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
Ford Government Responds to the Failure to Achieve an Accessible Ontario by 2025 with Bogus Claims
January 17, 2025
SUMMARY
There has been so much encouraging media and public attention on the fact that Ontario is not fully accessible to Ontarians with disabilities, even though the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (“AODA”) required the Ontario Government to lead Ontario to this goal by January 1, 2025. The AODA gave the Ontario Government a long 20 years to lead Ontario to that destination. The Government sadly squandered those two decades, doing far too little to implement and enforce the AODA.
What has been the Ford Government’s response over the time leading up to and after New Year’s Day? Its response has not been to bring forward a bold new plan of action. Rather it has been to make a series of bogus claims. These fly in the face of the reality which people with disabilities face every day in this province. Below we list and dissect these bogus claims.
Because the Ontario Government has no comprehensive plan of action, the AODA Alliance has come forward with one. We call it the Accessible Ontario Pledge. We are now campaigning to get Ontario’s political leaders to sign on to it. The only provincial party so far that has made the Accessible Ontario Pledge is the Ontario Green Party. Our January 6, 2025 Queen’s Park news conference has been viewed on YouTube over 1,300 times, far more than any of our previous news conferences.
How You Can Help
- Circulate the link to the AODA Alliance’s January 6, 2025, Queen’s Park News Conference. Get others to watch it, and to share it with others.
- Share the Accessible Ontario Pledge that we are urging all Ontario party leaders to make.
- Contact your member of the Ontario Legislature. Urge them to make the Accessible Ontario Pledge.
- Publicly post this AODA Alliance Update on the web and on social media. Invite others to sign up for AODA Alliance Updates by going to the sign-up link on the AODA Alliance web site’s home page.
There have now been 16 days since January 1, 2025, the legislated deadline for Ontario to become fully accessible to 2.9 million Ontarians with disabilities. We need all political parties to make the Accessible Ontario Pledge to get Ontario to that goal as soon as possible after that missed deadline.
MORE DETAILS
Premier Ford broke his commitment to fulfil the AODA’s 2025 deadline. Two and a half years ago, on June 27, 2022, the QP Briefing reported that Premier Ford had this to say about his Government’s duty to meet this legislated deadline:
“We’ll make sure we meet those time lines…”
The Ford Government knew full well that the January 1, 2025 deadline was fast approaching. For years, the AODA Alliance has maintained a countdown on Twitter. We know the Government follows the AODA Alliance’s Twitter feed.
The Government had plenty of time to prepare its response to the new year’s arrival. Despite this, the Ford Government’s response has been deeply troubling. It did not even acknowledge that Ontario has failed to reach this deadline, and that Ontario is still replete with accessibility barriers. It has not publicly recognized the harm that this does for over 2.9 million Ontarians with disabilities, their families and their loved ones. It did not admit the long-term harm this causes for all other Ontarians who are bound to get a disability later in their lives.
The Ford Government has not recognized that Ontario is in an accessibility crisis. This is still the case even though over one and a half years ago, the Government received the 4th Independent Review of the AODA. The Government had appointed Rich Donovan to conduct that review. The Donovan Report declared that Ontario has an accessibility crisis.
Making this worse, the Ford Government has announced no plan of action to respond to the fact that Ontario is still not accessible to people with disabilities, despite the legislated 2025 deadline and Premier Ford’s commitment to fulfil it. When the media or the opposition in the Legislature have asked the Ford Government about the slow pace of progress towards an accessible Ontario, the Government’s responses have only made the situation more disturbing for people with disabilities.
- Back on November 25, 2025, the Ford Government’s Accessibility Minister Raymond Cho, who is responsible for the AODA’s implementation and enforcement, said that 88% of people think Ontario is accessible. As the November 29, 2024 AODA Alliance Update explains, this claim contradicts the life experience of many people with disabilities, the wrenching presentations made at the November 25, 2024 AODA Alliance community public hearings at Queen’s Park, and the clear and strong findings of government-appointed AODA Independent Reviews in 2015, 2019 and 2023.
- On December 30, 2024, CBC national radio reported on a rare instance when Raymond Cho, the Ford Government’s Accessibility Minister, spoke to the media. CBC Radio News reported on December 30, 2024 as follows:
“But Raymond Cho, Ontario’s Minister for Seniors and Accessibility, says the Province won’t be forcing compliance.”
Raymond Cho: “We don’t believe in punishment. But we believe in Education.”
This statement is devastating for Ontarians with disabilities. The Government in effect abdicates its responsibility to enforce the AODA. The AODA contains robust enforcement powers. The Accessibility Minister has lead responsibility for overseeing the use of those enforcement powers.
This statement sadly harkens back to the harmful policy of the Government under Conservative Premier Mike Harris, starting in 1995. That Government promised a Disabilities Act in the 1995 Ontario election. After it won that election, it announced that its Disabilities Act would be voluntary. That meant it would have no enforcement. As a result, the Harris Government’s widely criticized Ontarians with Disabilities Act (enacted in 2001 and later repealed) mandated no enforcement whatsoever for removal and prevention of disability barriers.
Moreover, the claim “(w)e don’t believe in punishment” embodies a seriously incorrect understanding of the AODA. The AODA’s enforcement powers are not about punishment at all. They aim to create a real financial motivation to comply with the law. The Ford Government has, through its actions and Minister Cho’s statement, taken that motivation away.
