government has a role to play in terms of helping to assimilate and to coordinate information, and I think part of that can be done through the disabled persons secretariat. But also I think this committee has an opportunity to be the non-partisan distiller of the different points of view from the various vested interest groups, the various partners who'd like to be involved and help blend that together to a national dream, a national vision that is friendly to all of the participants, that is sustainable, that is realistic, that is practical and is something that really will improve opportunities for Canadians with disabilities.
As I look around this table, and having followed some of the proceedings of the members of this committee, I think you can not only deliver the input you have as individual members, but collectively you have an opportunity to provide some of that leadership.
Instead of creating new bureaucracies and wasting money on administration, we can look at things like reform of the tax system to try to provide means to direct resources to the individuals at need and not create massive programs that end up being targeted for abuse and mismanagement and using up more money to deliver the program than is actually used to put the resources at the front line with the individuals who need that help.
We can, for example, at the unemployment insurance fund as a way to provide resources to help get more Canadians with disabilities into the labour force. Unfortunately, many Canadians with disabilities have never been in the labour force to start with and don't perceive the federal employment training programs as being helpful, because you have to be in the program, on UI, to get the training and transitional supports. But if you're not in the system, if you haven't had a job, you can't get on UI and you can't meet the eligibility criteria.
I think there's a resource there that not only could use some more flexibility, but I think Canadians as a whole across the country are supportive of the goal and the objective of tapping into that underutilized resource of the disability community.
We look at the changing demographics of the Canadian population, regardless of the problems in structured unemployment, and so on. We need to include Canadians with disabilities in that labour force, not because it's the right thing to do morally but because it makes good economic sense in using the resources to help people participate in the community rather than using those resources to help people stay at home.
I think, as my two colleagues have said, it's very clear that we do need a national strategy to come from the federal government to drive the engine of social policy and public policy to the benefit of Canadians with disabilities. Regardless of what level of funding we're talking about, regardless of the details of the operations of who's going to do what, whether it's federal, or provincial, or the community, or the private sector, somebody has to take charge; somebody has to give the vision; somebody has to be able to pull the ideas together and say, yes, at least we can agree on this much of the agenda and we can start that part moving forward.
We're never going to come up with a perfect world where everybody's going to be happy. We'll never have all of the resources we need to create the Utopia, but if we never start that journey towards the goal of full inclusion and independent living and the opportunity for meaningful employment for Canadians with disabilities, we're certainly not going to get there.
If the federal government, with all of the resources at its disposal, despite a climate of economic restraint, feels that they can't provide that kick in the pants and that leadership, where do they think it's going to come from if not from the national government if we want to ensure that there's a basic quality of life for Canadians with disabilities wherever we live in this country?
We never know from the time we're born to the time we die which parts of the country we're going to end up living in, where our family connections are going to be, or where our job is going to take us. So we need to ensure those standards are there for all Canadians.
As you look at yourselves around this table, you don't know yourselves how far you are from an accident, or an illness, or some unexpected situation that might put you on the receiving end of those services, or people in your family, or your relatives, so that you would like to make sure that that system is fair and equitable and reasonable and available.
I think we want to ensure that the national strategy looks forward to a fair and sustainable system. It has to be providing a means for the opportunity for community inclusion, for independent living and especially employment for more Canadians with disabilities.
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It's going to require creativity, flexibility and a change in thinking in terms of directing resources to the individual to the level that individual needs. Some Canadians with disabilities will need more supports, but some will need much less. We don't need to try to make a system where everybody gets the same regardless of their need or the opportunities available.
I want to make sure that I leave you with the message that we're looking for your committee to provide that non-partisan leadership to this issue, to keep disability issues on the public agenda. I'm not here on bended knee looking for a handout, and I'm not here to thump the table and say we want more rights for Canadians with disabilities. I think we have those rights expressed in theory. What we're looking for is the provision of support systems in a sustainable and long-term way so that Canadians with disabilities can also assume their responsibilities as Canadians. They want their opportunity to contribute to the community and to be part of it. They want a national strategy, national vision and national leadership that provides the environment where that's possible.
I think the other message we want to send you is that we're looking for some feedback as to where you see the role of your committee in terms of providing that leadership. Where can you as a committee send signals to your colleagues in all of the caucuses, not just within the government, to show that we're talking about an issue that has broad support among Canadians regardless of political affiliation, geographical location and the type of disability?
