Canada is still failing people with disabilities

Over the past few weeks, Statistics Canada has done releasing new material covering disability, access and employment in Canada. A report on accessibility in Canada (based on the 2022 Canadian Survey on Disability, CSD) and a related study on the labor market characteristics of people with disabilities carefully critical information about the challenges facing the disability community.

While the federal government has done to make Canada “barrier-free” by 2040, increasing access, especially in employment, and reducing poverty among those with disabilities, these studies show there is still much to do. People with disabilities continue to experience worse employment outcomes and higher levels of poverty than those without disabilities, a situation that is almost entirely the result of poor policy design.

As the first study shows, between 2017 and 2022, the disability rate – the share of Canadians living with one or more disabilities – increased by 5 percentage points, going from 22 to 27 per cent. In 2022, nearly 8 million people in Canada reported having a disability.

Statistics Canada classifies disabilities as mild, moderate, severe and very severe. Among those with one or more disabilities, 39 percent reported their disability as mild, 20 percent reported their disability as moderate, while 20 and 21 percent classified their disability as severe. and very heavy, respectively.

It was among younger Canadians that the prevalence of disability increased the most between the five years that separated the two Canadian Disability Surveys. Among 15- to 24-year-olds, disability increased by 7 percentage points, while following the overall trend of 5 percentage points among those in the base 25- to 44-year-old age group.

In 2022, disability rates increased with age, with one in five young adults aged 15 to 24, one in four adults aged 25 to 64 and two in four adults aged 65 and over reporting a disability. Among all types of disability, mental health-related disabilities grew the most between 2017 and 2022.

Among youth, the most common type of disability was related to mental health, while for older Canadians, disabilities related to pain, flexibility and mobility were the most common. Overall, women were more likely to have pain-related and mental health disabilities than men in all age groups. For working-age adults, disability categories were similar, although mental health-related disabilities ranked higher.

Women in all age groups were more likely to have a disability than men. The CSD reports that in 2022 women had a disability rate of 30 percent, while for men it was 24 percent. As the data show, the disability rate gap is largest between young women and men and tends to narrow with age. For example, young women were more than twice as likely to have an intellectual disability as young men (19 percent vs. 9 percent).

When it comes to employment outcomes, StatCan studies show that disability is an important factor.

Overall, people with disabilities aged 25 to 64 had a significantly lower employment rate than people of a similar age without disabilities, according to the 2022 CSD (62 percent vs. 78 percent). Moreover, the employment rate decreased as the severity of the disability increased. People with very severe disabilities had an employment rate of only 30 percent, while those with mild disabilities had a rate of 75 percent.

Disability has a significantly greater impact on men’s employment prospects than women’s. Also, disability has a greater negative impact on employment for those with lower levels of education. As educational attainment increases, employment prospects for people with disabilities improve.

At the same time, some progress has been made in recent years. While employment rates for those with mild and severe disabilities were stable between 2016 and 2021 (the reference years for the last two Canadian Disability Surveys), employment increased by approximately 5 percentage points among people with disabilities limited moderate and severe. This was certainly a step in the right direction, although the progress did not close the employment gap with non-disabled people. Moreover, such improvements were uneven. For example, among women aged 25 to 34 with the most severe disabilities, employment fell from 59 percent to 43 percent between the two surveys.

Latest Labor Force Survey (LFS) data. SHOW that the employment rate of people with disabilities increased slightly by 1.5 percentage points between 2022 and 2023, likely driven by a tighter post-pandemic labor market. However, at the same time, the unemployment rate in this group continued to be significantly higher than among those without disabilities, 7.6 percent compared to 4.6 percent.

As the CSD and AFP figures also show, part-time work is more prevalent among those with disabilities than among those without disabilities. Sixteen percent of people with disabilities worked less than 30 hours a week in 2021, compared with 13 percent among non-disabled people.

These worse employment outcomes persist despite many people with disabilities reporting a desire to work.

StatCan tracks the “job potential” among people with disabilities under a “best-case scenario” of “an inclusive labor market without discrimination, with full access and accommodation.” As the CSD study reports, more than 741,000 people with disabilities have a potential to work in “an inclusive labor market”. This amounts to approximately two in five (42 percent) disabled people between the ages of 25 and 64.

The current situation is not only discriminatory in denying employment opportunities to persons with disabilities, but is a huge waste of human, economic and productive potential. Despite employers having a legal “duty to accommodate”, large numbers of disabled people are excluded from the labor market.

Of course, the inaccessibility of employment translates into lost potential earnings and lower incomes. In constant 2020 dollars, people with disabilities had median annual after-tax incomes $7,270 lower than those without disabilities. The severity of one’s disability further widens this income gap. In 2021, the median income of people with severe disabilities was more than 30 percent lower than the median income of non-disabled people. Also, women in all disability statuses earned less than men.

Not surprisingly, people with disabilities are more likely to live in poverty than those without disabilities: 10 percent vs. 7 percent. Also, the percentage of people with disabilities living in poverty increases with the severity of the disability.

The federal government promised to address poverty among people with disabilities through a new Canada Disability Benefit, though its size, design and scope are criticized by lawyers and political analysts.

Such frustration can be added to the list when it comes to Canada’s policy approach to those with disabilities. Disability support benefits between provinces remain punishingly low. In fact, Canada is among the worst when it comes to what the OECD classifies as “disability expense”, which includes sickness, disability and work injury benefits. In 2020, Canada spent just 0.8 percent of its GDP on these benefits and services, the fifth lowest ahead of Turkey, Costa Rica, Colombia and Mexico. The top “disability” spenders, Norway and Denmark, each spent 4.5 percent of GDP on disability support in 2019.

Two data sets from Statistics Canada should serve as a further wake-up call. They demonstrate that while we are making strides in some areas, we are still largely failing people with disabilities.

An equitable economy would not squander the talents and potential of people with disabilities by denying them the job opportunities or accommodations they need to thrive.

A just and caring society would not withhold necessary cash benefits and would not impoverish those unable to work for pay.

Over the past several decades, labor and the left have done a better job of including the disability community within our movement and prioritizing its demands. But there is still a long way to go to build an economy and welfare state that is truly accessible, inclusive and just.

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