SSPD Committee Meeting

SUB-COMMITTEE ON THE STATUS OF PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES OF THE STANDING COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT AND THE STATUS OF PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES

SOUS-COMITÉ SUR LA CONDITION DES PERSONNES HANDICAPÉES DU COMITÉ PERMANENT DES RESSOURCES HUMAINES ET DE LA CONDITION DES PERSONNES HANDICAPÉES

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, March 2, 1999

• 1117

[English]

The Chair (Ms. Carolyn Bennett (St. Paul's, Lib.)): I welcome the witnesses, and I apologize in terms of our attendance. We've had some personal catastrophes on the Liberal side. Ms. Longfield was in the intensive care unit in a hospital in Germany for awhile, and Nancy Karetak-Lindell's husband died suddenly in December. Everybody is a bit thin, but we don't want the witnesses to feel that because we've done badly this morning in attendance, it's in any way a reflection on how happy we are to see you here.

I'll introduce you in the order that I hope you will speak. I would welcome Don Lenihan, Sherri Torjman, and Gail Fawcett, and I think we'll then hear from Patrick Fougeyrollas and Cam Crawford. And if you all give short presentations, there will be lots of time for questions.

Mr. Don Lenihan (Research Director, Institute of Public Administration of Canada): Thank you very much, Carolyn.

First of all, I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to appear here and to give you some thoughts on the work that IPAC, the Institute of Public Administration of Canada, has been doing over the last few years. I was asked to come to say something about the way we've been dealing with so-called collaborative models of governance. There are a number of ways of coming at this. It's one of those clusters of issues you can get at probably through about 45 different routes. Maybe the appropriate one to start out with here today is the idea of horizontal issues. My understanding is that it's sort of core to the work you'll be doing when you think about disability. Indeed, we've done a lot of thinking and working on those issues over the last few years.

Maybe the way to start out is just to state the obvious. If by “horizontal issues” we mean issues that cut across a number of departments, policy areas, jurisdictions, or even across sectors—private, public, and third sectors—dealing with those effectively really means some form of collaboration between different organizations, and usually between government and other governments, government and other organizations, or various departments. Hence, much of the work that we have been doing has been looking at so-called collaborative models of government and governance.

I guess I want to do two things here. I promise to try to stay within the six or seven minutes that I was told I should take, so I'll very briefly say something about what makes collaborative models possible; something about what's at the core of them and how they are to be applied; and, lastly, what this means for accountability and, potentially, for policy in committees like this.

First of all, let me just start by contrasting a so-called collaborative model of government with a more traditional or contractual one. Traditionally, when governments get into relationships with other organizations, whether they're other governments, third-sector organizations or whatever, the way they've done that is in what we call a contractual model. What they do is negotiate with someone to do something, and the contract specifies the terms and conditions of how they're to do that. Governments don't like to take chances, so they tell the contractor what to do and how to do it. If the contractors do that, the governments will pay them x amount of dollars, or whatever the case is.

• 1120

That's a perfectly good way of doing lots of things. What it means for the person or organization on the other side is essentially that they're contracted to deliver a service. Managing the so-called partnership—these are often called partnerships—really amounts to ensuring compliance with the terms of the contract. Negotiating the partnership is negotiating the terms of the contract. There's nothing wrong with these models. They're perfectly adequate and good for lots of things.

What has happened recently, though, is that over on the other end of the spectrum, what we'd call collaborative models of partnership have begun to open up. What this means is that there are not just terms and conditions that someone fulfils, but there is actually a genuine sharing of decision-making, authority, and planning activities between government and the partner. So I guess I want to say a little bit about what makes that possible and why it's a good or a bad thing.

First of all, if I can sort of get this down to the real bare bones of what's changed in the last five years in governments across the country and indeed around the world, it's an emphasis on so-called new tools of public administration—and I'll try to stay away from jargon here because I hate it as much as you do, but I still have a tendency to use it. New tools of public administration really come down to talking about what's called results-based management, where governments start saying that what they really care about is the result of programs and policies. It's not that they don't care about the so-called inputs—that is, how much money, how much labour, how many resources—it's just that, in the end, what they really want is the result. If they start focusing more on outcomes or results of policies and programs, they figure they'll be more effective as governments.

But you'll notice something once you start to focus on outcomes rather than all the processes and all of the interim steps that get you to the outcome. If you're a government and you say to yourself that this is really what you care about, it actually creates an opportunity for a different kind of a relationship with a partner. You can contract with a partner for outcomes as opposed to a whole bunch of itemized steps that the person or the organization is supposed to perform. You can say that what you really care about is getting them to lower the unemployment rate or achieve such and such, and that you frankly don't much care how they do it. That doesn't mean you don't care at all—you can set some terms around that—but you begin to open up the possibility of the partner making choices as to how they will achieve those outcomes and essentially how they want to get there. That gives them some of the decision-making authority that governments have. It shares some of the decision-making power for how the program is to be designed, how it's to be delivered, and how the outcome is to be achieved.

On the other hand, what's crucial here from a government's point of view is that they have some way of finding out in the end whether those results really are achieved. This brings us to the second part of the so-called new tools of government, what we might broadly call indicators or measures. In place of all of the terms of the contract, what we do agree upon, loosely put, is some way of assessing some indicators that will tell us whether or not the partner has actually achieved the goal in the end. Indicators are how you manage the partnership. You say you want the partner to achieve these outcomes and tell them how you're going to measure how they got there or didn't get there. If they did it, then they did their job. If they didn't do it, then they didn't do their job or you've got the wrong indicators or something like that.

Let me say a couple of very quick things about this. First of all, I don't think it can be underlined how much this changes the way governments would partner with other organizations and other governments if governments do this. It means they begin to share some of the decision-making authority about program design, program delivery, and even some policy decisions—this is a good thing, this is a bad thing. It depends on where governments use it and how they use it.

If you're the minister and you're suddenly thinking about sharing that decision-making authority, you may worry about the partner doing something wrong. This is the whole thing about accountability, about making bad choices or bad program design or whatever it is, and you have to stand up and answer in the House for that. There is this whole question of accountability and the extent to which performance measures or indicators are a good enough rein on the partner to make sure you have the partner under control. There's a whole raft of questions here that we can talk about later if you like.

The last thing I'm going to say about this is just what it means for the role of committees like this. I think moving to results provides a very significant opportunity for committees like this to become much more involved in the policy process. On the one hand, it looks like this is a top-down process. The minister, for example, decides he wants to create a partnership with another government, with a third-sector organization, or with a private-sector organization. Along with his staff from the department, he sets some outcomes, he defines some indicators, and they then propose a partnership with the partner.

It's going to turn out that two things happen here. First of all, it's really hard to get a lot of these outcomes right and these indicators right, and there's a lot of really important work for committees to do there in terms of asking if this is really the way to manage the partnership. Is this really going to provide the kind of accountability needed in terms of control over the partner? Are these really the outcomes that we care about? Insofar as we begin to talk about outcomes, we begin to talk about really important policy choices. What do we actually want to achieve with this program and this policy? Do they have it right? How can we change this? Can we actually achieve this at all? Can we even measure it? Is there really any way of knowing?

• 1125

Finally, lots of times these outcomes very often end up cutting across a number of departments, a number of jurisdictions. If you'll excuse the jargon, they're what we call multi-jurisdictional outcomes. Lots of these things are whopping, big things that just cut across a number of departments and governments. On the one hand, the good news is that's part of what links this so-called horizontal approach together. You'll find out that you and your partners all care about the same outcomes, that you all have the same goals in mind. On the other hand, it also means your policies and programs are only one small part of what will help to achieve that outcome or goal. Figuring out how they actually contribute to that is not an easy task, but I think it's a very important task into which committees like this have or could have a lot of input.

Let me close with maybe one last point. It's worth distinguishing three different levels on which this collaborative partnerships approach can be applied. It needn't be the case that it happen in all three of these levels, because it needn't happen on any of them.

In no particular order, the first one is between levels of government. Governments can partner with governments. They have relationships with other governments. They can do it more or less contractually or they can do it more or less collaboratively. If we look at things like the labour market development agreements, the social union agreement and other things, we see that governments are increasingly using a sort of results-based, outcome-based approached. They're becoming more framework-oriented with one another in creating the possibility of more collaborative relationships.

Secondly, governments can do it with third-sector or private-sector organizations. They can create outcome-based partnerships with others for service delivery.

Finally, they can do it with themselves between departments, and more specifically between line departments and central agencies. Treasury Board can say to line departments, as it has in the federal government and other places, that it's going to be a lot less concerned about all the processes around how they achieve these goals and is going to start to give them some latitude to make decisions. On the other hand, it can say it's going to subject the line departments to some sort of test with respect to performance indicators and others to see whether or not they do a good job.

Let me close by saying this. Governments across this country are engaging in a lot of collaborative relationships at a lot of different levels. Most of this effort has come originally from the bureaucracy, and it has come for what I would call management reasons. That is to say, it's come out of the restructuring. Governments are doing it because they sometimes think it's cheaper, because they don't have the resources to do it themselves, have turned to partnerships, and have begun to strike relationships. All of that is fine, but it misses a very important point. If it's true that these things are or have been largely done for management reasons, they have big governance implications.

When you create a collaborative partnership, you are actually changing the relationship between government and somebody else with respect to government's decision-making authority. You're beginning to share that decision-making authority. My own view is that this is a decision for politicians, not for bureaucrats. That doesn't mean they can't provide advice and insight and all sorts of other things, but where these things should be used, how much they should be used, and how much we want to use them to change the nature of government and governments in this country seems to me to be a very important political question that committees like this ought to be exercised about.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thanks, Don.

Sherri.

Ms. Sherri Torjman (Vice-President, Caledon Institute of Social Policy): Thank you very much for the opportunity to attend the committee today. I really appreciate your inviting me back to discuss some issues with respect to disability in children in particular. Before I mention a few points with respect to that issue, though, I just wanted to point something else out.