I'll conclude with that. Hopefully we have some time left for questions and answers with the people who are here today.
The Chair: Thank you for your presentations.
Mr. Scott.
Mr. Scott: Thank you for your presentations.
Randy, when you used the Elizabeth Taylor analogy, I wondered how you were going to perform it. I think you've made it exciting for all of us.
I'd like to explore the structural challenge. There has been a historic debate - I understand it quite well - relative to whether we want to isolate, within government, responsibility for the community you're representing, or to what extent you don't want to ghettoize the issue in a particular place and have it be a preoccupation of all government departments and programs so that they're all thinking about this.
I understand to what extent we have to strike some kind of balance. I would be interested in a response as to where you are now.
As a member of the social security review, I was acutely aware of the fact that the number of issues on the table made it difficult for the community of persons with disabilities to not be overwhelmed. UI was big, and so was post-secondary education. As a member of that committee who has a particular interest in the issue of persons with disability, I felt that issue was left behind, and in your presentation you said that as well.
How do we avoid that? Without segregating the issue beyond where.... Historically, at least, that's where you'd want it to be - that's one. You mentioned ministerial responsibility and whether it is where it should be.
I think the national strategy, at least in part, would be an attempt to deal with what the first question brings up: how you find the balance between an isolated, specific focus for responsibility, and at the same time not ghettoize the issue.
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Presuming that an objective of the national strategy was giving focus, and at the same time causing all departments to share responsibility so that the notions are being felt by everybody, did it succeed? If it didn't succeed, how could we do it better so that there's more buy-in?
Mr. Dickinson: I will respond and maybe the others will have something to say.
We too want to be careful about the opportunity to blend the idea. We want specific recognition and, more importantly, specific accountability about the issues and resources allocated to address the needs of Canadians with disabilities. Our experience has been that when you deal with bureaucracies or ministries or the federal or provincial governments.... It's not that we want all of these separate programs for persons with disabilities, or that every department has a separate office for persons with disabilities, but there has to at least be a plan, an awareness and an inclusion of the repercussions and the delivery of programs and how they will enable Canadians with disabilities to be included in those initiatives.
Our experience has been, although we've talked a lot about awareness.... No ministry is going to say they don't include Canadians with disabilities in their programs, whether training programs or education initiatives, etc. If you look at the numbers of Canadians who are actually participating in those programs and being served by them, it's obvious that they've not been structured or promoted or made available in the right context to include a proportionate number of Canadians with disabilities.
You need a certain amount of technical expertise in place if you're talking about what we mean by barrier-free access to a building, communication in alternate formats, or assessments for a person with learning disabilities, a person with developmental delay or a person who may be visually impaired or deaf. The types of supports required have to be designed in a way that the program criteria enable those persons to access them, or that an additional reserve resource can be tagged on to the regular program so that the extra cost or requirements of the person with the disability are addressed.
Our experience has been not to be cynical but to rely on good graces, moral suasion and the hope that people will not only accept the philosophy and principle of inclusion, they will actually do it in the delivery of their programs. That doesn't happen unless there's something inside the system that finds out about proposed changes before they're announced publicly, has input to the program criteria and the priorities before they're decided upon, and has a voice at the time when budgets are being discussed and decisions are being made. Otherwise you're always putting the groups and Canadians with disabilities in a reactive, defensive posture that leads to confrontation and antagonism and does not best serve the needs of service-providers, government policy-makers, consumers, or the people for whom the programs are intended.
Mr. McPherson: The question about whether the national strategy is a success or a failure is a good one. It depends on your definition of either one, I think.
A national strategy in those terms is meaningless without the support of Statistics Canada to monitor change over time. No post-census disability survey is planned for 1996, so how do you know if the last five years have been successful or not? How do you know when we didn't have a goal or a vision to start with? That's part of the problem.
What we need is a national vision for Canadians, and we need to recognize that disability is but one form of disadvantage. In a changing world of technology and information, I may not be disadvantaged where somebody else might be. The other person who might be disadvantaged might have two arms and two legs, and in the past was considered able to get out and get a job, but maybe the jobs aren't there in the same vein any more.
So I think we need a national vision and a national strategy that supports people who are disadvantaged and people with disabilities, allowing them to become part of that national vision.
