This election, Canada must tackle disability rights reform

Early into this federal election campaign and, encouragingly, talk of the creation of a Canadians with Disabilities Act has surfaced.

The idea for such national legislation was raised by the group Barrier-Free Canada, remarked on by prominent disabled activist Rick Hansen, and endorsed by journalist André Picard in the pages of The Globe and Mail.

The call for a federal law to address the elimination of discrimination against individuals with disabilities is an important idea concerning a significant and pressing social issue. 

The statistics paint a discouraging picture. Depending on the province, one-in-five to one-in-four people in the working age population have a disability in Canada. Throughout their working years (15-64 years of age) people with disabilities remain about twice as likely as those without to live with low income – 21% versus 11% respectively overall. People with disabilities are much less likely than people without to have jobs – 51% vs. 75% respectively. 

Even where employed, people with disabilities are one and half times more likely than people without to live with low income. This is unacceptable. 

The suggestion for a federal law to address these inequities ought to be seen within an agenda of reforms for advancing reasonable accommodation and equality rights as well as facilitating full participation and opportunities for employment and income support. A broad focus on inequality ought not to leave disabled communities behind.

A research project headed by the Council of Canadians with Disabilities (CCD) has put forward an ambitious yet practical agenda of reform for advancing the inclusion of Canadians with disabilities.

This reform agenda includes proposals directed at the federal government, other proposal directed at provincial and territorial governments, and still other reforms that concern intergovernmental cooperation.  

In terms of federal actions, the CCD recommends three reforms.

One is the introduction of specific federal accessibility legislation to promote access to federal programs, facilities, benefits, communications, and services within and under federal jurisdiction for Canadians with disabilities. This legislation would be based on principles of universal design, effective participation, and equality of opportunity. These principles, in turn, would have standards that would be monitored and enforceable. 

The second is that the Court Challenges Program be reinstated. This initiative, which the Harper government cancelled, provided resources to disability associations (and other groups) seeking to establish or to confirm their constitutional rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The CCD recommends that the program be re-established as a vehicle for promoting a fuller measure of inclusion and citizenship.

The third concerns the UN Convention of the Rights for Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). While Canada has signed and ratified the Convention, what is now required is that Canada develop an implementation plan that makes the promise of the CRPD a reality for Canadians with disabilities. The Government of Canada should name and support the Canadian Human Rights Commissions as the CRPD monitoring body and, also, should ratify the Optional Protocol of the Convention.

Intergovernmental cooperation:

There is the necessity for introducing accessibility and inclusion legislation for persons with disabilities by provincial and territorial governments. Those which have not done so already – and that includes most provinces and the territories – need to introduce legislation that aims to eliminate barriers and to enhance access and inclusion for the full participation of people with disabilities in their jurisdiction.

Canadians live in a complex and interdependent federation. This means that federal-provincial-territorial (FPT) collaboration is critical to providing essential supports and services for everyday living for the millions of people with significant impairments. 

Governments across Canada need to work together in developing a new statement on inclusion, accessibility, disability, and participation. Such a statement would affirm the central importance of supports, income and employment. 

Addressing the disproportionate poverty of Canadians with disabilities will require development of new policy and legislation, legal protections and commitments and the democratic co-construction of public policy. Any such FPT process must engage fully with organizations of people with disabilities in the possible development of a new framework and implementation plan.

To that end, a permanent joint government-disability community advisory group should be established with a mandate and resources to ensure progress on objectives and commitments. This advisory group should also submit an annual report to all responsible cabinet ministers and, through them, to all legislatures.

A basic aim would be to share and design new effective practice models with the goals of making public services and supports, including legal aid and technologies, more accessible for all citizens; and, clarifying policies and programs as they relate to disability issues and human rights, including the UN Convention.

If there is to be robust and coordinated measures to substantially reduce the exclusion and poverty in which so many Canadian with disabilities live, these ideas require wide discussion, and this election campaign is a democratically appropriate and politically hopeful occasion to do so. 

Let us seize the moment! 

Michael J. Prince is a Broadbent Policy Fellow and Lansdowne Professor of Social Policy at the University of Victoria. Prince was principal investigator with Yvonne Peters of the CCD research project, Disabling Poverty, Enabling Citizenship.

Workplace discrimination against disabled people and earnings gaps

Disadvantages in employment opportunities and discrimination in the workplace are significant issues for Canadians with disabilities.  Perceived discrimination in the workplace can encompass the following situations and experiences:

• ·      refused an interview
• ·      refused a job
• ·      refused a promotion
• ·      given less responsibility
• ·      paid less than co-workers
• ·      denied accommodation  
• ·      denied work-related benefits.

The level of apparent discrimination varies by type and severity of disability. People with learning, psychiatric and cognitive disabilities and people with mental health issues are more likely than people with disabilities in general to express feelings and experiences of unfair treatment in employment because of their condition. “Regardless of the nature of the discrimination, the finding is that the extent of the discrimination increases as level of limitation increases” (Furie 2010, 29).

