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
Get Federal Candidates to Make the “Accessible Canada Pledge” in this Snap Election – Here are 3 Tips on What to do Right Away!
March 22, 2025
SUMMARY
Sigh! With the Ontario election just finished, we find ourselves now up to our disability advocacy ears in a new snap federal election. The AODA Alliance is ready for action!
This Update gives you three easy ways you can help raise disability issues in this election right away! We will offer more suggestions and give you more helpful information as the election campaign unfolds.
We’ve already written the federal party leaders, asking them each to make the Accessible Canada Pledge. It would ensure that the implementation and enforcement of the Accessible Canada Act (ACA) is swift, strong and effective, that air passengers with disabilities stop suffering horrific mistreatment by Canadian airlines, and that the Canada Disability Benefit Act at last fulfills its purpose of lifting people with disabilities out of poverty.
The AODA Alliance’s March 21, 2025 news release lets the news media know what we’re asking of the party leaders. We will of course make public any responses that the parties send us.
How To Help Right Now
- Please ask candidates to make the Accessible Canada Pledge. You can do this if a candidate or canvasser comes to your door, or if you attend any public election event like a candidates’ debate, or if any candidate appears on a call-in program on the media. You can give them the link to the Accessible Canada Pledge which is posted at https://www.aodaalliance.org/whats-new/in-the-impending-federal-election-which-political-parties-will-promise-strong-action-to-prevent-more-horrific-mistreatment-of-air-passengers-with-disabilities-that-a-house-of-commons-report-recommend/
- Publicize the AODA Alliance’s March 20, 2025, letter to the party leaders asking for them to make the Accessible Canada Pledge. Circulate it on social media. Link to it on your website.
- Help the AODA Alliance get as many disability and community organizations as possible to sign a forthcoming open letter to the federal party leaders. That open letter will call on the leaders to make the Accessible Canada Pledge.
In just one day, we have already gotten 13 disability organizations to sign on! If you work at a disability organization, or are a member of one, or have any contacts with any, please ask them to contact us to be a signatory on this forthcoming open letter. We will make it all public and send it to the media once we have heard back from more organizations.
Contact local, provincial or national disability or community organizations. We need an organization’s head, CEO or chair to give us permission to list their organization as a co-signatory.
Organizations can get a copy of the open letter and discuss this with the AODA Alliance by writing us at aodafeedback@gmail.com
And of course, they can read the Accessible Canada Pledge on the AODA Alliance website.
For More Background
The AODA Alliance Website’s Canada page documents its efforts to get the Accessible Canada Act strengthened and effectively implemented.
The AODA Alliance website’s Bill C-22 page sets out efforts to substantially improve the paltry Canada Disability Benefit.
The AODA Alliance website’s transportation page details efforts to make air travel and other modes of transportation accessible to passengers with disabilities.
AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky’s March 19, 2024, testimony at the House of Commons Standing Committee on Transport’s hearings into Canadian airlines’ horrific mistreatment of passengers with disabilities.
AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky’s October 1, 2024, testimony before the House of Commons Human Resources Standing Committee (HUMA) on the need to strengthen the weak Accessible Canada Act during Parliament’s five-year review of that legislation.
AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky’s April 27, 2023, testimony before a Senate Standing Committee on serious deficiencies in the Canada Disability Benefit Act.