AODA Alliance
ACCESSIBILITY FOR ONTARIANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT ALLIANCE
NEWS RELEASE – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky Scheduled to Testify at Labour Grievance Arbitration Tomorrow About Preventable Disability Barriers in Controversial New Billion-Dollar Toronto Courthouse
June 25, 2025 Toronto: At a provincial labour grievance arbitration scheduled for tomorrow, AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky is scheduled to testify about the serious disability barriers at the massive new Toronto criminal courthouse on Armoury Street. The Ontario Crown Attorneys Association is presenting a grievance about the lack of accessible parking at the courthouse for Crown Attorneys with disabilities who prosecute cases in Canada’s largest criminal courthouse, which opened in 2023. The Crown in question was previously given an accessible parking spot at the courthouse where she worked, before that courthouse closed and all cases were moved to the new Armoury Street courthouse.
Last August The AODA Alliance brought the many preventable disability barriers in this courthouse to public attention when it released an online video which branded this new facility a billion-dollar accessibility bungle. View a 4-minute version, a 14-minute version or the 49-minute unabridged version. This video includes the lack of sufficient accessibility parking assured for people with disabilities coming to the court.
“We warned the Ontario Government in writing years before construction began about preventable disability barriers in this new courthouse, including the obvious lack of sufficient accessible parking assured for people with disabilities going to court,” said Lepofsky, who is also a visiting professor of disability rights at the law schools at Queen’s, Western, and the University of Ottawa, as well as a retired Crown counsel. “There are only six accessible parking spots on the street near the courthouse, but they can all be used by anyone with a disability permit, leaving none for people with disabilities going to this court.”
Many mistakenly think that the Ontario Building Code requires all new buildings in Ontario to be accessible to people with disabilities. The AODA Alliance has been campaigning to get the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act effectively implemented to prevent inexcusable barriers such as the one that is the focus of this arbitration. The Ford Government failed to meet the Disability Act’s mandatory deadline for leading Ontario to become accessible to people with disabilities, which was the start of this year.
“After the Government opened this courthouse two years ago, it retained two separate expert accessibility consulting firms, Gensler and Human Space, to report on the building’s disability barriers and how to fix them,” said Lepofsky. The Gensler report confirmed several of the disability barriers our video identified. We were promised to receive the Human Space report, but the Government has never released it. I fully expect it to identify the shortage of accessible parking as one of this facility’s disability barriers.”
The Government has said it is leading by example on accessibility. However, this courthouse is a very poor example by which Ontarians should not be led.
“The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act was enacted 20 years ago so that people with disabilities would not have to battle against accessibility barriers one at a time,” said Lepofsky who led the decade-long grassroots campaign from 1994 to 2005 to get the Disability Act enacted. “An individual provincial employee should not have to face this barrier, much less the undue hardship of a long legal battle against the very Government that is responsible for leading the Disability Act’s implementation and enforcement.”
It is the AODA Alliance’s understanding that the arbitration hearing will not be open to the public. However, after he testifies, David Lepofsky can be reached for comment.
Contact: AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky, aodafeedback@gmail.com
Twitter: @aodaalliance
Background on the AODA Alliance’s advocacy efforts regarding this courthouse can be found on the AODA Alliance website’s courts accessibility page.