I've brought with me a publication that we're releasing today. It's called real leaders, and it pertains to one of the questions that was posed to me last time I was here. It was the Hon. Deborah Grey who asked me this particular question with respect to some of the partnership arrangements that were possible with groups outside of government. In this document, we profile an individual who is working on a voluntary basis with engineers, in order to be able to make some very substantive changes to living environments to ensure that people with disabilities can live independently in the community. I'd just like to point this out, and I will distribute this later for your information.

• 1130

I'll turn now to the issue of children with disabilities and the role this committee might play with respect to their needs. Before looking at any specific policy options, though, I think it's important to ask some key policy questions. I think there are three policy questions. First, what are the needs the committee would look at and would want to address? Second, what are the key policy levers available to you to be able to address those needs? And third, what are the most appropriate policy levers available to address those needs? There may be a range of possibilities, but there are some policy levers that I believe are more appropriate than others. There are also some actual measures that don't exist right now that I'd like to talk about as well in terms of expanding the scope of the policy levers available to you.

Just very briefly with respect to the needs of children with disabilities, there is a wide range of needs. It's a very broad issue, but if we had to focus, if we had to select a certain spectrum of needs, I would say it's very important for children with disabilities to have a range of supports to help them live independently in the community, to promote their emotional and physical development, and to participate in the school system. We know there are serious problems right now with respect to a lack of support and services in the school system that allow children to participate in the classroom.

That's a whole spectrum of needs that we're talking about. Some of those services are actually professional services, some of them are more paraprofessional, and in some cases we're talking about attendant care and just support in the home. It's a very broad range, and I think it's very important to think in terms of the concept of wrap-around services in this case. That's something that's being looked at with respect to youth more generally, and the concept really refers to the fact that you look at each individual child as a person with specific needs. What you're trying to do is ensure that you can wrap around that child a set of supports and services that are specific to his or her needs. That's the challenge within this broader question of how to individualize the supports that a particular child might need.

But I think there is also a set of needs on the part of parents. We're not just looking at the children, because parents who have kids with disabilities often talk about the fact that they themselves need some support, they themselves need respite that's in very short supply, and there are also some costs that they face. They are additional costs that are very difficult for many families.

So we're really talking about the availability of a set of supports and services for both children and parents, and we're talking about affordability of certain costs for disability-related supports and services. The issue then becomes what the policy levers are that are available to address these issues of availability of a wide range of supports, and affordability.

I think there are again three major kinds of policy levers here.

First of all, there's the provision of supports and services directly to families through schools, through community centres, through rehabilitation programs or vocational programs. But you have the services directly available to families and to children. Of course, the issue arises as to the federal role in this regard and how the federal government can become involved in that provision, but we can return to that in a minute.

The second policy lever has to do with giving money directly to families to help them offset some of the costs. The current policy lever available to you in that regard is the national child benefit.

The third option has to do with the tax system. You're offsetting the cost of purchasing disability-related supports and services through a range of tax provisions. There are in place a range of tax provisions at the current time, but there are some serious problems with those tax provisions.

So you have a certain set of policy options available to you to address those needs. I think, though, that it's important to look at the third question, and that is what the appropriate policy options might be in this regard. I think this is one area around which we can have some extensive debate, and I hope we will.

In our view, however, there are really two policy proposals that we would put forward. The first has to do with the short-term actions that you can take, or what you can do right away. Our view in this regard is that there are problems with the current tax provisions that could be ameliorated in the short term. They could be done very quickly because the measures are in place, but they simply don't meet the needs of many parents. I could go into some detail with respect to that. An example is the refundability of certain credits to ensure that low- and modest-income families can benefit from some of them. There is also the fact that two-parent families cannot take advantage of some of the tax credits available to single-parent families with respect to children with disabilities. Those provisions would have to be looked at and improved.

• 1135

A general problem we have found is it is extremely difficult to understand the tax provisions in and of themselves. They are very complicated. Anybody who is not an accountant surely would have a difficult time if they were a parent trying to figure out the credits they could apply for.

I just want to point out to you that there is a brochure called “Information Concerning People with Disabilities” with respect to the tax measures. You would think you would be able to find sufficient information in here to understand the provisions that would apply to you. In many cases, you'll find that this document refers back to the general tax guide. When you go back to the general tax guide, it refers you back to this document for more information. You are literally caught between the lines, the documents and the wording. It is a very difficult process. So information in and of itself is a problem, but the coverage is a broader problem. I think there is some work to be done with respect to Revenue Canada and figuring out this particular issue.

In terms of the possibility of giving money to families directly through the national child benefit, it is not something we would support or propose at this time, for a number of reasons. It is very difficult to individualize your response through that particular approach because basically everybody would get a certain amount, and when you take into account the fact that some people have lower costs than others—some people have very huge costs and very specific needs—it is quite a blunt instrument. I think in this case the tax provisions are better.

Finally, with respect to the provision of services, this is probably one of the areas in which the federal government actually can play a very important role. I recognize that in terms of jurisdictional questions we're talking about provincial governments, especially in the area of education, but I think there are some open doors right now. We have a social union agreement that opened the door to federal-provincial collaboration around a wide range of social areas. We have the document entitled In Unison: A Canadian Approach to Disability Issues, which the federal and provincial governments have signed, in terms of trying to make personal supports more readily available to citizens with disabilities. So there are a number of agreements that would allow you to move forward.

One of the proposals that we think would be really worth looking at is a new collaborative arrangement, like Don was talking about, with respect to the federal government taking a leadership role and possibly offering to put forward a pool of money that would be directed toward supports and services for children with disabilities. The provinces would be involved in this process, would hopefully be able to match those funds on the basis of some formula, and would agree to spend the money for the provision of supports and services for those children.

They could move in a number of different ways. It could be quite open, with respect to how they would want to spend that, but you could have a very interesting federal-provincial initiative around this very important question, which I think we've been missing for a very long time. Right now there appear to be some opportunities and some open doors, and I would encourage you to think in that direction.

Thank you very much.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

Gail.

Ms. Gail Fawcett (Research Association, Canadian Council on Social Development): First I would like to thank you for asking me back and giving me another opportunity to put a couple of issues in front of you that I think are important for persons with disabilities. I have to say, after listening to Sherri, she has sort of touched on most of what I was going to say.

• 1140

One of the groups I was going to talk about was children. In my last address I spoke mostly about the labour market issues.

First of all, I'd like to say that I think the In Unison: A Canadian Approach to Disability Issues document Sherri just mentioned is an excellent instrument or framework that can be used to bring about policies that can hopefully result in full citizenship for persons with disabilities. But if it's going to be effective, we have to first of all respect the underlying spirit of the document.

We have to be very far-reaching in our approach, and I think Sherri touched on how that might be done. We also have to understand the interrelated nature of the building blocks of disability supports, employment and income.

We have to adhere to the call for an integrated and client-centred approach. That was, for me, one of the most significant little clips I took away from it—and I'm sitting close to the author of it here. We can't lose sight of that, and I think the points Sherri made certainly emphasize how you have to look at an individual's needs and how the needs of one individual with a disability will not necessarily be the same as another.

The group that concerns me right now is children with disabilities. It's curious that you chose that as well to speak about. One of the things I'm most concerned about is the cuts to special education programs. They're coming as a result of provincial cuts, and I realize it's not a federal issue, but again, I think there is an opportunity here for the kind of partnership you've been hearing about.

As a researcher, my area is to look at the data, talk to the people and see what's actually happening, rather than necessarily proposing the policies. But in terms of what I've seen happening in research, we know, for example, that increases in the level of education among young people with disabilities in the late 1980s was a major factor in increased labour force participation and economic success. We also saw, from the data we had from the late 1980s, that access to special education programs was a significant part of that. People who had higher levels of education were also people who said they'd had access to special education programs. Right now we're seeing some very serious cuts.

So as you approach policies that try to work toward that goal from the In Unison document of full citizenship for persons with disabilities, you have to look at some of the trends that are going on right now that are undermining those goals. We may not see the results for some time to come. If you're looking for indicators, the indicators that would measure that won't show up for many years to come, when children right now present themselves to a labour market and they're not prepared because they haven't had the opportunities that perhaps the generation ahead of them did.

We had just started to see, from the 1986 and 1991 HALS, the tip of the success we were having. Now, if we have cuts, when that generation hits the labour force you're going to see some problems. To address the employment building block for these people when they're adults is too late. So I think you have to be very far-reaching when you look at the In Unison framework. If your focus is on employment, then you have to look at young children with disabilities.

The other area that concerns me as well is trends we see already in terms of cuts to disability supports and services—home care. We also know from research that people who have supports, for example, with domestic chores within the home for reasons of disability, are much more likely to participate in the labour force. They're also much more likely to be economically independent. It makes a difference. We're seeing cuts, and again these are sort of trickling down from the provincial level, but they're happening. Again, they're going to undermine that goal of full citizenship. They are very much related to that employment block, whether they appear to be obviously related or not.

• 1145

The third thing I want you to consider, in terms of a trend that should help guide you in policy making, is the aging society. It's no secret that there's a demographic bulge of baby boomers. The tip of it has just passed into that age where the rate of disability starts to increase fairly significantly.

Right now, about 12% of our population is over the age of 65. That will more than double within the next 25 to 30 years. That's going to increase the rate of disability quite quickly in the very near future. If you're looking at full citizenship as a goal, you have to start looking at developing an infrastructure of supports and services, keeping in mind that you will have a significantly larger proportion of your population with disabilities.

The final thing I would say is if we look at supports that are already in place right now and government spending on them, it's only a small portion of the actual supports, because a lot of the disability supports now are being borne by families and friends. We don't know how deep that is. The problem is, there are people who are now caregivers for children who have disabilities and for elders who have disabilities, but what will we do when they require caregivers? Right now I think we are underestimating the amount of supports that are actually required.

I think that's where I'll leave it.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

Patrick.

[Translation]

Mr. Patrick Fougeyrollas (Scientific Director and President of the CSICIDH, Institut de réadaptation en déficience physique de Québec): First of all, I would like to thank the committee for asking me to appear.