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Project funding is only valid and useful if it supports the overall national vision; in other words, if it leads to a meaningful gain on the other end, and I don't think we often get that. So I wouldn't want to respond. I think there were some things that were successful about the national strategy, and there were other things that could have been better. The important thing is what we learned from it.
Right now, we have no measuring stick. We can sit around this table and debate it all we want, but how do you know? What did we want on the other end of it anyway? So that's a tough question to answer, and it's a good question, Andy.
The Chair: Mr. McPherson, in your opening statement you indicated some of the strengths and weaknesses, so indirectly you implied some attempts at measurement.
Mr. McPherson: Those are just observations. They're not measurable.
Dr. Cummings: You commented that even within the social security review, disability was somewhat marginal. We also experienced that in terms of what actually got on the agenda. However, as a community of persons with disabilities, that whole process was helpful to us. More than at a lot of other times, it brought us together and allowed us to see some of the commonalties of our needs, and to see that we share many of our needs with other marginalized groups.
It also allowed us to see that the need for income supports in the face of joblessness is experienced by groups other than the disabled. We have a whole series of needs that are specific to various types of disability, not to disability in general. Some of us were quite taken with the notion put forward by the Roeher Institute that there ought to be a separation between income supports and supportive services. There can be generalized programs in relation to income supports and generalized criteria provided that in tandem with that there are specialized responses to individual diverse types of need. As I think Randy brought out, the costs of having a disability are enormous. It's very costly to purchase the kinds of services that you need to survive on a daily basis.
So if we're looking to a new national strategy, I would want to look to something that had a vision of how common needs are acknowledged as common, and that the various groups' income support needs in the face of joblessness - that those are acknowledged and understood to be common, but that there is also a response to the specific needs that are better known on the ground than they are from distant corridors. There needs to be better communication there. None of us has the answers. It will take creativity.
In terms of one department versus all departments, most of us who have needs have to relate to a whole variety of government departments, so the leadership and respect for our needs needs to be in all of those departments, not just in one. But that is not to say that there doesn't also need to be clear assigned leadership to hold accountable the various departments for understanding, appreciating and responding to those needs.
Mr. McClelland: I think some of the concerns raised by the panel were discussed previously by the committee and I'm certain will be part of its recommendations - probably unanimously - particularly the issue of political will and the consciousness, because that's been identified, particularly in the fiscal conditions we find ourselves in, which transcend ideology. The circumstances we are in will require political will to ensure that the people who are most vulnerable are not caught up in the sea change of society.
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One of the things we can do to ensure that persons with disabilities are held harmless from what's going on is to take persons with disabilities out of the welfare and the social services mix and look at it entirely differently.
Would anyone care to comment on that, keeping in the context the fact that through self-identification we've had this enormous increase in the numbers of persons who identify themselves with disabilities? People being people do so in times of economic downturn. The number of people who identify themselves as disabled in order to get onto the Canada Pension Plan, or for whatever reason, and yet we know there is a difference between a chronic long-term disability that requires support and a disability that may not be of the same magnitude or may not even be chronic.
How do we make the distinction then between persons who...for instance, a person who was a cook and gets arthritis and now can't cook but could certainly do something else. Is this person disabled for Canada Pension Plan benefits, or should this person then find some other avenue of employment? It's entirely different from being in a wheelchair for life, for instance, or being deaf, or being blind.
The Chair: Dr. Cummings, would you like to start?
Dr. Cummings: If you ask, how do we come to a determination, I think one of the things that would be accomplished...if people have income needs - in other words, if they fall below a basic minimum for whatever reason - that encompasses a fairly wide group of people. When you say that people in a wheelchair for life have more needs than somebody who is a cook with arthritis and can no longer cook, the answer to that question would be so much easier were there other jobs that the person who had arthritis and was a cook and now no longer can cook could go to with dignity, with respect, with some sense that his or her life chances were similar to those of a cook without his arthritis.
So I find it difficult to answer that kind of question, and I always worry a bit that by trying to answer that type of question we will tend to divide artificially the community of marginalized, disadvantaged persons.
I would rather see us take the flip side of that question and say, if we had in place a good job strategy, a lot of these issues wouldn't exist. People are not going to go looking for stigmatized welfare programs if they have access to a decent living, a decent job, their own communities. That's why I can't positively respond to the question framed in that way.
