Accessible Canada Act has Brought About Far Too Little Progress for Canadians with Disabilities after 5 Years and Must be Substantially Beefed Up, Disability Advocates to Tell House of Commons Today

 ACCESSIBILITY FOR ONTARIANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT ALLIANCE

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Accessible Canada Act has Brought About Far Too Little Progress for Canadians with Disabilities after 5 Years and Must be Substantially Beefed Up, Disability Advocates to Tell House of Commons Today

 

October 1, 2024 Ottawa: The Accessible Canada Act, which requires Canada to become accessible to over 6 million people with disabilities by 2040, must be amended to make it strong and effective, AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky will tell the House of Commons Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities (HUMA) today. Hearings begin at 11 am Eastern time, in Room 330 of the Wellington Building, 197 Sparks Street, Ottawa, and streamed live on Parliament’s ParVu web page. AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky led the campaign from 1994 to 2005 to get Ontario’s accessibility law passed, and now leads the AODA Alliance’s campaign to get it effectively implemented.

 

“It’s good Parliament decided five years ago that Canada needed a new federal law because people with disabilities face too many barriers when travelling by air or train, when trying to use banks, cell phone or cable TV services, or when dealing with the Federal Government and that Canada must become accessible to people with disabilities by 2040,” said David Lepofsky. “But the Accessible Canada Act is great on intentions but palpably weak on implementation and enforcement. Progress on accessibility since it was passed in 2019 has been painfully and glacially slow.”

 

The Accessible Canada Act requires Parliament to conduct this 5-year review of the Act. The AODA Alliance submitted a detailed brief to the House of Commons. It lists 10 key amendments that are desperately needed to speed up the Act’s sluggish implementation and substantially strengthen and simplify its paltry enforcement. The poor rate of progress on accessibility since the Accessible Canada Act was passed proves that Canada needs all these amendments. The Federal Government rejected these amendments when the AODA Alliance proposed them 5 years ago during Parliamentary debates that led to the passage of the Accessible Canada Act.

 

“With a federal election looming, MPs from all parties will want to be sure this bill is amended to make it a historic law,” said Lepofsky. “We’ll remind MPs at the hearings today that people with disabilities are the minority of everyone. Everyone either has a disability now or is bound to get one later. No politician or party can afford to disregard the minority of everyone!”

 

The AODA Alliance will tell Parliament that Canada is not on schedule for becoming accessible by 2040, the Accessible Canada Act’s mandatory deadline. The Accessible Canada Act is just like the Canada Disability Benefit Act. Both laws promised much but have done far too little for people with disabilities.

 

A new draft “Roadmap” to 2040 that the Federal Government just released for months of public consultation is far too little too late. It should have been released five years ago.

 

The AODA Alliance will call on the House of Commons to strengthen the Accessible Canada Act by

  • Setting a deadline for the Federal Government to enact mandatory and enforceable accessibility standards under the Act that will specify what federally regulated organizations must do and by when to tear down accessibility barriers. Over the 5 years since the Act was passed, the Federal Government has enacted none.
  • Requiring the Federal Government to ensure that public money that it distributes is never used to create or perpetuate disability barriers.
  • Substantially simplifying and strengthening the complicated, ineffective and labyrinthian bureaucratic maze for enforcing the Accessible Canada Act, now splintered among three federal agencies: the Accessibility Commissioner, the CRTC and the Canada Transportation Agency.
  • Ensuring that nothing done under the Accessible Canada Act can reduce the rights of people with disabilities, and
  • Requiring the Federal Government to apply the promised disability lens in all its policies, decisions and practices.

 

“For me, this day has a powerful echo of history,” said Lepofsky. Forty-four years ago, Lepofsky, now a visiting Disability Rights professor at the law faculties at Western and the University of Ottawa, appeared before a Standing Committee of Parliament on CNIB’s behalf to urge the Pierre Trudeau Government to amend the proposed Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to guarantee equal rights for people with disabilities in Canada. His recent memoir recounts the grass roots battle to win those rights over four decades ago. Today’s testimony aims to get the Accessible Canada Act amended so that it will make the Charter’s guarantee of disability equality at last become a reality in the lives of over 6 million people with disabilities in Canada and all others who will get a disability later in life.

 

Contact: AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky, aodafeedback@gmail.com

Twitter: @aodaalliance

 

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