I want to talk to you today about a very important issue, that is, fair compensation for the additional costs associated with impairments, disabilities and handicaps. This is a societal issue that speaks to Canadian society as a whole and requires policy and program complementarity at the federal and provincial levels. Because my field of expertise is Quebec, I will specifically concern myself with its circumstances today, although the situation in the rest of Canada is similar.

Over the last 25 years, a considerable effort has been made to ensure that people with disabilities can exercise their rights and enjoy equality of opportunity. Public and cross-sectorial actions have fostered the development of a service infrastructure intended to meet a variety of needs. We are now seeing—in Quebec, for example—that these initiatives have considerably improved the quality of disabled persons' social participation. However, certain problems remain and the solution found hinge on fragile gains which are forever being called into question.

One of these problems is the unstable economic status of persons with disabilities. In 1991, more than a third had to defray additional disability-related costs in order to meet their needs: purchasing medications, using paratransit or home support services, access to specialized adaptations or technical aids even. Coupled with their low income, limited workforce attachment and poverty in many cases, the mismatch between compensation plans and the consequences of the illnesses, injuries and other problems affecting a person's integrity and development is a socio-political factor that strengthens the obstacles to social participation. It creates additional handicaps for persons with disabilities and impairments.

This is something that affects people of all ages with motor, sensory, intellectual and psychological impairments. It includes people with mental health problems and mental impairments. And let us not forget their families, of course, who also suffer the consequences and require specific support. The realization that beyond their differences, what all these people have in common are disabilities, functional limitations and living with barriers and social exclusion, because the social and physical organization of their living environment does not meet their needs, is certainly one of the major achievements of the last 20 years.

• 1150

However, in the context of an aging population, which will mean increased needs and demands for services to meet impairment—-, disability-, and handicap-related needs, it is important to realize that an alliance of persons with disabilities and senior citizens will be a political force to be reckoned with. We are coming closer to a time when approximately 20% of Canadians will be living with disabilities. There is an urgent need to find solutions to the inequities inherent in our current compensation system.

There are three types of problems. First of all, there is a lack of harmonization between the methods and criteria for assessing both the needs and the disability. A number of studies have noted that most programs have evolved almost randomly, according to their own dynamic, and without the benefit of any integration or coordination. This has led to different definitions of disability, both in terms of specific programs—for example, those that compensate victims of work injuries, traffic accidents, criminal offences and HIV and general programs such as the Canada Pension Plan, health insurance and income security. Evaluations between programs are often repetitive and contradictory. There is a lack of standardization of evaluation tools, conceptual definitions and information systems. This is also a problem in assessing disabilities, particularly with respect to partial and total disability. Certain programs, such as those that provide compensation for work and highway accidents, cover partial and total disability, whereas the QPP and CPP only cover total disability.

How can we go about measuring partial disability with a view to ensuring equity and equal opportunity? What medical and non- medical criteria should be used to assess partial disability and set compensation? Should the compensation be based on the level of impairment as measured by its impact on daily life or social roles, or based on a percentage of potential income loss?

The second problem relates to inequities that arise depending on which target groups are involved and the status of affected persons. Canadians have access to a certain number of programs that provide compensation without regard for a person's status: income security, social assistance, public programs and services, as well as programs for victims of work and traffic accidents and criminal offences are all universal programs that cover both workers and non-workers. However, the benefit plans administered by the Automobile Insurance Board of Quebec and the compensation program for crime victims are linked to the cause. Other programs are aimed specifically at workers: the Workers Compensation Plan and private and group disability insurance plans.

The fact that programs are linked to causality, workforce attachment or status—in other words, worker, non-worker, youth aged from 0 to 18, senior citizen or retiree—has an impact on program access and coverage of specific disability-related needs. As a result, people with exactly the same needs may be compensated in very different ways. Even though in theory, no one in Quebec receives any compensation whatsoever for additional costs—there are 150 public programs—in actual fact, the lack of coverage or disparity of coverage, compared with the protected population, is the result, not of a lack of programs, but rather of a lack of resources to meet needs, of their complexity in terms of accessibility, of inadequate program coordination and harmonization, and regional disparities.

The third problem is the inadequacy and disparity that currently exist in terms of compensation and meeting needs. The new service reorganization dynamic has its advantages, including regionalization and decentralization, but a lack of standards leads to certain disparities, when it comes to meeting individual needs, and transfer-related problems when people have to move. In the case of home support services, for example, some regions no longer allow any choice, set priorities based on income or specific to client groups, or no longer offer this service at all. The drop in federal health transfers has clearly aggravated this problem, particularly in the case of unprotected envelopes. As for compensation and coverage of additional costs, the important distinction made between total permanent disability and disability leading to a significant deterioration in one's quality of life without resulting in total disability leads to serious inequities.

• 1155

How can we improve the current system? In terms of protecting against social risks, compensating people for additional costs would appear to be a confirmation of the social recognition of their existence and, as such, constitutes a risk that society as a whole is responsible for. Also, it is essential to foster a complementary approach, which involves acting on systematic obstacles to the social participation of persons with disabilities. As a number of groups and committees have already stated in the past, the establishment of mechanisms for cross-sectoral cooperation, at the federal and provincial, public and private levels, with a view to implementing a universal disability insurance plan is absolutely fundamental. We could look for inspiration in the work of Terrence Ison, a legal expert who fought for many years for such a plan to be put in place here in Canada. This would be an universal plan guaranteeing income replacement and compensation for additional costs incurred by any persons with temporary or persistent disabilities or impairments, or suffering from a handicap, whatever the cause. It would be based on the no fault principle, meaning no more civil suits, on the creation of a single fund that would sustained by activities that could be identified with specific causes, such as work and highway driving, on an actuarial and non-individual basis, since taxing activities is inconsistent with equality of opportunity, on various taxes, as well as on a system of management in which organizations representing persons with disabilities would have an equal say. Significant cost savings would flow from the rationalizations inherent in such a scheme and the decompartmentalization of clients with similar needs.

In conclusion, given our realization that 20% of Canadians will be living with impairments and disabilities and that we are currently up against a system that leads to inequities and unfairness, the implementation of a universal disability insurance plan, being an important societal issue, must constitute a government priority.

It is important to align two major strategies: first of all, a rationalization of existing plans, and due consideration for the positive social and economic spinoffs of an equitable, universal system, complemented by an overall political and strategic will to ensure equality of opportunity and the participation of persons with disabilities in all aspects of community life.

Canada would regain its past role as an international leader when it comes to recognizing the rights and equal opportunities of people with disabilities. Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

[English]

Cam Crawford.

Mr. Cam Crawford (Acting President, Roeher Institute): Thank you very much for inviting me to speak as well. I have the unenviable position of having all of these very good acts to follow.

I'd like to open by saying that I think by and large I would agree with everything everyone has said, which is not common for me to say. But I think there is a common understanding that has emerged around a lot of these issues. There has been a critical mass that's developed, and I think all the issues that have been put on the table do need to be dealt with.

What I wanted to speak to are the practicalities. We are living in times where governments are cash-strapped. There's rumour there may be new money, but maybe not. People are doing the dance around who's responsible for what in the social union. There are a lot of concerns about one level of government not creating the impression it's treading on the toes of another level of government. These are all real issues that have to be dealt with.

So what I'm proposing here is something that I think is a little new—actually only four people have heard this idea, so it's completely out of the can here. I hope what I'm going to share with you is consistent with the In Unison document. I hope it's consistent with the social union framework, and I believe it's consistent even with some of the directions that have been articulated in HRDC's strategic policy directions around disability.

I should make clear my assumptions. I believe we as a society have a shared responsibility to create a society that is open and accessible, one in which people can participate on equal terms as citizens. The second assumption is that no level of government and indeed no sector, whether it be the private or the voluntary sector, should be held singly accountable for undoing over a century of issues, measures, and conditions that have resulted in a very large segment of our society being excluded, for all intents and purposes, from the mainstream of the economy and from the community.

• 1200

The third assumption is that whatever we do to address these issues has to be sustainable and affordable, not only for governments but for everyone, including people who have disabilities, the private sector, and the voluntary sector.

I think what is needed is some thing, some new approach, that will improve the access of children, working-age adults, and senior citizens to the opportunities, obligations, and benefits that flow from Canadian citizenship. In order to do this I think, as the people have spoken to here, what's needed is really a two-pronged approach, one that will address issues that individuals face in their private lives and will somehow attach new resources to individuals in respect of their highly specific individualized needs, as well as measures that will deal with some of the systemic and environmental factors that result in the exclusion of such large numbers of people from the economic and social life of the community.

So I guess in terms of a strategy, I think what would be helpful would be for the federal government to really pluck up its courage, assume a leadership role, and indicate that it will help the provincial governments and the private and voluntary sectors to fashion a new society, one that's more open and accessible, one that facilitates participation by helping those other partners to secure the resources they need in order to make significant progress toward a more inclusive, equitable, and accessible society.

So what am I proposing then? Well, I'm proposing some fairly concrete things here. One would be a combination of grants and loans. There's a spending program here. I'll detail it very briefly, and we can have a discussion about it later.

Another component would be grants to the voluntary-sector organizations and a third would be new financing arrangements for voluntary-sector organizations.

In terms of the grant and loan piece, if we think of the tax regime we have in place right now, there are some really good things that are available to people in the tax regime. I'm thinking of employers in particular. But it's like the bird in the hand being worth more than two in the bush. Right now, we've got the birds in the bush, and the bird in the hand has been very elusive.

A lot of smaller employers simply aren't in a position to take advantage of the tax system because they lack the cash to make the necessary investments so they can recoup the benefits through the tax system. Really, if we're thinking about measures to employ more people with disabilities, small employers are where the action is. That's where communities find work, in smaller employers.

So how do we deal with this problem of helping employers take advantage of the tax system and make the necessary investments?

Well, here's where the grant and loan idea comes in. One, there could be a grant available to employers to stimulate interest in making necessary investments for workplace modifications—accessible doorways and entrances, and all of the things we know are needed in order for people with disabilities to be employed. But maybe more importantly, and perhaps significantly larger than the grant portion—this is like the old student loan program, right?—would be a low-interest loan that the federal government would stand security behind. Basically the federal government would cover a loss in terms of interest payments.

