Canada needs Canadians with Disabilities Act

4.4 million Canadians with disabilities have lower incomes, lower employment rates, less access to community services and education and little recourse to the government

Canadians with disabilities have the Charter of Rights and Freedoms but the Charter does not enforce their rights and they remain largely shut out of Canadian society. The disabled face discrimination in employment, schools, social and eating places. By comparison Americans have effective protection with the Americans with Disabilities Act. They also enforcement bodies like Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

Individual Canadians with disabilities must hire their own lawyers and sue governments, schools, business and organizations for basic human rights and inclusion. Non-government organizations dedicated to the disabled in Canada are relatively ineffective in pursuing equality for the disabled.

Federal government programs for the disabled have remained essentially the same despite consultations and reams of reports being published. Other than the CP Disability, no material improvements in disabled services have been produced since 1994.

If a disabled person is denied access to a restaurant, a store, a business or a city street, the only recourse is to beg the authorities to fix it. This is universally unsuccessful.

Education institutions pay lip service to disability access. Holland College has a series of poorly designed, and non-conforming adaptations that make the lives of disabled students unbearable. The University of Prince Edward Island removed the last inner-campus accessible parking. More than 65% of the buildings fall outside the National Building Code maximum disabled parking regulations and the University’s management are able to ignore it with impunity.

Until Canadians with disabilities get protection under a law with an enforcing government organization they will continue to suffer human rights abuses in Canada on a daily basis.

Non-government agencies (NGO) in Canada are largely asleep at the wheel. They have ignored the advocacy role in favour of administering government programs for a fee. On Prince Edward Island, the government reform committee, largely made up of NGO’s issued a report which is long on vague suggestions and short on material improvements to the lives of Islanders with disabilities. The NGOs did not want to bite the hand that feeds them.

For example, the PEI Council of Persons with Disabilities is the generic disability advocacy and services NGO. While given the task of administering disabled parking, they do nothing more than issue permits. They don’t lobby for change. They allowed UPEI to remove its disabled parking. Pick a topic and the PEICOD is virtually doing nothing.

If it were not for US and large Canadian chain stores, accessible parking on PEI would be a disaster. Wal-Mart ahd Home Depot have more accessible parking than UPEI.