To reframe the question, how can we provide well for the cook with arthritis who no longer can cook, and how can we provide well, but differently, for the person in a wheelchair for life? The needs are quite different, but the needs are real nonetheless. The key to that, I think, is an individual response based on need rather than on some presumed assumption about what needs are of particular groups of people.
The Chair: Would you care to add to that?
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Mr. McPherson: I think Joan got at it, and I think you said it up front in your statement. The problem here is the label of disability, which presumes to lump everybody into one category. Disability doesn't really have anything to do with it; it is what the individual needs.
By having supports for disability confused with the welfare system in most cases, that's where you get the lumping. If welfare was strictly an income replacement requirement, that would be one thing. The supports you need as an individual who has a disability can vary from disability to disability, and therefore the need. As Randy said, you might need a little bit or you might need a lot. But it really has nothing to do with income support.
What makes the income support so important is because you have the increased cost of disability and you need to cover them off somewhere, so you need more money. If those needs were met in another way, then you could take the disability component out of the welfare system.
I need supports. I need someone to get me up in the morning. I need someone to help me eat. I need someone to transport me. I don't need money in the sense of a cheque to pay my rent and to pay my mortgage. But if I don't have the supports to get up in the morning, to transport to work, and so on, then I need all of it.
As an example, I think that's how you do it. You treat the needs of the individual in terms of the support as one thing and you treat the income of the individual who happens to be a cook with arthritis and who has been laid off in another way. That cook with arthritis doesn't have a cost in terms of the support they need. It may then become a matter of reorientation, retraining or rethinking, but that is no different from most Canadians who find themselves without work.
The Chair: I would like to call on Mr. Allmand. We have only about twelve minutes left.
Mr. Allmand: Thank you.
When the government officials were here, including Lloyd Axworthy, I tried to convey to them the concerns of the disabled of the community who have appeared before us with respect to the CHST, and the differences between CAP and the CHST. Those concerns and those principles have been similar to the ones that were raised by Dr. Cummings and others this morning.
Each time I have done this, their answer has been that these concerns have been exaggerated, that in their dealings with the provinces, the provinces are very sensitive to the needs of the disabled, and as far as they know, the money will be - these are the federal officials speaking - distributed fairly and equitably, that many provinces have appeals of their own, and others are considering appeals.
I am going to act a bit like a devil's advocate. The questions I will put are ones that are being put in many committees, and not necessarily my own. But I want to hear your answers, and it follows up on what the federal officials are saying.
Since health and social services are basically, under the Constitution, provincial responsibilities and the federal government has really only got into those areas through the spending power, which is in a secondary way, why should we presume that the provinces will be less sensitive, less concerned, than the federal government with respect to these issues?
I have personally over the years seen the provinces take the initiative on many things like this. Saskatchewan was the first province to deal with medicare. Other provinces have been way ahead of the federal government on human rights issues. Even in my own province of Quebec, I have seen that on various things.
We are trying to straighten out a lot of things here in Parliament with respect to responsibilities, federal or provincial, and we are trying to make sure that there is not waste through overlap and dislocation, but how do you respond, first of all, to the federal officials who think there is a bit of an exaggeration here with respect to the block transfers to the provinces under CHST?
The questions that I put to you arise out of the constitutional discussions. Why are we so certain that the federal government will give a better deal to the disabled than the provinces when there is such a chequered history? Sometimes the feds have been better; sometimes the provinces have been better. Sometimes the feds have been awful.
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Mr. Dickinson: We're all excited by that line of questioning. To put it in another context, from your own previous background in say justice issues, why do we have a Criminal Code across Canada? There are certain issues and certain fundamental criteria in being a Canadian - your obligations and your rights as a citizen, where you can't rely on the capacity of certain provinces or a certain government of the day. It may have changing philosophies about what is politically expedient for the moment versus the long-term equity and access for public goods and services and public responsibilities in public policy. Although that same danger is also there for the federal government, this -
Mr. Allmand: We could have a party elected to run the federal government who would not believe at all in any of these things.
Mr. Dickinson: But because you get your mandate as the federal government from voters across the country, you are reflecting a national agenda. I think there's some issue there in terms of protecting a minimum national agenda and a national standard, whether we talk about health care or whether we talk about social programs. If you look at issues such as the tax-base capacity of certain provinces to deliver certain levels of certain types of services, I think there is a need for the sharing as a national family that Canada has as a country that provides the whole raison d'être to be a country. Otherwise we'd break up into balkanized, individualized provincial empires that -
Mr. Allmand: Yes, but we do that through equalization and we can do it through block funding.
