Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to finish my remarks.

As members will recall, the member for Brant's motion asks the government to endorse the recommendations of a panel that recommended changes in the way the government deals with private sector employers and recommended that these private sector employers be encouraged to change the way they hire persons with disabilities.

In his motion, he suggested that we look at government initiatives. That is one of the areas where, in fact, the government has failed persons with disabilities.

Persons with disabilities have depended on the fact that the government ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in March 2010. That ratification required the government to actually do things to make persons with disabilities have easier lives, better lives, and more employable lives. At the end of two years, the government was to have given the UN a report card on just what it had done in providing these additional supports to persons with disabilities.

March 2012 came and went. March 2013 came and went. We are now approaching March 2014, and there has been no report card. That speaks volumes about the government's real commitment to persons with disabilities.

In addition, in the last budget, the Conservative government made it much more difficult for agencies that deal with persons with disabilities by granting them access to employment and by employing them directly. Some of those agencies are now going to fold. They are now going to close, losing the employment of hundreds of persons with disabilities at the same time. These agencies actually directly employ these people, and now they are being forced to close.

The government claims that the money is still there, but these agencies now have to compete with universities, with hospitals, and with agencies that have huge and deep pockets and the ability to prepare the applications for funding in a much more systematic way than the smaller agencies can. As a result, those agencies are losing their funding, and persons with disabilities are actually losing their jobs.

That is something the government needs to pay attention to. The current government has not paid attention to persons with disabilities in the way it should have. That is but one of the examples.

There are also other examples. The government has heard testimony from persons with disabilities who have said that the income support structures and the disability support structures that exist in this country are not conducive to their working. The EI system cannot deal with disabilities that are not continuous. The health benefits system, in all of the provinces, fails persons with disabilities, and the federal government has not stepped up to the plate to fix that system.

While we applaud and encourage this particular panel's report, and we encourage the government to endorse it, there is so much more the government should and can be doing to support persons with disabilities being employed.

Mike Sullivan

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