How this would work would be that the federal government would stand security for a low-interest loan. Pick a figure, 2% or 3%, instead of the going rate of 7% or 8%. That would be a fund, a pot of money up to whatever level the federal government wanted to establish, for employers, in this instance, to access the fund so they can get the cash, so they can make the investment, so they can claim the tax credit. The federal government in turn would be basically underwriting the differential in the interest premium between the regular market rate and the low-interest rate. That's the cost to the federal government.

You can imagine this loan fund or loan security program being fairly significant in terms of the overall loan moneys that would be available to private-sector employers. If you had, say, $1 billion available in loans, and if everyone took up on that fully tomorrow, which is not likely, it would probably cost $100 million or $150 million in terms of the principal differential the federal government would swallow.

I'd like not to dwell, however, just on getting people employed. Although that's an important aim, I think that's only a piece of the problem. People also need access to the community in terms of accessing community services, public services, and private services. So why can't we make such measures available to people who own boutiques, to make their doorways more accessible so people can get in and buy the consumer products; or to municipalities, so they can make the necessary investments in whatever architectural modifications are needed to make sure that public services are fully accessible, that informational services are understandable to people with intellectual disabilities, and that people who have sensory impairments or disadvantages aren't further disadvantaged by the kinds of public and private services that are made available?

• 1205

So I'm thinking of accessibility. I'm thinking quite broadly, not just of physical hardware and architectural modifications, but also of the cognitive and sensory issues that have to be addressed.

I think there is a role for the federal government to play here in actively supporting the creation or fashioning of a more accessible society. What I'm proposing here is that these dollars would be made available, but on the condition that whatever provincial money is saved—part of this would be targeted only to provincial spending—would in turn be reinvested into the direct supports people need because they have a disability, whether those are supports to families in the form of respite support, or highly specific technological appliances that the child who's blind, who's six years old, and in Mrs. Livingstone's grade one class needs.

So there's a whole range of very important things that are needed that need to be fully articulated.

Here's another piece of the proposal. In order to articulate what the priorities for strategic spending ought to be, the voluntary sector needs to be engaged. Currently the voluntary sector, because of factors that Gail and Patrick have pointed to, are really being pounded by the cuts. They simply lack the resourcing. They need to engage substantively with government and the private sector in articulating issues and finding solutions to problems. So I'm also proposing that some dollars ought to be available to the voluntary sector to enable them to participate effectively in working with other sectors in a partnership alliance in creating and working toward a more accessible society.

The final thing that could be considered would be accountability measures in terms of dollars that are available for voluntary-sector organizations, but ones that are a little different from what we have right now. Currently what we have are financing mechanisms that basically require voluntary organizations to do the work, and then they get paid. Well they don't have large operating revenues, so unlike big, highly capitalized companies, they're really starving until they can get the work done. So perhaps some attention could be given to the financing arrangements to enable the voluntary sector to participate and get the money it needs to do so up front. They should be held accountable for the outcomes they deliver for those dollars, but there may be new ways of thinking about how to ensure the outcomes that governments are looking for are delivered.

In a nutshell, that's what I think would be worth having a discussion about.

The Chair: Thank you all very much. We'll begin the questioning now, and I'll just remind the witnesses that Minister Pettigrew will be appearing before the committee on Thursday. So if there's anything in your answers that you would like to give us a tip about in terms of what you think we should be asking him.... Also, Minister Dhaliwal will be here next week. So if in your answers there were some questions, that would be great.

Ms. Grey.

Miss Deborah Grey (Edmonton North, Ref.): How is that for an invitation?

Thank you again for all your presentations. I'm not sure what I want to ask other than whether we get discouraged that we have beaten this horse time after time and it's just not happening. Do we have to take one incremental step and say, yeah, there's a victory?

I'm looking at the letter that was just sent out from the Council of Canadians with Disabilities. It was very, very critical of government. It says what we need is an action plan with defined outcomes. Andy's group probably went through that in 1996, and some of you folks who have been around a long time probably went through it decades ago.

It continues:

- a responsibility center within government at a senior level to ensure new policy initiatives such as the Child Tax Credit take into account the needs of families with children with disabilities,

Sherri, that's exactly what you were talking about.

- a coordination mechanism within government to ensure cross departmental collaboration,

There's an opportunity we have with Pierre when he comes on Thursday, and I'd appreciate some comments on that.

- a commitment to HALS in 2001,

We don't know that's going to happen.

- an extension of the Opportunities Fund,

- mobility rights assured by national standards, and

- a commitment to the ongoing removal of barriers that prohibit our participation in community life,

- an action plan to address issues of aboriginal people with disabilities.

And it goes on.

You talked about children, but one of the amazing things I find is that as a baby boomer, and pretty well all of us around this table fit into that category, this has been no surprise—for 55 years—that there's this huge demographic bulge in the population that's getting older and older.

• 1210

My sister Leslie is 53 years old. She is at the front of it and I'm a few years behind her.

What in the world are we going to do about this? Do we have to get government funding, as an enormous block, that is going to be able to look after that?

I think, Gail, you mentioned family and friends, the amount of revenue, if you were going to take it that way—granted, it's voluntary. But what happens when I get too old and rickety to look after my old, rickety mom? Then you have to get into that whole public funding thing.

Rather than trying to sound too discouraged and just throwing my hands up, I admire you people who work full-time at this.

Let me ask Don about this collaborative model. It sounds great in theory, again. Do you have any examples of where something really worked and where somebody somewhere was helped because of this?

Mr. Don Lenihan: I think there are probably lots of collaborative relationships.

Miss Deborah Grey: I'm sure there are lots. Just give me one.

Mr. Don Lenihan: Coming out of labour market agreements, much of the employment services involve community organizations now. What happens is government will partner with community organizations in order to provide more career counselling, for example, a much better idea of what's going on in the community and what people's needs are and what they can do for them.

I'm trying to think of a very good example. In fact, I suppose one good example was one that won a number of awards. Several years ago the Government of New Brunswick did a large literacy program. Before that, it was a typical government program, and they were trying to raise the standards of literacy, very unsuccessfully. They finally decided what they needed was some sort of a community-based partnership with not just community organizations but also private-sector organizations, and so on. There is a case study of this.

To make a long story short, it made all the difference in the world. Getting the community involved in church basements and elsewhere has raised the literacy rate considerably. They've had much more success.

Miss Deborah Grey: Would you say then that that was a result of somebody somewhere having the insight to say we need to get to results rather than just all the how-tos?

Mr. Don Lenihan: If I could take a minute and go back to the original comments—and I think this comes back to what Cam said, if I understood him correctly—I think there's one really important issue here. That's what I call capacity building in the third sector.

If it turns out that we are moving to a new way of doing things, and I think we are—whether we like it or not, government has changed, right?—and the whole idea of partnerships is a part of the future for lots of reasons, the thing I worry about most here is insofar as a lot of these kinds of programs will rely on community-based and third-sector organizations, voluntary organizations, to begin delivering services, most of those have taken a real whack as a result of the cuts, and most of them are struggling to stay alive. What we're asking them to do at the same time is not only to start picking up the slack the government is leaving, but actually to begin to act collaboratively. I think if you want those organizations to really begin to think differently, like the government and the private sector are supposed to be doing, and initiating ideas and sharing decision-making authority, there's going to have to be a kind of capacity building that goes on within them.

They actually don't have the resources, and I'm not just talking about physical resources or money. In most cases they don't have the capacity for—excuse the expression—strategic planning or thinking about how to initiate ideas and getting those through government, or how to strike and make partnerships happen. If and when they do, the benefit here is that it's not a zero-sum game. We actually generate new resources, new money, and that's what will get the machine going.

Miss Deborah Grey: Yes.

Mr. Don Lenihan: But they have to be able to do that, and the fear is that if they don't, what will happen is in their weakened condition they will be so reliant on government for contracts to get money that they will just be turned into an arm of government, a service delivery arm like in the past, but with almost no capacity except to deliver services.

Mr. Cam Crawford: To respond to that, I agree entirely, and I guess in some people's thinking the federal-provincial division of powers really vests responsibility for service delivery with the provincial authority, and that's contracted out through parties in the voluntary sector, by and large. But there's a whole piece that the voluntary sector has been performing without anyone really acknowledging up front that this has been actually occurring. They've been getting together and problem solving—identifying social issues, trying to come up with solutions, and developing strategies for dealing with those solutions. Those activities are piggybacked onto board meetings and onto service delivery in one form or another.

As you pointed out, Don, if the move pushes the voluntary organizations more and more into a service delivery mode, cut and dried, pure and simple, with very strict financing arrangements in place that really require them to scramble just to provide that much of a service, I would argue that all of these other functions that have been happening without explicit recognition of funding are really at risk.

• 1215

I think there is a role for the federal government to play in ensuring that social issues are identified in a timely and comprehensive manner, that the partners in Canadian society move forward in identifying and articulating commonly shared understandings of solutions to those problems, and so forth. It's about building the community capacity, for which I think the federal government has a very important responsibility. My view would be that the provincial governments probably don't see the necessity of voluntary organizations being able to reach out across provincial boundaries, and don't see the necessity of funding them. That's been the experience. They really haven't been funding them up to this point.

The Chair: Yes, Sherri.

Ms. Sherri Torjman: I just wanted to point out that I think there's a very interesting partnership underway right now that appears to be working quite successfully, and that is the national child benefit. It's a partnership between the federal and provincial governments. The federal government invested and is continuing to invest a sum of money in this particular benefit. In turn, that has freed the provinces to move their money from the current welfare portion and invest money in services and supports for families and children. I think that can be used as a prototype for a lot of the kinds of things we're talking about with respect to new federal-provincial arrangements. So when you ask for an example of something that is working right now, I think there are many important lessons that can be learned from that particular example.

