Only a pawn in their game

To understand the problems of the disabled on PEI one must look at the underlying relationships of the people who feed off the disability industry.

These people are often in positions of trust and power. They make the public appearance of being there for people with disabilities. When their power and prestige is threatened, however they fight back.

Myrtle Jenkins Smith - often the mastermind behind lack of progress on disabilities

This summer the issue of accessible parking came up at UPEI. This seems like a simple issue. However, the PEI Canadian Paraplegic Association has a member on the UPEI Access-Ability committee and they are blocking progress. There is more.

Exactly why is hard to determine except the CPA member appears to have succumbed to the charm of UPEI upper management. He’s one of them now. One of the high level organizers for the Canada Games 2009 is Myrtle Jenkins Smith, also executive director of PEI CPA. The plot thickens.

One of the main reasons UPEI wants to get rid of people with disabilities is to beautify the University for the Canada Games. So we lose parking at UPEI for a Myrtle Jenkins Smith project and she has her minions at the PEI-CPA defend it. That’s corruption.

Tony Dolan, one of the CPA directors, is also a director of the PEI Council of the Disabled. Instead of supporting accessible parking, the Council makes a weak statement that UPEI trumpets as endorsement. Dolan once was one of PEI’s great disability advocates. Why he has become an Uncle Tom is beyond me. People change I guess.

Disability Alert has been advocating re-instating the accessible parking re-instated. In response the PEI-CPA starts a letter writing campaign to the Guardian to discredit me. Since PEI-CPA, UPEI, Canada Games and Jenkins Smith see themselves as powerful, expect more in the weeks to come.

The purpose of their letters is to get us off the issue and into some kind of letter to the editor war.

It gets even more sinister when we see the Executive Director of the PEI-CPA Jenkins Smith was a high-level campaign worker for Minister of Health Doug Currie. As a reward, she is given the $100,000 consulting contract on the Disability Services Review committee. Her main job is to see the reforms are not embarrassing to the Liberals.

Jenkins Smith’s desire to discredit me is strong since I am peeling back the layers of the onion on her convoluted relationships, most of which serve her bank account and not PEI’s disabled community.

You would think these people were just trying to help people with disabilities. They say money sex and power are the big motivators in life.

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