The Ford Government’s claim that “we believe in Education” is a harmful and hurtful throw-back to decades ago, when some claimed that disability barriers would go away if we educated the public about them. Minister after minister and government after government have said they are leading efforts at educating the public. The debate is over. That approach does not work. Disability barriers persist. New ones are created, including barriers that the Government itself has created.
The AODA, in contrast to the earlier and much weaker Ontarians with Disabilities Act 2001, includes potent enforcement requirements. A core principle for the Disabilities Act which the Legislature approved in 1998, in a unanimous resolution, is that it must have effective enforcement. The importance of effective enforcement was emphasized at the May 10, 2005 Queen’s Park news conference right after the Legislature unanimously passed the AODA.
When Doug Ford and the Tories campaigned to be elected in 2018 and again in 2022, they never, to our knowledge, warned the public, if they are elected, that they will essentially abdicate their responsibility to enforce the AODA.
- Accessibility Minister Cho also claims in the December 30, 2024 CBC News report:
“And 99% of accessibility audits is resolved. So, it’s working.”
This amounts to smoke and mirrors. Extremely few obligated organizations are audited, according to any information the Government provided to the AODA Alliance. The so-called “audits” are not inspections of an obligated organization’s premises or services. They are simply Government reviews of an obligated organization’s self-reports. Such paper audits are no verification of an obligated organizations accessibility.
- The Government has repeatedly told the media it is meeting or exceeding standards in the AODA. For example, a January 3, 2025 City News report stated:
“But the Ministry for Seniors and Accessibility tells CityNews Ontario is meeting, achieving, or exceeding the AODA standards.”
Even if we assumed that this claim were true (even though there is no evidence to support it), it means very little for people with disabilities. The five accessibility standards enacted under the AODA since 2005 are very weak and limited. They do not even address a majority of the disability barriers in Ontario. Too often, those standards set requirements for action that fall well short of the guarantees to people with disabilities in the Ontario Human Rights Code.
- In the Legislature on November 25, 2024, Minister Cho claimed:
“All new GO Transit stations, train platforms and bus stations adhere to the AODA…”
In fact, no AODA accessibility standards set any accessibility requirements for GO Transit stations, train platforms or bus stations. We have been calling for them to be strengthened since the Ford Government took office, so that they would require the accessibility of such places as GO Transit stations, train platforms and bus stations. The Government has done nothing in response. It has been sitting on the final report of the Transportation Standards Development Committee that the Government received before the Ford Government even took office.
- The Government has repeatedly claimed that it has invested heavily in new accessible infrastructure. For example:
A November 12, 2024 CBC News report quoted a Government official in part as follows:
“Pidgeon said in the email that under the current government, Ontario has had “historic spending” on infrastructure to improve accessibility, which includes school upgrades, new and retrofitted hospitals and long-term care facilities, as well as public transit upgrades including over 2,200 new accessible buses being delivered province-wide.”
During Question Period on November 25, 2024, Accessibility Minister Cho said:
“This year, school boards received $1.4 billion for AODA improvements. We have built the standards of the AODA into the Ontario building code. The province is making historic investments to make Ontario more accessible today and for the future. We are getting it done, Mr. Speaker.”
He also said this during Question Period that day:
“…We are the government that is seeking 50 new hospitals, 60 new schools—projects all exceeding accessibility standards. We are the government that has been a champion for accessibility.”
These claims are very substantially overinflated and overblown. The Government has nothing in place to ensure that all new infrastructure, such as new hospitals, public transit and schools, are fully accessible. One need not look any further than Toronto’s new Armoury Street courthouse. Last year, an AODA Alliance’s online video revealed that this billion-dollar project was replete with accessibility bungles.
As well, a new Toronto bike lane that turns out to have been built by the Ontario Government is situated on a sidewalk, endangering pedestrians with disabilities, as a 2023 AODA Alliance video revealed. Contrary to the Ford Government’s inaccurate boasts about the accessibility of new schools built in Ontario, the April 8, 2024 AODA Alliance Update demonstrates that the Government is not ensuring that its new school construction projects meet the accessibility needs of students, school staff and parents with disabilities. The K-12 Education Standards Development Committee’s final report offered detailed recommendations on this, which the Ford Government has never enacted in the three years since it received that report.
Moreover, these claims appear to include at least some figures about total infrastructure spending, not spending specifically limited to ensuring the accessibility of infrastructure.
- In the Legislature on November 25, 2024, Accessibility Minister Cho also stated:
“This is because we are the government that built AODA standards into the building code.”
In fact, the Government did not “build AODA standards into the Building Code.” There are no comprehensive built environment accessibility standards enacted under the AODA. There is only the very weak and limited 2012 Design of Public Spaces Accessibility Standard that was enacted under the AODA. It only addresses a tiny fraction of the barriers in the built environment, and almost none inside buildings.
The Ontario Building Code has, for years, included some built environment accessibility requirements. However, these have always been grossly inadequate. They fall far short of what the Ontario Human Rights Code requires.
Similarly, On November 25, 2024, Minister Cho said this in the Legislature:
“We have delivered over 2,200 accessible buses to municipalities.”
In fact, the provincial policy requiring accessible municipal buses started three decades ago, under Ontario’s NDP Government of Premier Bob Rae.