I just wanted to make a comment about your observation about the aging population and the need for supports. I think it's important to recognize the fact that the disability agenda and the needs of the entire Canadian population are not so diverse that we're talking about completely separate needs. This is a Canadian issue that affects every single family, every person, every household. The extent to which we can begin to really think in that way is, I think, very important.

Finally, on your comments on the letter that was written, I think you're rightly sensing that people are discouraged and exhausted in the disability community. These discussions have been going on for many years, for a very long time. I guess my response to your question about what we should do is to work incrementally and at the same time to think big and begin to move a bigger agenda at the same time. You then would at least have something happening. You'd be meeting identified needs in a very concrete way through the measures we have right now. You would keep moving along on that track so that at least there is something happening, there is some progress, and you would be helping people directly with respect to the needs they're identifying. At the same time, there's a tremendous opportunity for bigger leadership issues around supports for children with disabilities and around the accessibility issue more generally, to which Cam referred. I would therefore encourage you to actually work at both levels right now.

Miss Deborah Grey: Well, there's one small thing that we could do that has huge potential, I think, and maybe you could advise us on this, Sherri. You talked about this pamphlet that you showed us about the information on taxation or whatever regarding disabilities. It refers you to the tax guide, which in turn refers you back to that. Who can we find in this country that could write that sucker straight? Is that one thing this committee could do: get it so that the information there is at least coherent and, with the tax provisions, somebody's taxes would get better? Who can rewrite that?

Ms. Sherri Torjman: I would certainly pose the question to Revenue Canada and point out that there are some difficulties in terms of understanding the information that's in there. That's completely aside from the problems with some of the actual credits themselves, but just at the very least I think they can do a far better job of the information. It's very difficult and very confusing, especially for parents.

The Chair: I guess the question is whether the information isn't well communicated or whether it's actually too complicated right now and in need of simplification as well.

Ms. Sherri Torjman: I think it's both, quite frankly. I've certainly spent hours and hours literally pouring over both tax guides before coming here today in order to try to figure out some of the credits and benefits to which families would be entitled. Just to understand the interrelationships among several of those areas is very complicated.

• 1220

Miss Deborah Grey: Well, Madam Chair, I suggest that our subcommittee do something about that and appeal to the revenue minister to somehow make it easier. I mean, somebody sitting somewhere in a bureaucratic office knows how this operates. It may take that person forty hours a week just to figure it out, but surely we could help that way.

Ms. Sherri Torjman: It really worries me that parents are not aware of some of the benefits.

Miss Deborah Grey: They're not going to be able to take the time.

Ms. Sherri Torjman: Exactly, and they're not even aware of the fact that they may be entitled to some of the benefits they're really concerned about, especially with respect to respite care and support for themselves. I'm not sure people actually understand the current provisions.

The Chair: Well, Sherri, we promise we will read section 4 of the briefing book. We will try to have good questions for Minister Dhaliwal when he comes next week, and we'll take up this real concern.

Ms. Sherri Torjman: Thank you very much.

[Translation]

The Chair: Madame Dalphond-Guiral.

Mrs. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral (Laval Centre, BQ): I listened carefully to all of your presentations. Although some of you spoke rather quickly, I do think I have a good sense of what you were trying to convey. For my part, I will try not to speak too quickly so that those who understand French will not have to use their headset.

There is a problem. Over the course of my professional life, I worked in the health sector, trying to help families with a child less well equipped for life than others. I experienced that directly. I also worked with adults in similar circumstances.

Families, and some adults as well, tell us that they are sick and tired of being seen as freeloaders. Basically, they are clients and they would like to have the right to receive what they are entitled to. However, there is a problem. In our system, we have different levels of government that all have the right to collect taxes; the federal government is one of these managers.

Participative management is certainly a very interesting concept. However, in everyday life, the client is usually the one who pays and says what he wants. In the case of people living with disabilities, the client is only too willing to tell people what he needs, but in the end, it is not he who pays directly or immediately; it is the government machine.

So, this results in a terrible distortion. I really don't know how we can tackle that problem, particularly since we have been discussing it forever and a day. There have been some improvements. Some very definite improvements. I am from Quebec, and I know that people outside of Quebec would very much like to have the same system as Quebec.

So, when I hear people talking about an overarching federal vision, I say to myself that may be the solution, although I am not totally convinced. I believe that the closer you are to the person whose needs you're trying to meet, the easier it is for that person to express his needs and for us to help him.

For example, I live in a town with a population of 350,000 where members of the community look after one another. Some people, who 20 years ago would have been thought of as disabled and left pretty well on their own, are demonstrating tremendous courage and energy and making themselves useful to others. It's when they acquire some self esteem—you know, when you feel you can walk with your head held high—that they begin to feel good about themselves, even though they may not have everything they need. I think it can be tremendously rewarding.

Should we not be saying to our fellow citizens who are not as lucky as we are that they are an integral part of our society, that they can be of service, and that they themselves can identify their own needs, since they are in the best position to do so?

• 1225

For example, they know what it means to be four foot two inches; we don't. Or at least, I don't. I was once four foot two, but I was still a little girl and people would take me in their arms. So, no, I don't know what it means. And there are many situations like that.

I don't really know how we can resolve this, but I don't think the solution is to have the decision-making process far removed from the people affected by those decisions, so that they have to travel a very long way to be part of the process. That just doesn't make sense. We have to bring things down to a human level.

I believe it was Mr. Fougeyrollas who talked about universal disability insurance. I am even tempted to suggest some sort of universal wellness insurance. What do we exactly mean by wellness? To my mind, disability insurance has a negative connotation to it. In fact, we have replaced unemployment insurance with employment insurance. In a developed society such as ours, would it not be possible to determine minimal standards of wellness, a level to which everyone would be entitled? That would be another way of looking at things and it might be worthwhile to take a look at how people who face these problems actually experience them.

I see no other immediate solution. However, I do think the committee can demand that an effort be made to work on the meaning of disability. It is ridiculous that such variations in meaning exist—that for some people, to be disabled means being unable to eat by oneself or do anything else. That is simply ridiculous. We need to develop an intelligent definition.

Of course, there is also the taxation issue. We all know that when we have some income, it's not just a gift, but something we are entitled to. It's good for one's self esteem.

You have a great deal of work to do. We can just sit here and talk, whereas you have to reflect on all these issues. Thank you.

Ms. Sherri Torjman: I would like to make a brief comment just to say that the proposal I made does not only apply to the federal government. It applies to both federal and provincial levels of government. What it means is that the federal government has to invest money and that the provinces that engage in this process will also invest, although they themselves will decide how the money should be invested, be it in services, in personalized funding for children or parents or elsewhere. It is a comprehensive project. This is not a project where the federal government would be deciding how money is to be spent in the communities themselves.

Mrs. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral: There were a couple of different funds set up by the federal government that suddenly disappeared. A need was identified and met for a certain period of time. But we all know that once a need has been met, it becomes a necessity. Once that need has been satisfied, it's even worse; you feel it even more. That's just the way it is. Is there any guarantee that the funding will be ongoing? I certainly wouldn't bet on it. The government could turn around and decide to allocate that money to defence, for example. That is one of my concerns.

[English]

The Chair: Mr. Lenihan.

Mr. Don Lenihan: I hope you'll excuse me if I reply in English, because I'm not as competent in French as Sherri is.

There are many issues opened up by the comments you made. There is one in particular that I did want to say something about, and that's the comment you made about the fact that the person delivering the service should be the person who is closest to the client. I think that's absolutely right. It seems to me that if there's any sort of task that faces us in reorganizing government and moving it away from the old departmental structures, it has to start by looking at the citizens, the clients, or whatever you want to call them, and move back from there.

• 1230

Having said that, it will surely turn out that in some cases the best person—the best government or whomever—to provide the service will be someone very close to the client. In other cases there will be different levels and multiple levels. I'm not even sure who the client for this will be, but when we think about regulation of the environment, regulation of businesses or things governments do, if they're services at all they're of a very distant sort, and it's hard to say who's in the best position to deliver them.

On the whole business of a more results- or outcome-based approach, if we do it well it should help us sort out better the different levels at which governments have different responsibilities. I'm not an expert in this area, but it may be that in an area like disability there are different responsibilities at different levels. There are certain things that are most appropriately done at the community level, there are some things that more appropriately done at the provincial level, and there may be some things that are done well at the federal and even international levels.

There's a lot of really important committee work to be done, and it seems to me the task here is to try to sort it out. When we talk about outcomes or results, there's not just one outcome we're trying to achieve; there's a cascade of outcomes. We start from a high level with something like health and we say the outcome we want is well-being and a healthy population. That's a big outcome. Then we cascade down a step and say, what's the next level down? We don't want to have too many levels or we'll just get lost in it.

On the other hand, when it comes to the task of sorting out really important policy levels or levels of integration of policy and having a better idea who's in the best position to do what part of a large task, that will help us coordinate better across governments and in the community and sort out who should be doing what, where.

When it comes to committees like this, one way they get a bottom-up sort of policy process going and feed back to governments and ministers is by actually looking at the outcomes governments have set for themselves and asking if they got it right, if they have actually sorted these things out properly, and by beginning to look at whether there is a better and more effective way of sorting out those things to decide who should do what, where.

Mr. Cam Crawford: Part of what you're speaking to is the need, as Sherri mentioned, to respect and acknowledge people's very different needs, depending on who they are as individual people. We need to work toward fashioning a new system that will be more respectful and responsive to the individual needs people have.

Certainly that's been on the agenda in the disability community for many years. But the question that always comes up is how do you finance it and where do we get the money from? It has always come back to that in recent years.

I don't expect there to be a great discussion about this, but I propose a new approach to encourage buy-in or participation by the many sectors that really need to be engaged in order to create a more responsive system. It would move our society toward a collaborative model, where the federal and provincial governments would cooperate.

Federal governments would provide certain incentives and supports to provincial governments. They in turn would engage the voluntary and private sectors. They could help create more responsive individualized mechanisms, taking money they're currently investing in infrastructure and other supports over here and putting it into a more direct, individualized support program over there.

