Canada Kicks Off National AccessAbility Week Tomorrow with No National Disabilities Minister for the First Time in a Decade

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

 

Canada Kicks Off National AccessAbility Week Tomorrow with No National Disabilities Minister for the First Time in a Decade

 

May 24, 2025

 

SUMMARY

 

 

What a blistering irony. Tomorrow, National AccessAbility Week begins, but for the first time in a decade, Canada has no National Disabilities Minister to lead the week’s events across this country! The Toronto Star included an excellent article covering this today. See below.

 

This comes on yet another important anniversary in the long grassroots battle for accessibility legislation in Canada. Thirty years ago today, Ontario’s Conservative leader Mike Haris wrote the AODA Alliance‘s predecessor, the Ontarians with Disabilities Act Committee. In his famous or infamous May 24, 1995 letter, Mike Harris promised that he’d enact an Ontarians with Disabilities Act in his first term and that he’d work with the ODA Committee to develop it. This started a chain of events whose impact is still felt today, three decades later.

 

Mike Harris was elected Ontario Premier in the June 1995 election. Premier Harris prided himself as the politician who emphasized that he’d keep all his promises or resign. Yet in his 7 years in office, he refused every request for a meeting with the ODA Committee. Sound familiar? As well, he did not pass the promised Ontarians with Disabilities Act in his first term as promised, and he certainly did not keep his word about resigning.

 

In his second term, Mike Harris eventually passed a very weak Ontarians with Disabilities Act in December 2001. It was the last law passed under his tenure as premier. It was toothless and ineffective.

 

However, it paved the way to the stronger Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act being passed in 2005 by the successor Liberal Government under Premier Dalton McGuinty  That is the law that we’re still campaigning to get effectively implemented.

 

All in all, today is a historic anniversary.

 

How You Can Help

 

• We remind you to email Prime Minister Carney to ask him to restore the Cabinet post of Minister for Disability Issues, which he cancelled. Get others to email him too. His email address is pm@pm.gc.ca

 

• Urge the media to cover this topic. For example, if your local CBC morning radio program did not cover it, tell them it’s not too late. If it is newsworthy enough for CBC in Toronto, Quebec City, Fredericton, Sudbury, Moncton, Edmonton, Saint John, Prince George/Prince Rupert, Vancouver, White Horse, Victoria, Kelowna, and Kitchener-Waterloo, it’s newsworthy in your community too!

 

• Let us know what you hear in response. Contact us at aodafeedback@gmail.com

 

MORE DETAILS

 

Toronto Star May 24, 2025

 

 

Cabinet cut worries disability advocates

PM’s priorities questioned over loss of dedicated minister and lack of information about benefits

 

Serena Austin Toronto Star

The first payments of a national monthly benefit for low-income people with disabilities are expected to go out in just over a month.

 

But without a minister for disability inclusion in cabinet, advocates are concerned about how much of a priority this and other disability issues will be.

 

June is the first month of eligibility for the Canada Disability Benefit. Though its first payments are expected in July, there’s still little information available on how people can apply to receive it.

 

Employment and Social Development Canada, the department responsible for the benefit, said a firm date for when applications will open hasn’t been set yet, but it confirmed it is expected to launch by the end of June, and said the benefit’s webpage will be updated in the coming weeks.

 

With tariffs, the economy and Canada’s relationship with the U.S. being top of mind leading into the election and in Prime Minister Carney’s first few weeks in office, advocates say issues specific to people with disabilities have been sidelined, citing the lack of a disability inclusion minister as proof.

 

Canada has had a minister responsible for disability inclusion in some capacity since 2015.

 

The elimination of the portfolio is a “slap in the face” to the eight million people with disabilities in Canada, but it’s also “eminently fixable,” said David Lepofsky, who is blind and chair of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance.

 

He wrote to the prime minister on behalf of the AODA Alliance, asking him to assign the portfolio to one of the existing cabinet ministers, but said he hasn’t heard back.

 

The fact that there are portfolios for women, seniors and Indigenous people, but not for disabled people, sends a “very loud and clear” signal, said Lepofsky. “Disability is just not a priority.”

 

He recognized that having a dedicated minister won’t “guarantee success” when it comes to addressing issues affecting people with disabilities, like accessible and affordable housing, but said not having one will “guarantee that things are going to be worse.”

 

Rabia Khedr, national director of Disability Without Poverty and CEO of DEEN Support Services, a charity founded by Muslims with disabilities, said she’s glad the Canada Disability Benefit is now law, but is disappointed with the amount budgeted for it, some of its criteria and with how long it has taken to roll out.

 

At a maximum of $200 a month, the benefit is “too little for too few,” said Khedr.

 

The purpose of the Canada Disability Benefit Act is to “reduce poverty and support the financial security” of working-age people with disabilities. And while the act was going through second reading, Paula Qualtrough, then minister of employment, workforce development and disability inclusion, declared that “in Canada, no person with a disability should live in poverty.”

 

In 2020, 12 per cent of people with disabilities ages 25 to 64 were living in poverty compared to seven per cent of people without disabilities, according to Statistics Canada.

 

Lepofsky said some disability organizations wanted to see the act strengthened to ensure it would fulfil its purpose of reducing poverty, but that they were told doing so would slow down the benefit’s rollout, and that with a committed cabinet minister to “steer it through,” things would be fine. The benefit that was announced turned out to be “miles short of what’s needed,” he said.

 

Now without a minister for disability inclusion, the possibility of the benefit being increased seems even more distant, though Khedr said she hopes Patty Hajdu, the minister of jobs and families, which now oversees Employment and Social Development Canada, will reach out to Disability Without Poverty and other groups that contributed to discussions about the benefit.

 

Khedr also raised concerned about the possibility of provincial governments clawing back their benefits for people with disabilities once the Canada Disability Benefit kicks in, and said amending the Income Tax Act to prevent that should be prioritized.

 

The Liberals included plans to reform the Disability Tax Credit in their election platform, but without a voice representing people with disabilities in cabinet, some are worried it won’t lead to an improvement.

 

The Disability Tax Credit is a non-refundable tax credit that aims to offset some of the costs associated with having a disability by lowering the amount of income tax people with disabilities and their supporting family members have to pay.

 

People with disabilities need to be eligible for the tax credit in order to be eligible for the Canada Disability Benefit, a regulation Khedr said comes with “extra hurdles.”

 

“It’s a lot of paperwork and it also requires a physician completing a portion of it,” which is a challenge with an ongoing doctor shortage, Khedr said.

 

“Some physicians feel that they’re gatekeepers,” and if they don’t think they’ve seen “disability significant enough to warrant somebody qualifying for this benefit,” they may not sign off on their application, she said.

 

While it’s unclear what a reformed Disability Tax Credit might look like under Carney’s Liberal government – the Star contacted the Prime Minister’s Office, but did not get a response in time for publication – Khedr and Lepofsky stressed the application processes for disability benefits and tax credits should be streamlined so people who have already qualified for provincial disability benefits, like ODSP, for example, are automatically eligible for the Disability Tax Credit and Canada Disability Benefit.

 

“When times are tough we want to cut back government,” said Khedr. “This is one way to cut back.”