Mr. Dickinson: Both of those mechanisms may be appropriate as far as programs for persons with disabilities are concerned, as long as there's some accountability to ensure that they actually get delivered to where they are intended to go, allowing still some flexibility in the provinces.
Coming back to Ian's question on programs, a lot of the programs are based on the fact that the only time you can get assistance or support is when the situation has broken down into a total crisis or the person becomes totally dependent. Even then, the level of services is not good and there's a hodgepodge of responsibility centres.
What we're trying to do is to ensure that there's some consistency in the approach, that there's an opportunity for prevention initiatives, that there's an opportunity to intervene before it gets to a crisis where you need a whole lot of resources to solve the problem rather than minimal support to get the person back on track or to enter the mainstream. If you look back to your questioning of whether there's a role for the national government, if you remember the obstacles...the work of the former persona of this committee...that exercise left a fundamental legacy in Canada that it really was the turning point for Canadians with disability getting involved in the mainstream. They were consulted about the directions the government might take, they were involved in the development of recommendations and assigning responsibilities, and they were involved in the follow-up in terms of the implementation to the point it went.
I think it's time - 24 years or 19 years later, whatever the math is - to start looking at a new national plan, a new national vision. The only people who are in a position to be able to see that it comes across in some equitable fashion through the country is the national federal government. It's not to create a new mandate or a new responsibility, it's to revive a position and an opportunity for leadership that perhaps has fallen by the wayside in the thrust to meet the economic agenda.
The Chair: Dr. Cummings, would you care to comment.
Dr. Cummings: What I would want to answer in response to that is how I separate between motivation on the one hand and structural conditions on the other. I believe that certainly in my own province the province is sensitive to disability issues. I also understand from those very politicians to whom I report, from the various provinces, that they're under enormous structural pressures. When our jobless rate goes up much higher than other areas and they have more people who have to go on social assistance to live because they don't have municipal and provincial jobs, they find it increasingly difficult to be able to provide the supports and services.
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It's happening all over - the trickle-down of all kinds of what in fact are federal policies. The fallout of the free trade agreement, the fundamental restructuring of the Canadian economy to service a sector rather than a goods and manufacturing sector, the jobs and the job markets...all of those are federal pressures exerted on the provinces. The province is picking up the pieces or passing them on to the municipalities who are passing them on to the communities who can't carry them.
The real essence of the structural condition is that the federal government has the physical capacity to raise money and to redistribute money. That's why they need to be in this redistribution...they need to assure an accountability of what happens to the redistributed money.
I know this varies across Canada, but our politicians tell us when they go to the table to look for social service dollars, they have to face some of the growing mythology among the community that says those welfare bums...those bums who are beginning to stigmatize more and more marginalized groups. It would be helpful from their point of view to have clear understandings so that they are then much better positioned to assure that yes, their agendas, their sensitivities are translated practically into outcomes.
Just take Halifax in 1993 when the UI criteria were changed. A whole group of people landed immediately on social assistance when they could no longer qualify. Within the provincial budget how's that going to be handled? They have to pay it back. It's a mandated service. That's the other thing the politicians face - the difference between provincially legislated mandated services and those that are not mandated. All of those are structural conditions that, whether you like it or not, make it real hard to make the priorities of the more marginalized sectors of society count and get around that table.
My sense is not that there's bad will among the provinces; I think they do care about persons with disabilities. My sense is that they get under such extreme pressures from competing interests that it's very easy to lose sight and find it hard to respond to those who are less well-positioned to make their claims count.
The Chair: At this point I will call on Mr. Maloney.
Mr. Maloney: I direct the question to all three witnesses. If we're going to continue with an improved national strategy, what would you feel would be the specific improvements that would have the most value? How would you prioritize specifically?
Mr. Dickinson: I don't want to limit my response, without having a chance to discuss with other people who should be at the table, but I'll give you some examples we mentioned before: direct resources to the individual through the tax credit system, and not necessarily the same thing we have now, where regardless of the level of your disability you get the same amount of tax credit. It should be more in relation to the cost associated with your particular situation, so we can direct the resources to those who actually need help and not automatically put money where it's not needed.
I think we're talking about an opportunity to serve as an information resource point so that suggested changes in public policy at the federal level are connected to the discussions on policy issues at the provincial level or to ideas and recommendations coming from the consumer side or the private sector. We're also talking about how you blend those together to a national strategy.
