CAN-ASC-1.1 Standard on employment: Public Review Draft – Annex A (informative) Background and context

Persons with disabilities make up 22.3% of the Canadian population (Canadian Survey on Disability, 2017). Persons with disabilities have been historically marginalized in Canadian society and denied full and equitable opportunities to contribute and participate in their communities. The broader term of “disability” includes many types of disabilities (i.e., mental health, including post-traumatic stress disorder; intellectual, physical, episodic, developmental, sensory disabilities; brain injury).

Historically, Canadian society has been built upon systemic frameworks of oppression, including systemic ableism. Similar to systemic racism, systemic ableism is a result of centuries of prejudice and deeply rooted beliefs about the abilities, competencies, and contributions of persons with disabilities. Systemic ableism is internalized by decision-makers, including employers and hiring managers, as a form of “othering” of persons with disabilities, and a sense that persons with disabilities cannot perform relevant tasks and are “less than” persons who live without disabilities.

Systemic ableism does not exist in society in isolation. It is bound up in other forms of systemic discrimination, as disability is but one part of a person’s lived experience and identity (which also includes race, culture, gender identity, Indigenous identity, sexual orientation, degree of assimilation into Canadian culture, language, and so on). Moreover, approximately 20% or 3.7 million working-age adults (25 to 64 years) have one or more disabilities (Canadian Survey on Disability, 2017). Everyone – including persons with disabilities – lives with multiple intersecting identities, and any standard that identifies, prevents, and removes barriers for persons with disabilities needs to embody intersectionality.

Systemic ableism encompasses both systemic and structural barriers, both within and outside the workplace, and different types of oppression (individual, interpersonal, institutional, metaphorical/ideological). Types of oppressions include Individual, (i.e., making inappropriate statements like disability slurs, unacceptable behaviours, and actions), institutional (i.e., unacceptable policies, systems, and practices that discriminate against people with disabilities) or ideological (i.e., philosophies, theories, and ideas that are against people with disabilities such as deficit or pathological views).

This historical marginalization extends to employment; as of 2017, the employment rate of persons with disabilities is approximately 20% lower than the rest of the working-age population (Canadian Survey on Disability, 2017). Many persons with disabilities who are employed are under-employed – working fewer hours, earning less, and not given the opportunity to advance in their jobs or careers. COVID-19 has magnified these historic inequities; some studies have shown that more than 30% of persons with disabilities who were employed lost their jobs or had their jobs changed in a negative way during the pandemic (CNIB, 2020, 2021; Maroto et al., 2021).

It is important to recognize the medical, economic, social, and cultural models of disability that have preceded where we are today. In the medical model, disability is a characteristic of the person and can be treated, cured, or rehabilitated. The economic model of disability approaches disability through an economic and productivity lens and argues that disability is in fact a challenge to productivity. In the economic model, persons with disabilities are understood to be less productive than others as a result of their lived experience with disabilities – that is, persons with disabilities are anticipated to be off work more for disability- or health-related reasons ("absenteeism"), as well as to be less productive over the same amount of hours in the workplace when present ("presenteeism").

In the social model, disability is a result of barriers that exist that lead to a discriminatory environment. The social model of disability provides a framework that focuses on abilities based on a humanistic view (i.e., focus on what persons of disabilities need accommodation for equal participation or effective functions such as a white cane, captioning, or ramp). In this model, "disability" is the result of the interaction between people living with impairments and an environment filled with physical, attitudinal, communication, and social barriers. The social model of disability carries the implication that the physical, attitudinal, communication, and social environment must change to enable people living with impairments to participate in society on an equal basis with others. The social model of disability is the internationally recognized way to view and address "disability". The cultural model of disability, in contrast, takes into account multiple factors in conceptualizing disability and focuses on how different ideas of disability and non-disability may operate in a given culture.

This Standard seeks to refute the medical and economic models of disability, and reinforces the social and cultural models by emphasizing proactive approaches to identify, remove, and prevent accessibility barriers in the workplace.

This Standard is a departure from the past in that it emphasizes the role of the employer in proactively identifying, preventing, and removing barriers in the workplace environment for persons with disabilities. For the purposes of this Standard, the workplace environment is inclusive of the physical and/or virtual setting, as well as the policies, practices, culture, procedures, resources, technologies, services, and programs in place for any given employer.