There are many dimensions to this issue that need to be sorted through at the same time, but we need to create incentives for people to participate as collaborators in a common undertaking and work together toward the solutions you're pointing to. Right now I don't know if the incentives are there for people to get on board.

[Translation]

Mr. Patrick Fougeyrollas: Along the lines of what you were saying, it is important to state once again that at the grass roots level, what is needed is federal/provincial coordination and complementarity. When you say that people do not necessarily contribute to the funding, I do not really agree with you. Whether it is through work or other activities, through a driver's license, license plate or something else, the system is funded through a number of different sources.

• 1235

The problem is that all these programs that were put in place for societal or urgent socio-economic reasons have never been harmonized and give rise to inequities between people who have exactly the same needs.

Just think of the needs of children and the support given to families or persons with congenital problems. As soon as you start talking about compensation related to a cause—an insurable cause—inequities appear.

So, the idea would be to provide for cross-sectoral consultation with a view to identifying a series of funding sources that can be linked to work or a series of activities that can cause illnesses or impairments, so that available monies could be shared equally, via a fund intended to meet overall needs.

In order to do that, though, it is important to distinguish between two things, and here the situation differs from province to province in Canada: the magnitude of the income security component as opposed to the additional costs compensation component.

I will leave aside the income security component, but compensation for additional costs relates to every cost an individual must defray as a result of his impairments and disabilities, costs that other people do not have. These things should be universal. There is no reason for there to be any inequity in this area. This is something that cannot be an individual responsibility; this is a collective, societal responsibility.

Once we have agreed to that principle, there can be multiple funding sources, although an equitable calculation of compensation will be based on a variety of factors defined without taking into account age or cause.

There have been various experiences in Canada, depending on the province—and here I am thinking of no fault insurance where civil suits are not allowed—and in New Zealand, Netherlands and Scandinavian countries, where they have implemented systems that are not necessarily perfect but which, beyond the issue of the cause of the accident or illness, provide for a variety of kinds of equal compensation. So, there are many international examples of this.

I want to come back to a point, if I may. Based on our joint mandate, we must convince decision-makers that it is not just a matter of improving the living conditions of a small social minority, but that changes are occurring in our social organizations as a whole and that eliminating obstacles will truly improve the quality of life of all Canadians.

So, we are not talking about a health issue here; this is a cross-sectoral problem that requires a commitment on the part of many departments at all levels. We need to clarify responsibilities in order to progress towards improved quality of life. There are also many positive economic spinoffs that go along with fostering the participation of people with disabilities. We have to stop seeing this as something that costs us money or leads to an escalation of costs, and instead see it as an investment in the quality of life of Canadians as a whole and as a way of saving on costs we will certainly have to bear, if we do nothing, in terms of institutionalization, social exclusion and poverty. That is the approach we have to take.

[English]

The Chair: Great. I think, Deborah, you had a couple of quick questions.

Miss Deborah Grey: I'm done, thanks.

The Chair: Okay. Thank you.

Gail, do you have a comment for Madeleine?

Ms. Gail Fawcett: Yes, I have one comment on something I think hasn't been addressed. You hit on something very important when you spoke about your own community and the involvement of the community.

• 1240

We've spoken about partnerships involving governments and organizations, and we've spoken about problems and potential solutions. But when I am in contact with focus groups and disability organizations, the one thing I continually hear is if you could change public attitudes, the political will to make all of those changes would happen.

We can't deny the involvement of the community and the importance of in some way educating our public a little better about the abilities of persons with disabilities, as well as the importance of bringing about all the things we've been discussing here.

The Chair: I have a few questions. The most specific one is if we are about to embark on a different kind of government with more partnerships in the third sector, one of the concerns I hear from the third-sector groups is the difficult way of dealing with core versus project funding. If you're only paid to do service, you don't actually have any core staff to deal with strategic planning, make deals and partnerships, and raise funds.

Do you as a group have an opinion on whether that will have to change?

Mr. Don Lenihan: I would like to write a book on this. That's a really hard question. It goes to the heart of where.... The third sector is changing and probably needs to be subdivided itself, as it includes voluntary organizations on the one hand and things like NAV CANADA on the other, which are not-for-profit corporations that serve a public interest but of a very different sort. Even there we need all sorts of distinctions.

If we expect third-sector organizations, particularly voluntary organizations, to start paying their own way and generating projects and activities in the community in a public interest way, there is the tendency for them to be essentially assimilated into the business community. One of the hardest things here will be to strike a balance, if I can use that awful metaphor, between entrepreneurial values or rights that become profit-oriented in some way....

Let's be honest. Even if third-sector organizations are not-for-profit, they can actually pull in a lot of money if they handle their affairs right, however they want to use that in their organization. But as they get into partnerships and arrangements with governments, the private sector and other organizations, this whole question of how they actually generate and manage their revenues and what kinds of values underlie the practices they rely upon or develop is a really tough one. I actually think that's part of the capacity-building thing.

If we push it too far too fast, we risk turning a lot of third-sector organizations into either shells that are really service delivery arms for government or essentially private-sector actors masquerading as third-sector actors. If we think there is a really important role for the third sector—and I think the values on which it rests as an alternative to the government for promoting public interests are crucial—we have to find ways to allow them to transform themselves and get their own sense of what they're doing right, so they know what their objectives and priorities are, what they actually stand for, and how they can partner with the government in a way that doesn't undermine their own integrity. There are many risks there.

The Chair: I guess the question is also in terms of accountability outcomes and the power differential that happens with a funding organization. Do you get to criticize the people who are giving you the funds and how—

Mr. Don Lenihan: I'm tempted here to just start talking about my own organization, which is undergoing such a change in itself. The bottom line is it's very hard. I don't want to be telling tales out of school here, but my organization has moved from getting grants from the government to go out and do good works to suddenly having to do what you might call fee-for-service. We have to organize research projects that governments want to participate in. There's a fine line here between becoming a consultant, where governments want you to do what they want and come to the conclusions they want to see—that would just make us not only consultants, but probably cheap consultants at that.

• 1245

Part of the task of an organization like mine as we move in that direction is trying to figure out—and this takes a lot of reflection and thinking—what the criteria are by which we'll accept a project. We've begun to develop some that will make sure that we are not. If somebody says we're just a consulting firm, we can say we're not; here's what essentially determines how we operate and what makes us different from them.

There are checks and balances that make sure we don't just become a consulting firm, that we aren't just chasing projects to make money, and that we aren't just allowing governments essentially to push us around and come to the conclusions they want. But I do think how that is to be done will be different in each case. Organizations need to think that through, and they need to figure out for themselves how they manage their own business lines—if I can use that expression—well; how they make sure they do partner effectively without being absorbed into government or, alternatively, bossed around by government or the private sector; where they stand; and what makes them accountable to their own members, to their own board of directors, and to the public and their partners. These are not easy questions.

The Chair: Almost every panellist comes from an organization whose value to government has been recognized often. Does anybody else have any comments?

Ms. Sherri Torjman: I would just say that I think support of the voluntary sector is really a crucial component of citizenship. If we really want to put into practice that notion of citizenship, it does mean supporting a voluntary sector, and not just through fee-for-service. I think there's actually a really dangerous trend developing with respect to having people coming with dollars attached to them and having to pay a fee for service, with no support for the core operation.

The distinction you're making between core and project funding or fee-for-service, individualized funding is incredibly important. If you can recognize the need to support the core organizations, particularly in the field of disability, you are contributing to citizenship in Canada. It's extremely important to do that.

Related to that, I think there has been a trend too that I have heard about and have actually seen happen. Many of the organizations working in the area of citizenship are now being called special interest groups. They've been relegated to the side to the effect that we shouldn't really listen to them because they have special interests. Well, they should be listened to in a democracy, and we should listen to them very carefully.

The Chair: Maybe there are some other comments in terms of strategy for this committee, because what I heard clearly this morning was that the “we” and “they” have been a problem in this issue. I think we're being challenged today to sort out a way by which we can take the four million people who are now the “they” and move them into the “we”, which will be 20% of our society. If we have the challenge to do this piece properly in terms of developing an infrastructure, then we actually pave the way to the future of a society that is aging and has some needs in order to actually enable people to be full citizens.

Is there a strategy? Does anybody have a comment on how we could do that?

Mr. Crawford.

Mr. Cam Crawford: Maybe part of the strategy has to be to clearly delineate what it is that the federal government in particular is interested in achieving by means of this new approach. In the past, I think the federal government—maybe I'm wrong in points of detail here, and you can correct me—has financed the provincial treasuries through the Canada Assistance Plan. Provinces in turn financed the third sector through those cost-shared dollars. The federal government then kept additional dollars available for organizations to come together and to identify the social issues the CAP was to alleviate. The federal government, through the welfare grants program, also enabled groups to get together nationally to talk about broad social issues and to basically provide input and advice to government on how governments might approach these issues.

So there has been a role, but it has tended to be defined around CAP. If we can't do that around CAP any more, what role is there further? There remain broad, overarching social issues that need to be addressed intelligently, with a holistic understanding of what the issues are. I think it's very difficult for a provincial government to conceive of financing a whole lot of support for that. That is a broader kind of role. The financing of people to come together not only to identify issues, but to develop concrete solutions to problems, is a think piece that requires a lot of effort and time in some instances.

• 1250

Financing the voluntary sector to engage effectively with the private sector and with other public-sector partners, such as municipal governments or provincial governments, again, is a time consuming and potentially very costly undertaking for which a provincial government really may see no apparent advantage, but nationally speaking, there may be a benefit that perhaps only the federal level of government would really appreciate. If we're talking about issues of access and so on, perhaps there is something unique to the federal role in the federation that it could play by way of financing.

So maybe part of the challenge here is to identify what it is the voluntary sector is currently doing, or could do in the future, for which there's some rationale for the federal government to be playing a very distinct financing and support role. Then I think there would be new roles and responsibilities that perhaps could be carved out by the voluntary sector.