In a troubling trend, research indicates that “between 2001 and 2006, there was a decline in provision of some workplace accommodations by employers: in 2006, 65 percent of workers with disabilities who felt they required a job redesign had received one, down from 80 percent in 2001; [and] provision of human support declined from 83 percent in 2001 to 55 percent in 2006” (HRSDC 2010, 11).

Workers with disabilities are more likely to receive lower pay, even after adjusting for full or part time and full or part year employment, and are more likely to have fewer promotions (Garlarneau and Radulescu 2009, 12). It is important to point out that when people have a disability that limits them other than at work, there is no apparent earnings gap.

When the annual employment income for people with disabilities and people without disabilities are divided into quintiles, as Furie (2010) did, results show that 27% of employees with disabilities are in the lowest quintile compared to 19% of employees without disabilities. Only 15% of employees with disabilities are in the highest quintile, compared to 20% of employees without disabilities. In terms of total household income in quintiles for 2005, 33% of people with disabilities were in the lowest quintile compared to 18% of people without disabilities, while in the highest income quintile were 11% of people with disabilities contrasted by 21% of people without disabilities.

References

Furie, A. 2010. “Towards a better understanding of the dynamics of disability and its impact on employment: Final Report,” Ottawa:  Adele Furrie Consulting Inc.

Galarneau, D., and M. Radulescu. 2009. “Employment among the disabled.” Perspectives on Labour and Income 10 (5) 5-15.

Human Resources and Skills Development Canada. 2010. “Labour Market Participation of Persons with Disabilities in Canada: an overview.”

Diversity and severity of disability

In Canadian public policy, the diversity and the severity of disability needs to be better recognized.

The actual phenomenon of disability is heterogeneous in character. The term signifies people with developmental or intellectual, mental health, physical, visual or sensory conditions. As described in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, disability refers to physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments which in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis.

Definitions of disability in public programs in Canada tend to incorporate medicalized dichotomies that a person is either able-bodied or disabled. Although definitions do vary among programs (and also among social surveys) the general effect, because of a shared medical orientation, is to individualize and pathologize a person’s condition, to emphasize the inability to work rather than focus on work capacity, to ignore fluctuating or episodic conditions, and consequently to exclude some people from qualifying for specific programs.

About half of working-age adults with disabilities are outside the labour force, while others are unemployed, and still others are employed or involved in employment preparation activities of varying circumstances.

In Canadian disability policy, employment relates to a number of different sectors, organizational settings and particular arrangements, not all of which involve paid work and participation in the conventional labour force.

Employment preparation of a rudimentary kind may take place in adult day programs and activity centres, where the emphasis is usually on social services, recreation and leisure, and life skills training. Vocational training and support services can take place in ability centres and sheltered workshops and local employment service agencies may facilitate work experience placements for clients with disabilities. More integrated labour force participation takes place through worker cooperatives, social enterprises, self-employment, and what is called supported employment.  

Supported employment is paid and meaningful work in the labour market obtained and maintained with appropriate supports such equipment or job coaching assistance.

“Employment first” is a preferred idea and claim expressed by Canadian disability organizations. It is also an emergent policy commitment by some provincial governments that gainful employment should be the first priority and the anticipated outcome for people with disabilities. The expected result is real work for real pay in an inclusive work setting. That is to say, meaningful work to the individual and valued by others, paid at the industry or sector standard, where employees with disabilities enjoy the rights of other employees and are protected by legislated employment and safety standards on an equal basis with other workers.

Employment policy reforms needed for Canadians with disabilities

Canadians with disabilities are among the most marginalized in the country. They generally lack access to the mainstream employment programs and support measures that would allow them to participate more fully in the workforce and achieve better social and economic results. They are not getting the supports they need to realistically consider gainful employment in the regular labour force as a viable option.  

There is both real urgency and an opportunity to explore new approaches, negotiate new intergovernmental frameworks, and create new policy and governance arrangements, all to create the conditions for enabling hundreds of thousands adults with disabilities to work in accessible, inclusive, welcoming and rewarding places of employment. 

At the moment, people with disabilities encounter a complicated and fragmented patchwork of policies, programs and service agencies; a patchwork with many gaps and threadbare sections. Employment policy and public funding for labour market measures for people with disabilities is predominantly a provincial system, often with underdeveloped connections with provincial social assistance systems. The delivery of employment-related supports and services for disabled people is predominantly a community-based system of non-profit organizations, often with loose connections with local employers. The federal government retains a limited but still important role in labour market funding and employment-related programming for Canadians with disabilities.   

The status of Canadians with disabilities in the labour force now has a higher place on the federal political agenda and also on the intergovernmental policy agenda that it has in nearly two decades. In the literature on employment and disability, structures and methods of public decision making are hardly discussed. 

In upcoming Blogs posts, I will offer an original look at matters of governance and intergovernmental relations. Contrary to recent practices of classical federalism in Canadian public policy, I argue for a renewed collaborative style of intergovernmental relations on disability issues joined by a deliberative outreach as well. Federalism cannot be ignored nor taken for granted nor existing practices accepted as a fixed background. It is imperative for the federal and provincial/territorial governments to work together and to work more closely with employer associations and disability organizations. This requires opening up the closed nature of intergovernmental interactions traditionally practised in the executive federalism of Canada.