Barrier Free Manitoba

Barrier-Free Manitoba sent a seven-page (Word / PDF) to Minister Fielding today asking him to consider including stronger measures in his forthcoming final proposal for the accessible employment standard.

The letter was prepared and sent in response to the recent release of the Accessibility Advisory Council's (Council) report (Word / PDF) to the Minister that included the Council's recommendations for this crucially important standard. We were very pleased with many aspects of this report which is a vast improvement on the 13-page discussion paper (Word / PDF) that the Council released last December for public comment. 

However, we are deeply concerned that the Council’s report did not address or even provide comment on some of the recommendations we made in our detailed brief submitted in February 2017 (Word / PDF), and did not fully endorse others.

BFM understands the pivotal roles that the Council plays in providing the Minister with advice related to the development of the AMA’s standards. At the same time, we know that the Minister is committed to having his final proposal reflect the best thinking available on key elements that are needed for the standard to make a real and lasting difference. We also expect that the Minister is also very aware that strong and effective standards will make the most meaningful contributions to our province’s economy and prosperity, as well as to the realization of the human right to equitable employment.

Our letter to the Minister requests that he consider and act upon eight outstanding recommendations from the original 19 that we made in our Febuary 2017 brief. Following are the eight recommendations highlighted in the letter:

BFM Recommendation 7: That, consistent with the Customer Service Standard, all employers with 20 or more employees be required to document their training policy, including a summary of the content of the training and when training is to be provided.

BFM Recommendation 11: That the standard be expanded to include requirements that employers provide information about employment opportunities to agencies and organizations that provide employment services to Manitobans with disabilities.

BFM Recommendation 13: That consideration be given to adjusting or expanding the standard to address the accessibility of volunteer and internship positions.

BFM Recommendation 14: That the standard be expanded to require employer participation in a measurement and monitoring system that provides the basis for assessing the standard’s impact and the province’s progress toward achieving a fully accessible labour market.

BFM Recommendation 15: That, following Ontario’s recent decision, the Government of Manitoba commit to the development of an accessible education standard under The Accessibility for Manitobans Act that covers settings from child care to post-secondary and adult education and that this standard be developed and implemented within the government’s current term in office.

BFM Recommendation 16: That the Government of Manitoba develop and adequately resource a robust implementation strategy that will provide increased support to employers and Manitobans with disabilities, facilitate greater awareness of the value of employing, retaining and promoting persons with disabilities and address other barriers to employment that will not be adequately addressed through employers’ development and implementation of accessible human resource policies and practices.

BFM Recommendation 17: That the Government of Manitoba review and commit to providing the level of resources needed to ensure the full and timely implementation of The Accessibility for Manitobans Act.

BFM Recommendation 18: That the Government of Manitoba provide financial and other resources to Manitoba’s disability communities to ensure their capacity to conduct independent research and to support their fair and equal participation in the implementation of The Accessibility for Manitobans Act.

Following is the full text of the letter:

The Letter

Honourable Scott Fielding
Minister of Families
Room 357 Legislative Building
450 Broadway
Winnipeg, MB R3C 0V8

July 24, 2017

Dear Honourable Minister:

I am writing on behalf of Barrier-Free Manitoba to acknowledge your outstanding leadership in the implementation of the landmark Accessibility for Manitobans Act (AMA), as well as to encourage you to move beyond the Accessibility Advisory Council’s (the Council) recommendations in your final proposal for the accessible employment standard.

We have been delighted with the strong progress made this year towards the full and timely implementation of the AMA. As you are well aware, the systemic changes needed to recognize and respect the long standing human rights of Manitobans with disabilities require principled commitment and firm resolve. Both of these are clearly evident in the accomplishments over the last six months, and even more so in your 2017-18 implementation plan.

We expect that the demands related to the implementation of the AMA will increase appreciably over the coming years. Your continued leadership and the support of the Premier, your cabinet colleagues and your senior departmental officials will be critical in realizing the historic goals of equal opportunity and full citizenship for all.

One of the next major steps you will be taking is preparing and then releasing your final proposal for the AMA’s accessible employment standard. The development of a strong standard will not be easy given the marked disparities in both employment rates and levels of employment income that have persisted for decades among those with and without disabilities. In this regard, it is notable that other jurisdictions have had mixed results to date in addressing these issues.