Ms. Sherri Torjman: The national welfare grants also provided core funding for many organizations. When that division was done away with, it seriously hurt many groups. I would ask Mr. Pettigrew, when he appears before you, questions with respect to the financing of the voluntary sector. Of course, in particular, we're concerned here with spot financing for organizations representing people with disabilities and how the department supports those groups now that national welfare grants have pulled out of the game.

Mr. Don Lenihan: First of all, about this issue of core versus program funding, I do think that's really important, and if there isn't core funding for a lot of these organizations to actually function and have time to think and reflect about what they want to do, how can we expect them to do anything interesting and innovative?

Having said that, the second level of this sort of argument is that partnerships, collaborative and otherwise, are innovative activities that generate new activities and useful ones, and so on. Then it seems to me that what we really want to do—and I'm not sure how one does this—is create a situation, an environment, in which there are incentives for organizations to begin thinking about how they can be innovative, useful, interesting, and deliver projects and proposals. I don't want to say this is sort of a carte blanche. I think what we want to be careful about in doing that is that we don't recreate the same environment we had before, which is simply that government claims that what it's doing is creating a fund for access, for partnerships, and other things, and it turns out to be essentially just a way of making proposals to government to secure funds.

One way around that is to make part of the criteria somehow essentially partnership-oriented and maybe even the idea that organizations should be able to lever some of the funds that government gives them through partnerships. I'm not sure what, but that's how you begin to build the capacity and the strategic planning inside an organization so that it starts to think of itself as having a core, having a core mandate and objectives and businesses it delivers, but then being able to think innovatively about how it can contribute towards the problems it cares about in the community, and that's what we really need.

The Chair: One of the concerns we have is that this community has been consulted to death and they actually want something substantive happening. The concerns haven't really changed; they are ongoing.

Some of us have been rendered somewhat optimistic by the In Unison document that came as part of the social union and the actual press release around the social union that said there would continue to be objectives set and sectoral agreements on this stuff. So I wonder whether you are also optimistic about what is set out in the social union, in terms of setting some objectives and getting on with it, whether or not the status of persons with disabilities...and this project would fit a good first step in terms of the social union, putting the meat on the bone of the social union, and actually being a project that, because of the In Unison document, is almost well on its way, and that we as a committee could actually help with some of the outcomes and some of the stuff that we would want to see for this next step. How do you feel?

Maybe we should hear from Quebec first.

• 1255

[Translation]

Mr. Patrick Fougeyrollas: I just want to emphasize that one strategy would be to try to speak a common language. One of the major difficulties that leads to compartmentalization of client groups is that we do not have the same definition of the process that produces the handicap. For that reason, we do not realize that the characteristics of these individuals, while specific, lead to similar disabilities and force them to face similar work- ,education- ,or income-related obstacles.

That is one of the major arguments that tends to be used with respect to funding. When persons with disabilities exercise their rights as part of a movement, they make that connection and become aware of that specific reality. However, that awareness- raising must be communicated to government as a whole and indeed to society as a whole, so that we can achieve some harmonization as regards the different expressions of the problem. We have to realize that people are facing similar obstacles.

From that standpoint, the In Unison document is extremely valuable, but it actually only repeats what had already been argued in previous papers. There has to be a real political will to realize these goals at the national and provincial levels. If we truly want to improve things, we have to enforce the rules with respect to equal opportunity, for example.

We have a set of standards that we do not really enforce. We are seeking the political will to achieve meaningful integration. Why is there no real standardization of the different methods used to meet people's needs? Why do we not force the various government players to be accountable? Why do we not have a department responsible for coordinating all these issues? One organization must take responsibility for coordinating this work.

So, my answer really comes down to a question for all the political parties, because this is a societal issue: is there a real will to attain these goals? They have been around for some time. Are we really prepared now to implement them? That is what we are asking.

[English]

The Chair: Last week I was in Geneva trying to help write this book on the UN AIDS IPU, dealing with AIDS from a human rights perspective, and it was very interesting looking at various countries' models for how they get that done.

Of course, here we had a big dust-up with the AIDS community, and then we got a ministerial advisory committee that seemed to sort that out in terms of whatever it is, but clearly there's not only one minister who is in charge of human rights and health and AIDS. So the fact that we have it all in health has its own diminution of power when you say it's only a health issue and not a human rights issue. I guess having just the Minister of Human Resources Development with a ministerial advisory committee isn't sufficient.

I don't want to prejudge in terms of what the committee will look at, but in a horizontal issue where we want all of the ministers looking at this through a disability lens, how do we operationalize this such that it's not just consulting but it's actually making sure things get done? I guess that's what I'm hoping to see from the social union.

Maybe you can comment, Cam.

Mr. Cam Crawford: I have three observations.

I share with you some hope and optimism that In Unison might serve as a bit of a basis for moving forward on this front—and I will respond to your question in just a minute.

• 1300

I have a little concern about the lack of sync between different messages. In Unison is full of good messages, and those are messages that people with disabilities have been saying for a long time, but there are other messages that are really quite contrary to In Unison and are troubling. I can tell you that an increasingly cynical disability community sees these lacks of sync very quickly and seizes on them.

For example, while we're talking about engagement and participation and inclusion and that sort of stuff in In Unison, you'll see constant reference in HRDC documents to active measures and basically reducing CPP caseloads. People are not stupid. They know this means getting people off social programs. They think that is the real social agenda and that In Unison is being used—and there's lots of evidence now to suggest that In Unison actually is being used—as a way of justifying intentions that are contrary to the spirit of In Unison. I think people are very alert to that, and it needs to be dealt with head on somehow.

Another issue here that's part and parcel of the same problem is we have the labour market development agreements, which in the preambles at most have vague reference to disability, but basically there's nothing in the labour market development agreements at all specific to disability. For all intents and purposes, on the basis of my analysis of the programming that's shaping up in the provinces, they're really not even on the agenda in terms of labour market services at the provincial level.

This leaves then the employability assistance framework as the instrument for securing labour market attachment of people with disabilities, and I think there's a real danger that this underfunded little tool is going to be the only mechanism used. I think strategically it would be good if somehow HRDC could find a way to link EAPD into the LMDA process so that EAPD provided supports that people need in order to be involved in regular labour market programming and not just shunted off into this parallel little program. It just doesn't have the capacity to meet the demand.

The Chair: What I need some help with is in determining outcomes. Some of the outcomes in the labour market agreement actually work against persons with disabilities getting jobs because you set these targets. So how do we make sure that in this next process, where Canadians, it says in the framework agreement, are going to be consulted on social priority, the outcomes that are set are good ones for persons with disabilities?

Mr. Cam Crawford: You should engage them in the discussion. In In Unison, as great a document as that is, they really weren't involved in a substantive way in the discussion that led up to it. They weren't involved in any meaningful sense in the discussion that led up to the LMDA. They were sort of involved in the creation of EAPD, but subsequently have not been involved in any of the consultations. So if it's a matter of determining appropriate indicators and outcomes, I think they should be at the table and listened to. That would be one really—

The Chair: And also, in terms of this mobility piece that's sitting there in the social union but doesn't seem to deal with persons with disabilities specifically.

Mr. Cam Crawford: Another very practical thing, and I know I'm taking up too much time here, but we did some work when they had the Employment Equity Commission in Ontario, and basically the problem was how to operationalize what was then the Employment Equity Act for Ontario in such a way that people who had severe disabilities or who were severely disadvantaged in employment because of disability would actually benefit from the act.

It was a very fractious process. We developed 45 recommendations that the public and private sector people all agreed with. The trainers liked it and the educators liked it. But the overarching piece, and I think it's valid, was to create a cabinet committee comprising representatives from all of the major departments, health, social services, advanced education and training; all the big departments would be there. This group would have, like the committee on race relations, the power to cut through bureaucratic red tape and to just get really executive. It would have a small executive staff that would liaise with the private sector and also disability organizations. There would be a constant disability lens through which all legislation would be viewed, and there would be an earmarking of issues that had to be addressed in a timely, systematic, ongoing process of addressing those issues as they surfaced.

Because it would be a fairly high-level group, mandated with authority to identify issues and to bring speedy resolution to them, there was some hope that it would actually work. Apparently the committee for race relations was reasonably effective in being able to do this because it had that kind of mandate. Maybe that's a model.

Ms. Sherri Torjman: I too am somewhat optimistic about the social union framework agreement because I think it can be used as a prototype, or as a framework, for bringing the federal and provincial governments together around a whole set of issues that have been neglected in the past. I have a few concerns and I would like to express them.

• 1305

The first has to do with the emphasis right now on an accountability framework. I don't want to in any way minimize the importance of that, but I think it's only one small piece of what has to be done, and it seems like it's the only thing that's being discussed right now at the federal-provincial level with respect to disability. There has to be some action taken to be accountable for what you're doing. If you're going to be accountable, then you have to be doing something. All the action right now is just about measuring what is going on right now, but there's no movement in terms of addressing the needs that are still outstanding and that have been identified for years.

I'm worried about entrenching the status quo by an inordinate focus on accountability. As I said, I don't want to minimize its importance. It's essential, but it's a baseline.

The Chair: Measuring for the sake of measuring as opposed to having outcomes or being able to have some goals and objectives that you're striving towards is what you mean.

Ms. Sherri Torjman: For example, we talked today about meeting the needs of children with disabilities. In the current accountability framework that's being discussed, I'm not sure how we would move the agenda along that road. We would look at what we're doing now. We would see that we have x number of tax measures—and I do, by the way, have some questions for Mr. Dhaliwal. We would see that we have a national child benefit that's doing something else. And we would see that we have several programs for children at the federal level, including a community action program for children and aboriginal head start home care and a number of things. We would record that and find out who's being served, etc.

As I said, that, in my view, is only a baseline. We have to figure out now what we do. We know there's a whole area of unmet needs, and the social union framework agreement I think provides a way of actually bringing people to the table, and In Unison as well.

But in terms of moving the agenda along, my concern is that the agenda is being stuck in something called accountability, which is going to measure what is happening now but is not moving down the road. So it's important that you establish this baseline and that you continue to measure and continue to be accountable. At the same time, we need a set of actions underway, and I think that's where people have really been expressing some frustration, because they have not felt that there is the associated action moving along.