Everybody sees roles and responsibilities being in somebody else's ballpark, and it's because of the fear that there might be some cost associated with it, either financially or time-wise, or what have you. I think somebody just has to take some initiative and set some clear national agenda objectives, whether they're going to be delivered through the federal system or through the provincial system or other partners. Somebody has to pull it together and provide the vision.
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The Chair: Mr. McPherson, would you like to add to that?
Mr. McPherson: I think it has to start with vision. We need to ensure that all departments are working together and not at cross-purposes in terms of the criteria by which they run programs. As we're in this changing time, I think we also need to bring a forum of stakeholders together who can give input to that vision and are prepared to buy into it and work together collectively.
Right now we are expecting the local community to take on the responsibility that used to be funded by the federal government, as it trickles down to the bottom. Businesses don't see themselves as part of that responsibility because they're too busy trying to survive in a global economy. Provincial governments don't see themselves in the delivery of service.
So how do the two come together? We need to bring people around the table so that we can have a buy-in and a vision for everybody who's working together. I think that's the real key, and if we're going to put any money into anything, that it feeds that vision in a longer-term way.
A voice: It's a collective vision.
The Chair: Dr. Cummings, would you like to add something?
Dr. Cummings: I agree with the points that my two colleagues have made. I would just add that I would not want to see a national strategy for disability totally separated from or fragmented from the idea of a restructured tax system to make more resources available - a fairer tax system. I wouldn't want to see it separated from an adequate job creation program that makes many of the issues we're talking about irrelevant. The connection of that to broader social and economic policies is to me integral to any new national strategy that we envisage.
The Chair: We lost some twenty minutes earlier because of technical problems. Is the committee predisposed to extend for twenty minutes or so?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
The Chair: Warren.
Mr. Allmand: The first thing I want to say, Chair, is that the questions I initially raised, which are being discussed in nearly all the committees of Parliament...I feel we didn't have enough time to discuss those. I hope we have a better chance to discuss that with the next witnesses we have from persons who are disabled. But it seems I don't have time today.
My second question is to Dr. McPherson. What I want to ask is this. In referring to Lloyd Axworthy's seven points, he said there were some good ones there. He referred to the good ones, but I didn't get which of the seven points he didn't think were so good.
Mr. McPherson: I didn't say that. I don't think I meant that. I think what he said was good, as far as it goes.
Mr. Allmand: Okay. I misunderstood. I'm sorry.
Mr. McPherson: If I misrepresented it, I'm sorry.
Mr. Allmand: I probably misunderstood. I thought you said that of the seven points some of them were very good. I thought that meant that maybe some of the others weren't.
No further questions.
The Chair: I'd just like to pose a few questions.
Is the premier's council at the provincial level serving a useful tool in terms of improved partnership?
Dr. Cummings: We have an interesting set-up in Nova Scotia in that half of the council, a majority, is made up of persons with disabilities - the community representation - and the rest is made up of senior officials from departments that provide services: transportation, housing, community services, health, education, and so on.
The Chair: Is that then a useful model? When you spoke about the need for meaningful and ongoing participation and improved partnership, the first question that came to mind is, how do we go about doing that? So this member is searching for a mechanism.
Is the premier's council a useful model to emulate?
Dr. Cummings: It is in the sense that part of the mandate of the provincial councils is to be in touch with the broad community of persons with disabilities so that we make sure their issues are on the table at the provincial level.
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The Chair: In terms of accountability, which you indicated as one of the principles, I would like to know if that accountability also relates as a challenge to provincial governments, or only to the federal government.
Dr. Cummings: It relates to all governments - federal, provincial and municipal.
The Chair: When you spoke of sustainability, a program that is sustainable, what would ensure sustainability, from your perspective?
Dr. Cummings: Adequate resourcing. From our point of view, we know that dollars are tight. Everyone knows that. We know there's a deficit. But we do know that to be sustainable we have to rethink beyond the pockets of dollars that now exist, to redistribution to those with significantly greater needs. So that's part of it.
Where there's a lot of redundancy, we need to remove those redundancies. We need to think about problems of fragmentation. Any of the programs that include redundancy and fragmentation will not be sustainable because they involve a waste of resources.