We have now had the chance to review the Council’s report and the recommendations the Council tabled for your consideration. We are very pleased with many aspects of the report which is a vast improvement on the 13-page discussion paper that the Council released last December for public comment.

Upon the release of the discussion paper, Barrier-Free Manitoba consulted among disability community stakeholders with an expertise in employment and then in February 2017 submitted a detailed response (enclosed). We made a total of 19 reasoned, practical and well-articulated recommendations, 14 of which related directly to the employment standard.

We are very pleased that the Council’s report included recommendations that directly follow from seven of our 14 recommendations related to the standard, and partially addressed another two of our recommendations.

While we respect the Council’s decision to not recommend the harmonization of the standard and Worker’s Compensation’s return to work policies, we are deeply concerned that the Council’s report did not address or even provide comment on four of our recommendations.

We understand the pivotal roles that the Council plays in providing you with advice related to the development of the AMA’s standards. At the same time, we know that you are committed to having your final proposal reflect the best thinking available to you on key elements that are needed for the standard to make a real and lasting difference. We, like you, are also very aware that strong and effective standards will make the most meaningful contributions to our province’s economy and prosperity.

As such, we want to encourage you to consider a range of our recommendations that we believe merit further attention. Your predecessor, as the Minister responsible for the AMA, did exactly that in developing her final proposal for the Accessible Customer Service Standard. Her inclusion of strong, new measures on accessible public meetings in her final proposal for that standard, we believe, has provided lasting benefits.

Our Recommendations Directly Related to the Standard

We would like to highlight four of our recommendations related to the standard for your further consideration.

The first of these (our Recommendation No. 13) relates to the standard being expanded to address the accessibility of volunteer and internship positions. As we stated in our February 2017 response to the discussion paper, the journey toward paid employment for many persons with disabilities, particularly those with intellectual disabilities, often starts with volunteer, internship positions and student placements. Additionally, many educational and training programs include mandatory cooperative placements and volunteer requirements. The importance of these positions and opportunities was a key theme raised at the public consultation event. It is also important to recognize that human rights obligations regarding reasonable accommodations apply to both employment and volunteer positions.

To its credit, the Council recognized the importance of accessible volunteer positions but its report only suggests that employers be encouraged, as a matter of good business practice, to apply the standard to unpaid staff and volunteers. While we understand that the standard may need to feature lesser accessibility requirements for unpaid staff and volunteer positions, simple encouragement is clearly not an adequate response to the challenge.

The second (our Recommendation No. 14) relates to our call for the standard to include a measurement and monitoring system that provides the basis for assessing the standard’s impact and the province’s progress towards achieving a fully accessible labour market.

The Council did not provide comment on this recommendation even though the research suggests that the success of disability employment programs is directly related to the degree of accountability placed on agency officials and managers. In recognition of this, the provincial government has developed and managed such a system for its own hiring. There is also a clear precedent for such a system covering the public, private and non-profit sectors in the federal Employment Equity Act.

Finally, it just makes common sense. That’s why management guru Peter Drucker’s adage “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it” rings so true. Only a measurement and monitoring system like this will provide the evidence required to evaluate the standard’s impact and efficacy.

We understand that a new measurement and monitoring system may initially be most appropriately applied to larger employers, at least until it is well developed and perhaps streamlined. Based on data from Statistics Canada, Manitoba has more than 850 employers with 100+ employees, more than 380 with 200+ employees and more than 110 with 500+ employees. Most of these organizations have or should have well-developed human resource capacities. As such, we ask you to consider phasing in such a measurement and monitoring system beginning with the larger employers.

The other two recommendations we want to highlight are more limited in scope. Our Recommendation No. 7 called for employers with 20 or more employees to be required to document their training policy, including a summary of training and when this training will be provided. This same type of requirement is included as part of the Accessible Customer Service Standard. As this documentation provides a singular record of measures taken by obligated organizations, it is not clear why it would not also be included in the accessible employment standard.

Our Recommendation No. 11 called for the standard to require that employers provide information about employment opportunities to agencies and organizations that provide employment services to Manitobans with disabilities. Once again, the Council chose to only recommend that this practice be encouraged.

