Canadian Indicators for the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD)

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• Introduction
• General notes
• In this report

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Introduction

This report provides indicators for selected articles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities' (CRPD). These indicators are based on Canadian data.

Canada ratified the CRPD on March 11, 2010. The CRPD is an international human rights treaty. It is aimed at promoting and protecting the rights, freedoms, and dignity of persons with disabilities to ensure their full participation in society on an equal basis with others. The CPRD requires all parties to the convention to make sure persons with disabilities enjoy full human rights and fundamental freedoms without any discrimination on the basis of disability. This includes implementing laws, policies, and programs that guarantee equal recognition before the law and equal protection under it.

Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) has prepared this report. Data from Statistics Canada form the basis for the indicators, including data from the Canadian Survey on Disability (CSD) and other surveys. As new data becomes available, existing indicators will be updated or new indicators will be added. The report includes indicators for the following articles:

• article 5 - equality and non-discrimination
• article 9 - accessibility
• article 10 - right to life
• article 16 - freedom from exploitation, violence, and abuse
• article 19 - living independently and being included in the community
• article 20 - personal mobility
• article 24 - education
• article 25 - health
• article 27 - work and employment
• article 28 - adequate standard of living and social protection
• article 29 - participation in political and public life
• article 30 - participation in cultural life, recreation, leisure, and sport

General notes

Gender vs Sex^{Footnote 1}: Gender refers to an individual's personal and social identity as a man, woman, or non-binary person (a person who is not exclusively a man or a woman). The measure of “gender” is different from the measure of "sex" that can be found in some parts of this report. The categories of men and women under the term "gender" refer to the respondents' reported gender, which may be distinct from their sex assigned at birth and/or their current legal documents.

In 2018, the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat and the Department of Justice Canada made recommendations for modernizing the Government of Canada's sex and gender information practices. Accordingly, Statistics Canada has indicated that beginning in 2021 the gender variable is expected to be used by default in most census standard data tables and analyses. In order to conform with this change, the indicators based on data from more recent surveys (which included a gender variable) report the results by "gender" rather than "sex".

Some indicators in this report are based on surveys that did not include a gender variable. In this case, data is reported by sex, which refers to sex assigned at birth and has categories of men and women. Indicators using data from surveys that included a gender variable are reported by gender and use the categories of men (includes cisgender and transgender men and boys) and women (includes cisgender and transgender women and girls). In most surveys with a gender variable, non-binary respondents were redistributed into the men and women categories, denoted as “men+” and “women+” in charts and tables. This was done to protect their data confidentiality, given that they constitute a very small sample.

Rounding: For the sake of simplicity, most reported estimates were rounded to the nearest whole percentage. This provides a broad perspective on persons with disabilities.

Disability Screening Questions (DSQ): The survey data used to develop the indicators in this report rely on the DSQ to identify persons with disabilities. Analysts developed these questions between 2010 and 2012. The questions provide a measure of disability based on the social model of disability which takes into account the interaction between a person’s functional difficulties and the barriers they face in daily life resulting in activity limitations. The social model of disability recognizes:

• that disability is linked to a person and to the degree of difficulty they have with certain tasks
• the level of impairment they experience
• the possible existence of a health condition
• the person's environment as a key factor in determining disability

Target populations for data sources used in this report:

• Canadian Survey on Disability (CSD) 2017 and 2022: The population covered by the CSD 2017 and 2022 includes all persons aged 15 and over (as of May 10th, 2016 and May 11, 2021 respectively, Census Day), and who reported having difficulty "Sometimes", "Often" or "Always" to one of the Activities of Daily Living questions on the 2016 and 2021 Census of Population long form. This included persons living in private dwellings in the 10 provinces and 3 territories. The survey excludes those living in institutions, on Canadian Armed Forces bases, on First Nations reserves, and those living in collective dwellings.
• Canadian Income Survey (CIS) 2015 - 2022: This is a Canada-wide survey, including all provinces and territories. It covers all individuals in Canada. It excludes persons living on reserves and other Indigenous settlements in the provinces, the institutionalized population, and households in remote areas with very low population density. Overall, these exclusions amount to less than 2% of the population
• Labour Force Survey (LFS) 2022-2024: The target population for the LFS includes all persons aged 15 years and over whose usual place of residence is in Canada, including both non-permanent residents (NPRs) —that is, those with a work or study permit, their families, asylum claimants, protected persons and related groups — as well as permanent residents (landed immigrants) and the Canadian-born population. The LFS excludes those living on reserves, full-time members of the regular Armed Forces and persons living in institutions (including inmates of penal institutions and patients in hospitals and nursing homes). National LFS estimates are derived using the results of the LFS in the provinces
• General Social Survey (GSS):
  • GSS - Time Use 2022: The target population for this cycle is all non-institutionalized persons and non-residents of First Nations reserves 15 years of age or older, living in the 10 provinces of Canada
  • GSS - Social Identity 2020: The target population for this cycle is all non-institutionalized persons and non-residents of First Nations reserves 15 years of age or older, living in the 10 provinces of Canada
  • GSS - Canadians’ Safety 2019: The target population for this cycle is the Canadian population aged 15 and over, living in the provinces and territories. Canadians residing in institutions are not included
  • GSS - Caregiving and Care Receiving 2018: The target population for this cycle is all non-institutionalized persons 15 years of age or older, living in the 10 provinces of Canada
  • GSS - Canadians at Work and Home 2016: The target population for this cycle is non-institutionalized persons 15 years of age or older, living in the 10 provinces of Canada
• Survey of Safety in Public and Private Spaces (SSPPS) 2018: The target population for this survey is all non-institutionalized persons 15 years of age or older, living in the 10 provinces or 3 territories of Canada

In this report

1. Article 5: equality and non-discrimination
2. Article 9: accessibility
3. Article 10: right to life
4. Article 16: freedom from exploitation, violence, and abuse
5. Article 19: living independently and being included in the community
6. Article 20: personal mobility
7. Article 24: education
8. Article 25: health
9. Article 27: work and employment
10. Article 28: adequate standard of living and social protection
11. Article 29: participation in political and public life
12. Article 30: participation in cultural life, recreation, leisure, and sport