The Chair: In terms of the commitment to consult with Canadians as to their social priorities, obviously I know a little bit more about the health care report card stuff and waiting lists and the way that at the moment even cardiac waiting lists are designed by surgeons, not by patients. So I would love to know how we set the outcomes in a way that is consumer-oriented as opposed to cost containment or the various reasons for which government has measured in the past. How do we change the paradigm that how we're doing on these things is how much it's for the public good or how well the public's being served as opposed to how many people got turned down?

CPP disability would be one that obviously I have some concern about. Having signed many applications myself, to have those people then turned down was a kick in the teeth to my professional opinion. But to hear that 67% are turned down and that the way we evaluate this, I understand, is by how many people appeal, I have to think that this ignores the reality, in our multicultural society, of an individual's ability to actually get a lawyer and appeal when an authority says no, and therefore it doesn't necessarily mean the government was right.

I want to know how we build ongoing outcomes, and then, in terms of the way we measure them, how do we get Canadians involved in setting those?

Mr. Cam Crawford: In terms of the pragmatics, I've suggested having people at the table, but also looking I think to the well-documented series of outcomes that people with disabilities are looking to have achieved in society. People want to be included in their communities. There are ways of measuring that. They want to have some say over their life chances. There are ways of measuring that. They want to be involved in a collaborative design of social programs. There are ways of measuring that.

• 1310

We can go through the list. There are a number of outcomes people do want. Maybe the outcome picture needs to be broadened so that it's not just the number of people who roll off welfare and the number of people who get jobs that are the key indicators. Are people getting into post-secondary education and training? Are they emerging from high school now with higher achievements than they were three years ago? Do they have better access to support and services they need in order to get through the educational process? There are many things around labour market issues that aren't just about getting jobs that could conceivably be thrown into the measurement mix.

I think opening up the train a little bit and looking at a broad range of social indicators that speak to the kind of society people want to be living in might give some clues as to the kinds of indicators we should be looking to develop.

The Chair: Do you think that as a committee, and with the help of the community, we could actually help develop that set of outcomes or what we want measured? Don, could you help us on this?

Mr. Don Lenihan: First of all, let me say that I too am relatively optimistic about the social union framework that's out there. It seems to me that it offers a really significant opportunity to move the whole thing down a step, or maybe even several steps. That's what has to happen next. People have to pick up the ball and run with it, and it's not just intergovernmental people. Hopefully, it's not intergovernmental people. Hopefully, it's much more practical, whereby in a number of sectoral areas people will say, how can we actually apply this a step down or two steps down? That's the question you're raising about this committee.

There are a couple of things that strike me. You will remember I talked about the three different levels at which governments get involved in relationships: within itself; with other governments; and, let's say, with the citizen through community or private sector organizations. You probably need to separate those things, and there are probably things you need to be doing on all three of those levels separately and together.

Just to return to community-based organizations and the private sector, the outcome isn't just a policy outcome with regard to disability. Surely, that's the end result you want, but there's at least one intermediate step here too, and that's building the motivation and capacity in those organizations to do their part of the job. That's going to be to develop interesting and innovative things to do. It's not enough to say we want this outcome; they actually have to engage. Collaboration means engaging one another in creative and innovative ways.

So part of the task, I think, does have to be a kind of reflection on what we can actually do to create a collaborative environment with those organizations we intend to pick up the ball and run with as partners, and that may require some reflecting on outcomes. I'm not sure what's involved there, but I think that's a serious issue. If you try just to get people doing stuff right away before that, I don't know what kind of result you'll get.

I think one of the really promising things about a results-based approach is that it allows for coordination in less coercive ways. In the past, collaboration between governments usually meant the federal government trying to force its will on the provincial governments or to buy the provincial governments off, and of course there will always be some of that. That will always go on. But one of the things that's really interesting about looking at it from a results point of view is that if it turns out that two different governments agree upon the outcomes they want.... Suppose they look at the area of disability, and I'm no expert here, and say in this particular policy area this is what we want to achieve. First of all, they arrived at that independently of one another, so they already agree they want the same outcome. That probably means they're both contributing to it or they wouldn't come to the same conclusion. The first step is getting people to agree upon outcomes and the right levels.

The second step about indicators is not a small or unimportant one. It's enormously important, because if governments have the same outcome but different indicators, from a practical point of view you may end up having policies and programs that conflict in all kinds of strange ways. But suppose you have not only the same outcomes but also the same indicators. What that does is impose discipline on the policies and programs you choose. That's what drives you toward the end and helps you refine and learn about your programs and policies and make them better. If two governments have the same indicators and the same outcomes and have chosen out of their own free will—I hate to sound as if Adam Smith's invisible hand is here—they will naturally begin to coordinate and align with one another.

So it seems to me that at the intergovernmental level, rather than trying to coerce one another or arm-twist one another as to what outcomes you should have and what outcomes you should have, you should begin reflecting on which ones the community or governments already agree on and, while we're still early in this game, how we can begin to think about the kinds of well-disciplined, focused indicators that will drive policies and programs along the same line and begin to achieve a greater degree of integration and balance between them. You can do that in lots of practical ways. It may be as simple as getting people together from different governments and letting them talk it out so that they begin to share each other's ideas—the so-called best practices. What is the best way to get to this outcome? What sort of indicator should we choose? It can lead to much more formal arrangements, including joint committees and various other things, but I think that's a crucial part of the process. Getting at the indicators too early, though, is to get the cart before the horse.

• 1315

The Chair: In terms of outcome, surely if both levels of government are consulting properly with the groups, they're more likely to come to the same conclusion.

Mr. Don Lenihan: And it will have legitimacy too.

The Chair: I think one of the concerns that governments quite often have is that if there's no consensus in the groups, the governments end up having a whole bunch of different things. They say these people all want something different, and it therefore becomes a reason to do nothing.

Mr. Don Lenihan: I guess that's always the risk, but there's a question I would pose here. I claim no expertise in the area of disability, but from what I heard a few minutes ago, I hope it's true that there actually is a lot of consensus on this.

Ms. Sherri Torjman: In Unison is the consensus. That's what's so historic about the document. The federal and provincial governments have come together and have agreed on a set of objectives. That's what's so important about that document, so I think it provides a good basis for moving on.

Further to that, and given the fact that Mr. Pettigrew will actually be coming in on Thursday, I thought you might want to bear in mind the fact that the federal-provincial working group on disability issues is developing a set of indicators right now in terms of how to operationalize those objectives. What would be the outcomes that they would be looking at? They're developing an accountability framework, so one of the things you might want to ask him is how broad those outcomes are and whether they move beyond the social service indicators that Cam was expressing and that we're concerned about in terms of a very narrow focus.

So there is work underway with respect to the outcomes and the indicators right now.

[Translation]

Mr. Patrick Fougeyrollas: Along the same lines, and as far as the practicalities are concerned, I would say that everything that has already been mentioned with respect to the meaningful participation of organizations in the development of indicators is absolutely fundamental. From a purely practical point of view, over the last 15 years, a major information tool has been the Statistics Canada Health and Limitations Survey. I think it is time to do a new one.

There is also a need to adapt the questionnaire and framework of the new survey so that they fit the definition of indicators that.... I think everyone agrees that the indicators have to do with the quality of people's social participation, although the way of obtaining the information has evolved over the last 15 years. The government should also consider using the Statistics Canada survey to periodically collect information on indicators that would allow us to measure progress based on In Unison.

That would be something very concrete. We would expect an investment in that area and the survey content to reflect the expectations of both organizations and government information systems.

[English]

The Chair: Well, we have sent a letter to all of the ministers requesting that the HALS survey be committed to. Certainly what we heard from the people at Statistics Canada was that it does take them two years to get it right in terms of consulting, hopefully broadly, with the community to make sure the questions that are asked are relevant ones. If you're going to do this properly, it requires that kind of preparation. We're hoping the minister will be able to commit to it this spring so that come 2001 we have a survey that everybody is very happy with.

[Translation]

Mr. Patrick Fougeyrollas: It is an excellent tool that would allow us to measure outcomes and get an idea of the progress occurring in Canada over a period of years.

• 1320

[English]

Ms. Gail Fawcett: As number crunchers who typically get asked to operationalize these things and actually extract it from the data, one of the difficulties we will have is an absence of data from the 1990s. The commitment to do 2001 HALS will certainly go an awfully long way, but there are other things we could do in terms of providing data on other data sets, such as the national population health survey, or the survey of labour and income dynamics, which could improve that data so we can get interim measures.

We can improve the question using Statistics Canada's new proposal for the census question. There are a number of other questions that wouldn't take up a lot of room, and if you put those on, it would certainly also help to generate the kind of data you need to actually operationalize the indicators. I know people often tell me we want to measure this. The task is, how do I get that? How do I get comparable data over time? In terms of disability, we're in trouble in Canada for having that.

The Chair: Don is next, and then maybe Madame has a final question.

Seeing that we're overtime, do you have a—

[Translation]

Mrs. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral: It is already quite late, isn't it?

The Chair: Yes.

[English]

Mr. Don Lenihan: I'll be very brief.

As much as I hate these ugly words, I'm going to use them. Maybe the exercise you need to engage in is something you might call a business planning exercise. What that would be is where you stop and sit back and ask, who are the main partners? That will be other departments, governments, and community and private sector partners that we're likely to find ourselves engaging.

There's a process whereby you move from a strategic planning level for those different things down to an operational level. Once you have those ideas, those objectives that you're setting for yourselves, it may be something like encouraging capacity building in the third sector, or whatever it is, and then moving down to that level and asking, in a very practical way, how you can actually move this ahead so that you have a kind of plan for the committee and where it plans to go.

The Chair: Thank you all so much. It was extremely helpful, and we will call you back if we need you as we distill down our work. Thank you again. It was tremendous.

Ms. Sherri Torjman: Thank you for the opportunity to present today.

The Chair: Thank you.

The meeting is adjourned.