Mr. Dickinson: To add to that, we're not suggesting that the only way to solve the problem is to throw more money at it. We're also not suggesting that it's either a provincial government responsibility or a federal government responsibility; there's some partnership.
I think we have to look at redirecting the thinking, not only of the public policy formulators but also of the consumers and the people in the community, to start looking at how we take resources we have, or are likely to have in the future, and leverage those resources against other partnerships, whether it's the private sector, or business, or the community organizations and groups.
When we talk about privatization, for example, a lot of government officials we deal with have sort of a one-track mind and talk about private, for-profit contracting out for services from government. Maybe there's an opportunity there to build a meaningful partnership in the community sector and non-profit sector where certain programs and initiatives can be administered and delivered at lower cost and serve more people without getting into the inflationary budget squeeze.
I think another place where we've fallen down in the initiatives that have been tried in the past is we come up with short-term initiatives that are project-oriented and have perhaps some idea of a goal, or a vision, or an objective, but nobody ever goes back after the grant has been spent, or after the resource has been allocated, or after the program has been started, to see if it's actually meeting the objectives that have been decided.
How do you properly and effectively evaluate social programs and initiatives to see that they're still on track and that they're still needed? I think in some cases, in the past at least, public policy has fallen down, that once a program gets in place it continues ad infinitum even though the scenario of the economic environment and the social situation has changed, or it was predicated on bad advice or incomplete advice to start with, or it was a political decision made for the wrong reasons and never did serve a real need in the community.
So there has to be a way that we redirect that thinking. We're not here just to critique government's role; we're here to offer the observation that within the community and within the advocacy movement we have some room there to recalibrate our thinking to mesh together.
The Chair: What has the consumers' group done to date to reorient that thinking?
Mr. Dickinson: The very participation in the consultation processes, with the income security review as an example, or the commentary on the CHST at both provincial and federal levels...we're looking at trying to identify the most efficient and effective strategies for delivery of programs.
As we pointed out, not everybody has the same views on every issue, but I think we're seeing more movement away from saying universal programs where everybody automatically gets a fixed resource that has no relationship to what their need is. So you give support to those who need it and you don't give support to those who don't need it. That way, you can make your resources go further to attaining the goals.
The Chair: All of you have commented on the lack or the insufficiency of a national vision. Could each one of you indicate for the committee that national vision?
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Mr. Dickinson: I think since the decade of persons with disabilities, the language has been assimilated in the bureaucracy and in the public agenda - talking about inclusion, integration, equity, equal access, and barrier-free. But when you look at the reality for implementation and the prioritizing of resources and decision-making based on those principles of inclusion, they haven't really translated down the pipes yet to the front lines.
The Chair: No. My question is not the lack of implementation of a vision.
I would like to be clear on this point. What is your understanding of what that vision ought to be? A vision or a mission statement, if I may call it, or a clause is a statement of a dream. What is that?
Mr. Dickinson: But you've got to look at things like the measurement of outcomes.
We're going to increase the number of people with disabilities in the labour force. We're going to increase the level of education for persons with disabilities so they can compete fairly. We're going to look at the standard of income for persons with disabilities. So instead of being at the bottom end in all categories of those types of measurements, they should be represented in the public service, for example, in some way to reflect the population.
Without getting into quotas, we're talking about setting an objective that is measurable, definable, and really leads towards bringing Canadians with disabilities to the milieu, the same standard, the same measurements, and the same attainment of those goals as other Canadians in the population.
The Chair: Mr. McPherson, would you care to add to that?
Mr. McPherson: I would say that a vision statement and a guiding set of principles that lead us towards that vision statement are needed. I think we need to have one of those nationally that not only governments can buy into, but the corporate sector and the communities can buy into, because one of the things we're finding in Alberta is that, as the provincial government gets out of service and the regions and the municipalities get into service, there is no place for disabled people to lobby or to come together any more. If the premier's council didn't exist, the provincial government would have nobody to give it any kind of empathy or understanding.
So I think principles and vision are really important to keep people on track. So as Stephen Covey says, we know where true north is.
The Chair: Dr. Cummings.
Dr. Cummings: I think my sense of a national vision, if I had to say it in a word, would be equity -
The Chair: Okay. Thank you.
Dr. Cummings: - equity for persons with disabilities.
By the way, I would just like to add that all the things they have said are based on principles, which we have set out here in our recommendations.
The Chair: Thank you. Are there any other questions? Ian?
