Employment policy reforms needed for Canadians with disabilities

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

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

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

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

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