Krista Carr (Inclusion Canada) Senate Testimony “Employment Equity in the Federal Public Service” with LiveWorkPlay Reference

Selected clips from Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights 9 Feb 2026. LiveWorkPlay referenced 3:05-3:25 (see also italized content in unofficial transcript below)

[Senator Paulette Senior, Chair] Inclusion Canada. We have Ms. Krista Carr, who is the Chief Executive Officer. Over to you, Ms. Carr.

Thank you, Madam Chair and Senators. My name is Krista Carr, CEO of Inclusion Canada, a national federation of people with intellectual disabilities, their families, allies, and organizations. We work to advance the full inclusion and human rights of people with an intellectual disability and their families.

Inclusion Canada has been deeply engaged in the review and modernization of the Employment Equity Act over several years. In 2022, we were contracted by the federal government to conduct national focus groups with people with intellectual disabilities, families, employers, and community organizations. In 2024, we again participated in the government’s formal consultation on modernizing the Act.

Across both processes, the central message we heard is this:
The Employment Equity Act has not worked for people with intellectual disabilities.

Today, people with intellectual disabilities continue to experience the lowest employment rates of any disability group in Canada. Senators, only about one in five working-age adults with an intellectual disability is employed. Many have never worked at all, and those who are working are often underemployed, earning low wages, and living in poverty.

This is not because people with intellectual disabilities cannot work. It is because our systems were not designed to be inclusive.

When disability is treated as a single homogenous category, people with intellectual disabilities are often forgotten. Traditional hiring processes—online applications, rigid job descriptions, standardized interviews—block people before they ever get in the door. Accommodations are still understood too narrowly, focused on equipment or technology, rather than the human and communication supports that many people actually need.

Across our consultations, we heard clearly that legislation alone is not enough. Employment equity requires intentional design, accountability, and leadership.

Based on what we heard nationally, Inclusion Canada has made six consistent recommendations for reform. These include establishing a clear federal definition of inclusive employment, investing early through inclusive education and career development, reallocating resources toward sustained employment and growth rather than short-term job placements, collecting better disaggregated data so progress can actually be measured, and supporting employers with the tools and knowledge they need to succeed.

Today, I want to focus on one recommendation that is specifically relevant to this committee’s study. Recommendation six calls on the Government of Canada to become an employer champion.

The federal public service is one of the largest employers in the country. It sets standards, signals what is possible, and has the power to model what inclusive employment looks like when it is done well.

Canada’s Ready, Willing, and Able initiative, in partnership with our service delivery partner LiveWorkPlay in Ottawa, has demonstrated that people with intellectual disabilities can and do succeed in the federal public service. Their work has supported 231 jobs across 42 departments, with 50 permanent positions secured.

These results show what is possible, while also underscoring how much further the federal system must go to achieve meaningful scale. Right now, people with intellectual disabilities are severely underrepresented in the federal workforce. This sends a message that these jobs are not meant for them.

But the opposite could be true. The federal government could lead by intentionally hiring people with intellectual disabilities, redesigning job processes, proactively offering accommodations, and publicly sharing what it learns. It could demonstrate that inclusive employment is not charity—it is good public policy and good for workplaces.

We know inclusive employment works. Through Ready, Willing, and Able, employers across Canada have successfully hired and retained people with intellectual disabilities when the right supports are in place. Programs like this show that when hiring systems are flexible and human supports are available, people with intellectual disabilities succeed in competitive paid jobs.

This offers a practical example of what the federal public service could scale as an employer champion.

Modernizing the Employment Equity Act is an opportunity to move beyond compliance toward real inclusion. It means ensuring the Act works for those who have historically been left out, even within equity frameworks.

People with intellectual disabilities want what all Canadians want: meaningful work, fair pay, and the dignity that comes from contributing to their communities.

With the right reforms and with federal leadership, employment equity can finally begin to deliver on that promise.

Thank you.

[Senator Paulette Senior, Chair] Thank you, Ms. Carr.

Ms. Carr, I’d like to just explore a little bit about a comment you made earlier with respect to the fact that hiring and working with people with intellectual disabilities is not charity, but good public policy and good for employers and, in fact, the economy. Could you expand on that, please?

Yeah, I mean, I think that oftentimes we think about hiring people with disabilities generally, and certainly about people with intellectual disabilities, as something we do as a nice thing to do—or, you know, like tokenism a little bit.

And what we’re really saying is that when people with intellectual disabilities are given a chance to work, as we have shown in the limited experience we’ve had in the federal public service, they become obviously very valuable employees who contribute a lot to the workplaces.

And to what Professor Cukier has already said and others have said in these panels, diverse hiring—and in this particular circumstance, people with disabilities, or people with intellectual disabilities specifically—is good for business. The outcomes are better, the retention is better, the turnover is less.

The benefits to employers of hiring people with disabilities, and in our case people with intellectual disabilities, are just proven over and over again. But we still aren’t doing it to the scale that we should be doing it. And that, I think, is a gap that we’re really trying to focus on.

[Senator Paulette Senior, Chair] So people with disabilities are already included in the Act. Could you talk about where people with intellectual disabilities stand with respect to that?

[Krista Carr] So we’re not looking to make people with intellectual disabilities a special group in and of themselves. But what we don’t do within the disability category is recognize that people with disabilities are not a homogenous group.

And so we don’t disaggregate within that category by type of disability, et cetera. And we don’t—then of course—layer on an intersectional lens on top of that, which is critically important.

And that’s what we’d really like to see, because then we can see, even within the category of disability, who’s falling farther behind and who isn’t getting as much of a chance as others.

So thank you very much for the question, Senator.
Good opportunity for me to clarify that.
Thank you very much.