AODA Alliance
Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance Update
United for a Barrier-Free Ontario for All People with Disabilities
Website: www.aodaalliance.org
Email: aodafeedback@gmail.com
Twitter: @aodaalliance
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/aodaalliance
AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky’s February Column in the Toronto Star’s Metroland Publications Around Ontario Tries to Convince the Ontario Tories to Make the Accessible Ontario Pledge in This Provincial Election
February 16, 2025
SUMMARY
Right in the middle of this Ontario election campaign, the Toronto Star’s Metroland publications around Ontario today included AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky’s monthly Disability Issues column. You can read it below. It tries to convince Doug Ford’s Tories to make the Accessible Ontario Pledge to lead Ontario to become accessible to 2.9 million Ontarians with disabilities. The Ontario Conservatives are the only party that has not responded to the AODA Alliance’s effort to get accessibility commitments from all the party leaders. So far, it is also the only party that has not agreed to send a representative to the all-important February 19, 2025, “All Candidates’ Debate” on Disability Issues.
How You Can Help
- Please widely circulate this Metroland column to others, including on social media and on the web.
- Press your local media to cover this election’s disability issues.
For More Background on This Election’s Disability Issues
- The AODA Alliance’s new action kit with tips on how to raise disability issues in this Ontario election.
- The text of the Accessible Ontario Pledge sought by the AODA Alliance.
- The Ontario Green Party’s response to the AODA Alliance request for the Accessible Ontario Pledge.
- The Ontario New Democratic Party’s response to the AODA Alliance request for the Accessible Ontario Pledge.
- The Ontario Liberal Party’s response to the request for the Accessible Ontario Pledge.
- The online video of the January 6, 2025, AODA Alliance news conference at Queen’s Park, unveiling the Accessible Ontario Pledge.
- A list of candidates in the 2025 Ontario election assembled by AODA Alliance volunteers.
- The open letter from over two dozen disability organizations to the party leaders calling for all parties to make the Accessible Ontario Pledge in this election.
- A timeline of major events over the past 30 years in the grassroots campaign for accessibility in Ontario.
- For the AODA Alliance’s work from 2005 to the present, visit aodaalliance.org
MORE DETAILS
Inside Halton February 16, 2025
Opinion
Election offers chance for parties to state how they will make Ontario accessible, advocate writes
Greens, Liberals and NDP and have made detailed accessibility pledges. Only the Tories have yet to respond.
By David Lepofsky
David Lepofsky is chair of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance.
What will our next premier and government do to tear down the many unfair barriers impeding 2.9 million Ontarians with disabilities from riding transit, getting an equal education in schools, colleges and universities, making use of our health-care system, getting competitive employment and using vital public services?
This is an issue rarely covered by media during an election campaign.
Even if you don’t yet have a disability, this matters to your friends and family members who do. It will matter to you as you age and acquire disabilities. Is this issue urgent? Yes.
Ontario just failed to meet its legislated deadline to become disability-accessible by 2025.
We’ve asked the parties to make a 10-plank Accessible Ontario Pledge. It draws on our decades of experience and on expert reports of four government-appointed independent reviews of the province’s Ontarians with Disabilities Act.
The Accessible Ontario Pledge calls on the province’s next government to show strong leadership on accessibility, starting at the top with the premier. It asks for effective accessibility standards to be set in important areas like education and health care to tear down disability barriers.
It seeks to prevent public money from being used to create new disability barriers, as took place when Toronto’s new billion-dollar Armoury Street criminal courthouse was built with preventable disability barriers. It seeks at long last to get the Disabilities Act effectively enforced and for the government to be far more accountable to the public for its work on these issues.
So far, the Greens, NDP and Liberals have made detailed accessibility pledges that address all or a substantial majority of our issues.
Only Doug Ford’s Tories have not answered by the deadline for this column.
As a non-partisan coalition, we don’t endorse or oppose any party. We aim to get all parties to make strong commitments to Ontarians with disabilities.
For the rest of this campaign, we’re urging everyone, no matter their politics, to press the Tories to make the Accessible Ontario Pledge.
Here is our message to the Tories:
Achieving an accessible Ontario should be a PC issue, just as much as it is a Green, Liberal or NDP issue. Tories proudly voted unanimously in 2005 in support of the Disabilities Act and rose with all MPPs to give its enactment a resounding standing ovation.
In opposition in 2005, Tories commendably proposed amendments to make that legislation even stronger. While in opposition, they blasted the governing Liberals for moving too slowly with the Disabilities Act’s implementation.
Back in 1982, it was a Tory government that added protection for people with disabilities to the Ontario Human Rights Code.
More recently, in the 2018 election, Ford wrote the grassroots coalition I chair pledging: “Too many Ontarians with disabilities still face barriers when they try to get a job, ride public transit, get an education, use our health-care system, buy goods or services, or eat in restaurants … Making Ontario fully accessible by 2025 is an important goal under the AODA and it’s one that would be taken seriously by an Ontario PC government.”
Enabling people with disabilities to fully participate in our society is not a left-wing or a right-wing issue. It’s everyone’s issue.
The strongest disability law in the world was proudly signed into law by U.S. President George H.W. Bush, hardly a left-winger!
All other parties answered our request with substantial, detailed pledges. There is no good reason in policy or politics for the Tories not to do the same. Ontario has more than a million voters with disabilities.
It’s high time for our mainstream media to let voters know about this issue during the campaign.
It stupefies me that in election after election, as soon as the campaign begins, it is exceedingly hard to get editors and pundits to pay attention. They’re preoccupied with the horse race of election polls, telling us who is going to win before we cast any ballots, and thereby dissuading some voters from bothering to vote.
On Wednesday, Feb. 19 at 7:30 p.m., a consortium of disability organizations will hold a provincewide candidates debate on disability issues. Why not register and attend in person or online? For more details, watch for a post on the AODA Alliance website www.aodaalliance.org.
If you meet with a PC candidate or canvasser, or get calls from them, please tell them to make the Accessible Ontario Pledge. Millions of present and future Ontarians with disabilities deserve no less.