We believe that this practice needs to be required in the first version of the accessible employment standard – at the very least for employers with 20 or more employees. This will be critical to establishing relationships between employers and employment agencies that specialize in providing assistance to job seekers with disabilities. Once again, the research suggests that these relationships are currently lacking or are often tenuous. Where these relationships already exist, the requirement will serve to strengthen them. Downgrading this requirement to “encourage” employers can be considered when the next version of the standard is developed in five years’ time but only after these relationships have developed and matured.

Supported by both evidence and analysis, we strongly urge you to review each of these four recommendations and to include new and/or strengthened measures to address them in your forthcoming final proposal for the accessible employment standard.

Our General Recommendations

We would also like to use this letter to encourage you to consider four of the more general recommendations made in our February response to the discussion paper that were largely not addressed in the Council’s report.

Our Recommendation No. 15 called for your government to commit to the development and enforcement of a strong accessible education standard under the AMA – one that would cross education systems from child care through to post-secondary. As our response and the June 30 letter to you signed in two short weeks by over 1,100 individuals and 59 groups representing over 100,000 Manitobans made clear, this sixth standard will be essential in order to address the significant gaps in educational standing and training between Manitobans with and without disabilities that contribute to labour force disadvantage.

We appreciated the promptness and positive tone of the letter you sent in response in which you suggest that this can be considered as part of the comprehensive review of the AMA that is scheduled to begin before the end of this year. However, we urge to you to consider taking action sooner by making the commitment now or, at the very least, directing your officials to work with us this fall to gather information on barriers to equitable education directly from those who face them.

Our Recommendation No. 16 called for your government to develop and adequately resource a robust implementation strategy for the accessible employment standard. While not including any related recommendation, the Council’s report highlighted the need for such a strategy, including a significant need for more tools and resources.

We are now even more convinced that a robust implementation strategy will be essential to the success of the accessible employment standard. Part of this strategy must include your government’s review of its own policies that create employment disincentives for Manitobans with disabilities. Such policies include features of the Employment and Income Assistance Program that contribute to what is often called the ‘welfare wall’.

The last two of our general recommendations speak to adequate resourcing. Our Recommendation No. 17 focuses on the resources available to the AMA’s Director, the Disability Issues Office and the Accessibility Advisory Council to support their work and the overall implementation of the AMA. We appreciate and have publicly acknowledged the increase in the DIO’s budget for 2017-18.

This is an important start. However, as stated earlier in this letter, we expect that the demands related to the implementation of the AMA will increase appreciably over the coming years. It is clear to us that the level of resources available to those taking leadership roles in implementing the Act will need to increase accordingly.

Finally, our Recommendation No. 18 addressed the need for your government to provide financial and other resources to Manitoba’s disability communities to ensure their capacity to conduct independent research and to support their fair and equal participation in the implementation of the Act.

Many other stakeholder groups have relatively greater access to technical and policy-related expertise important to developing responses to proposed standards. They also have significant lobbying capacities to ensure that their views are heard and given due consideration by government.

That our disability communities were able to scrape together the resources required to support BFM’s detailed response to the discussion paper demonstrates their resolve in promoting and protecting the human rights of persons with disabilities.

The process that will lead to the accessible employment standard is only a beginning. Similar processes, expected to begin shortly, will lead to the development of three or four additional sets of standards. Given both the complexity and volume of the work ahead, our disability communities do not have the resources required to sustain the extent and high quality of our participation to date.

The AMA, the Accessible Customer Service Standard and now the accessible employment standard will be much more effective because of meaningful and thoughtful contributions from Manitoba’s disability communities.

Achieving a fully accessible Manitoba is in everybody’s interest. So too is government support to ensure the communities’ fair and equal participation in all major AMA implementation activities.

Closing Thoughts

Thank you once again for your leadership in, and commitment to, the full and timely implementation of the landmark Accessibility for Manitobans Act. We respectfully request that you give careful consideration to the matters raised in this letter and to addressing our recommendations in your final proposal for the accessible employment standard.

We look forward to working with you and your departmental officials to realize the transformative goals of the Act.

Regards,

Patrick Falconer
Consultant to the Barrier-Free Manitoba Steering Committee