Mr. McClelland: Thank you. It's pretty clear that there are quite a number of stakeholders involved in this from the disability community, and nobody seems to speak with one voice.
So when we're looking at this vision, or if we're looking at this principle, it shouldn't be just exclusively for government or providers. It should be for everybody, including people in the disability community, because they're all over the map as well, very often with perhaps conflicting priorities. This brings me to the question, then, of the tension that seems to be evident between those people who are disabled or who have a disability and are proponents of independent living and those of the medical or rehab industry who, as it has been said by some who are in the disability community, have a stake in the status quo because it's provided a very handsome and secure living for a long time for people in that industry and they don't really want any changes. It's very comfortable.
Mr. Dickinson: Let me use an analogy. If you're getting your car repaired, you have a mechanic who's skilled in repairing the car, but you still make the decision concerning at what point you're going to get the repairs done, what type of repairs you want, and what you're willing to pay for those repairs on the marketplace. Certainly, rehab providers and health providers are part of the tools out there to rehabilitate or to participate in the needs of a person with disabilities, as long as they don't control the process unilaterally and there is a role there for consumers.
I think the danger is once you try to say this is the place where the system breaks down, that you can't participate in the planning even though you're delivering part of the services and you have a role to play, or that we don't want to listen to your point of view.
I think the time we've been most effective in our province, for example, as a premier's council, is when we've brought all of those players together to come to a consensus. We may not agree on every detail or every aspect, but on many of the things we do, we have clear consensus from all of the stakeholders and we can move forward on those actions. If we just move forward on the things that we have great consensus on, there's more than enough work to do and more than enough objectives to be achieved that will certainly move the agenda along for everybody.
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I would point out that in our province, for example, we have representation from all of the disability advocate groups and service providers. We don't have representation from some of the strictly consumer-based organizations because in our province the consumers have been integrated, participate, make the decisions and are involved in all of those organizations. So there hasn't been the momentum to create that.
When we talk about input from a national association, it's important to make sure that group actually has a grassroots base in each of the provinces. If they don't have a base in a certain province, you're looking to other players who are the same type of representation but maybe under a different name.
I think we want to be careful. We're not selling franchises on the premier's council. It's not the structure that will make the system work. It's not the fact that you have a parliamentary committee in name that will make it work. It's you and you and you and the people and ideas you bring to the table and the assimilation of those ideas into a broader outcome-oriented, action-oriented...that goes beyond statements of principle and philosophy and starts putting the tires to the pavement and gets something done that will at least move the things forward that there is agreement on.
We'll never get perfect agreement on everything, but that's why we have democracy.
Mr. McPherson: Ian, when you do an overlay based on needs, you get one answer, but when you start listening to people's philosophies and vested interests in terms of where they come from, whether it be the council or whether it be an organization, you get another one. I think if we keep the focus on the needs, we get ourselves out of the other. That was a real key for us at the council.
The other thing I want to say about councils...to the question of whether they're useful, I think the council in Alberta has been useful. The role has changed because the climate has changed. So the mechanism that we needed in 1988 is different from the one we're going to need in 1995 and the one we're going to need in 1998.
The great thing about it is that we have a sunset clause that will give the government a chance to review that in 1998, because we're not in perpetuity, which is, I think, a strength.
I think we have definitely become a conscience for government. Our role with the community and government has changed as the government gets out of service and more into policy.
Our government could have got into real difficulty as they were making this fiscal change if they didn't have somewhere to turn for some advice, where they knew how the impact was going to affect people.
So that's been one of the strengths, but it needs to be flexible; it needs to be adaptive. In this world today I think those words apply more than ever.
The Chair: We have just about exceeded our extension. Are there any burning questions from anybody?
I have one. Would we make a difference between a focus on outcome or a focus on need?
Dr. Cummings: A focus on need will inevitably involve a focus on outcome.
The Chair: Thank you.
Mr. Dickinson: You won't know if you're getting to where you're going if you don't know what the destination is. You have to identify what it is you're going to address and then put in a plan of action, act on the plan, and then evaluate whether you've met your objective, and adapt as you go.
The Chair: Thank you.
Mr. McPherson, would you care to add something?
Mr. McPherson: I think they're both equally important. I think you need them both.
The Chair: Thank you.
On that note I would like to thank you all on behalf of the committee for your presentations and interaction with the membership.
The meeting is adjourned.