Thank you for the opportunity to speak to the committee, and to the committee for your work on this important issue.

As you said, I am the executive director of Inclusion International. We are an organization for people with intellectual disabilities and their families.

I am speaking to you from New York today. We are at a conference of states parties at the United Nations. Minister Qualtrough is here with us, talking about issues affecting people with disabilities. In particular, there has been quite a lot of conversation this week about women with disabilities. Therefore, the opportunity to speak to you about the context and the particular issues facing women with disabilities, in terms of economic security, is very well timed and certainly important both internationally and in Canada.

We are working globally and with our member in Canada to talk about the multiple forms of discrimination that impact people with disabilities, particularly women with disabilities. I want to speak to you today about two slightly different aspects of economic insecurity for women. One is for women who themselves have a disability, and in the case of our work, a particular focus on intellectual disability. The other, though, is the impact on women who have children with disabilities and are the primary caregivers of children with disabilities, very often children who grow up to remain at home and live with the family throughout their adult lives.

Starting with the first issue and category—women with disabilities themselves—Statistics Canada estimates that about 15% of women in Canada have some form of disability that limits their daily activities in some way.

What we know across the country, wherever people live, is that women with intellectual disabilities are underemployed and among the most excluded from the labour market. The reason for this very often doesn't have to do with their disability. It has much more to do with the supports they're able to access in order to go to work. Sometimes, depending on the province, it also has something to do with their relationship with the provincial supports they receive provincially for their disability. In some instances, if you go to work and you receive disability support from a province, there's a limit to how much work you're allowed to do before that gets taken back. Very often, because of the nature of the relationship with the labour market, part-time employment, insecure employment, things that produce low income, the reluctance to let go of the eligibility for disability are quite a barrier to remaining in and having a significant long-term attachment to the labour market.

From some of the other presenters, you will probably have heard more about the specific challenges to employment for women with disabilities. So I'll turn briefly to talk about the issues we see related to women who are caring for a child or adult with a disability.

What we very often see is that women's attachment to the labour market, when they have a child with a disability, becomes quite precarious. They are more likely to have to take time off work, not only for caregiving but also for various doctor appointments and their advocacy work, for lack of a better term, to make a place for their children in the community. If you're spending your time arguing with your school system about your child being able to go to school, it's very hard to maintain a strong employment relationship.

What often happens is that women who have children with disabilities end up having to leave the labour market because of the various responsibilities they have. In the long term, particularly for families who have children with intellectual disabilities, wherever they live in the world, not just in Canada, we know that most adults who have intellectual disabilities live at home with their families. That's true in low-income countries as well as higher-income countries, whether or not we have good, strong support systems.

I think there's a real challenge in understanding the role that families play in enabling their family member to participate in the community as adults and, particularly when they're young, with issues around inclusion, whether in child care or education. This can really have an impact on a woman's ability to continue to be in the labour market, and then obviously there's the impact related to income insecurity.

I will just mention quickly some of the areas where the federal government may be able to have a role to play in both the impact on women who have disabilities and the impact on women who are caregivers of children, or mothers of children, with disabilities.

I'll start with the one that is probably the most impactful and that is the area of child care. If we have good, inclusive child care that allows children with disabilities to go to school, the impact of their inclusion later in school and for mom to be able to go to work is enormous. This is inclusive child care, and I think this issue will have come up for children without disabilities, but certainly for mothers having the additional care and responsibilities related to children with disabilities, if they aren't able to access good-quality inclusive child care, that's the beginning of where the relationship to the labour market falls apart. So child care is huge.

I would also say that, in terms of income security, housing is a major issue for women who have disabilities themselves. We do not propose particular housing initiatives for women with disabilities. We think that the larger housing strategy has to take into account the needs of women with disabilities.

We need employment measures to support people with disabilities to have stronger relationships in the labour market.

Finally, I think there is always room within the tax system to explore ways of compensation for costs related to disability.

Without going into long recommendations, I think those are the kind of high points of things that the federal government could be thinking about to better the income security of women with disabilities and women caring for people with disabilities.

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