LiveWorkPlay

Disability employment is improving. But not for all.

October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month.

LiveWorkPlay is commemorating NDEAM (sometimes known as DEAM in provincial campaigns) by recognizing progress, celebrating employment success, and asking harder questions about who is still being left behind and why. At the end of this post, we share more about the history of NDEAM and the sources for the numbers presented here.

In Canada, 77.8% of working-age people without disabilities are employed. For people with disabilities overall, the figure is 61.8%.
For people with intellectual disabilities, Inclusion Canada reports the employment rate at only about 25%.

Just one in four!

That disparity matters. Broad improvements in disability employment do not necessarily mean equitable outcomes for everyone. People with intellectual disabilities continue to face extraordinary and systemic exclusion from the labour market.
And too often, the alternatives offered to people with intellectual disabilities are still disability-specific daytime services, unpaid roles, repeated training or assessments, or other pathways that can become permanent substitutes for paid employment.

This concern is not only about practice. Ontario retains an archaic provision, rooted in a sheltered-work model established in provincial law and policy more than 65 years ago. The provision excludes people who perform work in a simulated job or working environment for the primary purpose of rehabilitation from the protections of the Employment Standards Act.

As a result, people with intellectual disabilities in sheltered work settings can be denied minimum wage and other basic employment protections. The provision remains in force despite Canada’s commitments under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and fundamental human and labour rights principles of equal pay, dignity, and inclusion.

Community participation matters. Volunteering can be a wonderful choice. Learning and skill development can be valuable. But none of these should replace paid employment for someone who wants to work.

At LiveWorkPlay, we also know something very different is possible.
Every day, we see people with intellectual disabilities and autistic persons contributing as valued employees and coworkers. We see employers removing barriers, reconsidering conventional recruitment practices, building inclusive workplaces, and discovering talent they might otherwise have overlooked.
Those successes deserve recognition.

They should also make us ask why they are still out of reach for so many people.

Throughout October, we'll share some of what we have learned from employees, employers, families, and decades of supporting people to pursue authentic paid employment and careers.

We'll celebrate what is working.

And we'll keep asking what needs to change.

Awareness can help, but employment is what matters. Alongside efforts to change attitudes, systemic reforms are still needed to remove barriers and advance inclusion.

About the numbers: Statistics Canada reports employment rates of 77.8% for Canadians without disabilities and 61.8% for Canadians with disabilities, ages 25–64, in 2022. Inclusion Canada reports that approximately 1 in 4 working-age people with an intellectual disability are employed. These are not identical statistical measures, and Canadian data specific to intellectual disability remain limited. “Employed” also does not necessarily mean full-time, sustained employment or adequate earnings. We use these figures to illustrate the scale of the disparity rather than suggest a precision the available data cannot support.

About NDEAM: NDEAM is not a recent marketing campaign. Its roots reach back to 1945, when disabled veterans were returning from the Second World War and the United States established a national week recognizing the contributions of workers with physical disabilities. The language and scope evolved over time, expanding to people with all types of disabilities in 1962 and becoming a month-long observance in 1988. At its core was a challenge to the assumption that disability should mean unemployment. It was part of a longer struggle for the right to work, to contribute, and to be recognized as an equal participant in economic life.

In Canada, provincial recognition began with Manitoba in 2010 and spread to other provinces and territories. This provincial engagement helps explain why the campaign is often known in Canada as DEAM rather than NDEAM, although both names represent the same movement. Many disability employment champions have since amplified the campaign and its modern messaging, while its roots remain firmly grounded in rights, opportunity, and the refusal to accept exclusion from the labour market.

Today, organizations including the Ontario Disability Employment Network, the Canadian Association for Supported Employment, the Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work, and many regional and local partners continue to lead and amplify NDEAM and DEAM across Canada.

LiveWorkPlay was honoured today to host an official Windsor 2026 Conference site visit, welcoming Michael Lye, Secretary of the Australian Government Department of Social Services, to our headquarters at Cours Bayview Yards in Ottawa.

The Windsor Conference is an international forum, held every 18 months to two years, bringing together senior public-service leaders from Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States for discussions on employment and social affairs.

For Windsor 2026, Employment and Social Development Canada organized site visits to provide first-hand insight into Canadian approaches to labour market services and inclusive workforce development. LiveWorkPlay was invited in connection with disability employment and workforce transitions.

Because the visit fell on September 30, National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, we began by reflecting on the day and offering a land acknowledgement specific to where we were meeting: the unceded, unsurrendered territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg, with Kitchi Zibi, Pimisi, Kìwekì Point and the Chief William Commanda Bridge part of the Indigenous history and presence around Bayview Yards.

LiveWorkPlay Co-Leaders Julie Kingstone and Keenan Wellar then shared our approach to inclusive employment, from getting to know jobseekers and employers and finding the right match through onboarding and long-term retention.

We also wanted Michael to hear directly from different sides of the employment relationship. LiveWorkPlay member Daniel Pinsonneault, a longtime Costco Wholesale Canada employee, shared his private-sector experience, while member Heather McAdam, who has worked with multiple federal departments, shared her public-sector experience.

Brett Woods of DHL Express brought the private-sector employer perspective. We shared a video featuring DHL Express's inclusive hiring of two LiveWorkPlay candidates.

Daniel Carleton of Indigenous Services Canada, who also volunteers with our Federal Employment Strategy Group, contributed the public-sector perspective.

Another dimension came from LiveWorkPlay joining The BUSY Group in June 2026. With Paul Miles, Kerry Gibb and Rod Booth in Canada this week and available to attend, the discussion developed into a systems-to-systems exchange about how Australia and Canada structure, fund, and deliver employment supports, and what each system can learn from the other.

The morning felt very much in the spirit of the Windsor Conference: connecting individual experience, employer practice, service delivery, government systems and public policy in the same conversation.

Michael's Windsor 2026 program continued this afternoon with another Ottawa site visit hosted by our friends at CCRW.

Our thanks to Mr Michael Lye, Secretary of the Department of Social Services, the Windsor Conference Secretariat at ESDC, and everyone who joined us for such a thoughtful exchange.

With Ottawa Titans – I just made it onto their weekly engagement list by being one of their top engagers 🎉And they won the championship!!!! 🏆

Incredible!!!

OTTAWA MAKES HISTORY!!! 🥳🥳

With tonight's crowd of 10,278 we have officially broken the Frontier League single-game attendance record!! 🏆😁

Thank you so much, Ottawa! 🤗