Training and job applicants with disabilities do not want to be perceived as a threat because they are taking employment away from other qualified applicants. They want to be viewed as qualified applicants wanting jobs like other eligible persons. Through the incorporation of thoroughly researched and widely endorsed policies, a win win situation will be achieved. Coherence and benefits for all labour market partners will result. Of critical value to an increasingly more adaptive and receptive society will be fulfillment for persons with disabilities. Social and economic partnerships, ability recognition, and the tapping of human potential will be the tangible benefits from this investment. Communication, collaboration, coordination, and commitment imply diversity that can be equated to real value and real returns, reflecting the real Canadian context and future for persons with disabilities.

The perspective of members of visible minorities

All things being equal

According to studies on the factors that affect transition from work to school, members of visible minorities (Africans/Blacks, South Asians, Southeast Asians, West Asians, and Latin Americans) should be making the transition with relative ease. Level of education and field of study are among the most important factors easing the transition. Some members of visible minorities have high levels of education, but are among those who have greatest difficulty making the transition into work (Visible Minority Transition in the Canadian Labour Market, Aggrey et a1., CLFDB Task Force commissioned study, Ottawa, 1992). Even when they are qualified in such desirable areas as business, Black students were among the last of their classmates to be employed (York University Study on Business School Graduates, Toronto, 1986).

Level of education and field of study would be the most important factors in transitions if all things were equa1. But all things are not equa1. Family connections, which are linked to access to information and suitability, and perceptions of competence and the ability to fit in, which are frequently linked to racial stereotypes, have much to do with the transitions that members of visible minorities make into employment.