Mid-1980s
Provincial and federal governments learned that awareness boosting activities and training seminars undertaken since the 1970s were not having their intended effect, which led to the development of innovative measures to address the problem of employer attitudes”.1 One of these measures was the 1983 report of the Ontario task force, called Linking for Employment, that “envisioned…community councils linking businesses with local agencies and government departments in an innovative network that promised to connect qualified disabled people with job vacancies.”2 Jean Pigott, leader of the task force, believed that employers were of great importance in reducing barriers of employment for people with disabilities. Later, Justice Rosalie Abella, the sole commissioner of the Royal Commission on Equality in Employment, added to Pigott’s ideas, eventually leading to legislation regarding employment practices in Canada.3
1. Justin Galer, “Employers, Disabled Workers, and the War on Attitudes in Late Twentieth-Century Canada,” in Disabling Barriers: Social Movements, Disability History, and the Law eds. Ravi Malhotra and Benjamin Isitt (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017), 37.
