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
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More Good Media Coverage of Diverse Accessibility Issues
February 23, 2026
SUMMARY
Our advocacy efforts are targeted at so many different issues, from education to health care to public transit, just to name a few. Here are two recent news reports which typify the spectrum of our advocacy efforts:
- The February 22, 2026 edition of Whitby This Week, one of the Toronto Star’s Metroland publications, address the Ford Government’s failure to have any new plan of action on accessibility one full year after it failed to meet the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act’s deadline for leading Ontario to be an accessible province.
- The February 17, 2026 Toronto Star included a report on the problems at Ontario’s 7 school boards that the Ford Government seized control over, which identifies just some of the many problems facing students with disabilities/special education needs there.
How You Can Help
- Take your disability barriers to your local media. Urge them to cover them. Send us the coverage you are able to secure. Write us at aodafeedback@gmail.com
- Get practical tips on how to get the media to cover a disability issue by listening to the fourth episode of the AODA Alliance’s new podcast: “Disability Rights and Wrongs — The David Lepodcast.” Click here to get that episode.
- Take a look at just some of the media coverage on these issues, available on the AODA Alliance website’s media page.
MORE DETAILS
Whitby This Week February 22, 2026
Originally posted at https://www.durhamregion.com/news/aoda-shows-no-signs-of-improvement-1-year-after-deadline/article_4cad9276-ae42-5c84-b35f-6eef4e601fe8.html
‘We should be doing better’: Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act shows no signs of improvement 1 year after deadline
Demands for change aren’t being heard at highest levels, claim those who live with a disability and watch for change
“The only change has been in the wrong direction.”
By Tim Kelly
David Lepofsky is a lawyer and advocate for people with disabilities in Ontario. He says things have only declined since the Ontario government missed the Jan. 1, 2025, deadline to make Ontario fully accessible for those with disabilities.
What’s changed more than a year after the Jan. 1, 2025, deadline came to make Ontario fully accessible for all?
Not much if you ask the experts, watchdogs and those who live with a disability.
David Lepofsky, who has been keeping his eye on accessibility issues and the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) since its origins nearly 30 years ago, expresses frustration with the pace at which things get done.
“The only change has been in the wrong direction,” Lepofsky said in a recent interview.
“The government has announced absolutely no new actions on implementing and enforcing the AODA since it missed the deadline a year ago. In fact, it hasn’t even publicly acknowledged that it missed the deadline,” he said.
When the provincial election was held last February, Lepofsky, who runs the AODA Alliance, an up-to-date website that keeps track of Ontario accessibility issues, asked each party what they would do.
“Doug Ford didn’t even answer the request,” he said.
He said an all-candidates debate was organized to answer questions about disability issues, but the Ford Conservatives didn’t participate.
“What the Ontario government has to do is put in place a plan of action to get us to the goal of accessibility, which is still the law. It’s not only an obligation, it’s the law,” Lepofsky said.
The last time anything was enacted or revised in terms of accessibility standards was a decade ago, under the previous Liberal government, Lepofsky said.
During the decade since, he said, the government has received a series of recommendations to enact from government-selected panels on standards in employment, education, health care, information and communications, transportation and the built environment, Lepofsky noted.
“They have enacted nothing,” he said.
“With housing being such a big issue, they’ve enacted nothing in the area during an accessible housing crisis.
“On all of those fronts, they have done nothing, but when they receive one of those final reports from one of their government-appointed advisory committees, as a matter of law, they’re required to make it public upon receiving it. They have repeatedly withheld them, sometimes for years.”
Jim McEwen, a stroke survivor who lives in Clarington and uses a wheelchair, said he also has noticed no improvements in the past year, agreeing with Lepofsky’s assessment.
The one level of government he gives credit to is his local level. The Municipality of Clarington is looking into a measure to amend its traffic bylaw to exempt those with accessible permits from paid on-street or off-street parking.
It’s something Oshawa has done for years, according to Oshawa Reg. Coun. Brian Nicholson, but for McEwen, it’s a welcome improvement when it comes.
For McEwen, his personal pet peeve is inaccessible washrooms, but he’s been told time and time again that it’s an Ontario Building Code issue, not one that is covered under the AODA.
He doesn’t understand that thinking.
‘We should be doing better’
“There should be an accessible washroom in each restaurant and accessible doors to get in and out of washrooms,” he said.
McEwen said he sometimes has to ask another patron to come with him and hold a washroom’s outer door open so he can get in to use the facilities. Even if there is an accessible stall inside the men’s room, he then needs someone to help him get out.
It frustrates him that this is still the case in 2026, more than a year after the deadline for full accessibility for all Ontarians.
“We should be doing better,” he said.
Raymond Cho, who is the minister for seniors and accessibility, did not respond for a request for comment.
Tim Kelly
Tim Kelly is a reporter with durhamregion.com. He can be reached at tkelly@durhamregion.com.
Toronto Star February 17, 2026
Originally posted at https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/why-is-ontario-taking-over-school-boards/article_86819dfb-d0b6-4f14-9c84-06051b232fc0.html
Ontario has taken over seven school boards. What’s behind the unprecedented power move by Education Minister Paul Calandra?
The minister said “immediate intervention” is needed when issues affect student learning. Is he laying the groundwork for a new governance model?
By Kristin Rushowy Senior Writer
Seven school boards stripped of power – and an eighth likely – in the past nine months alone.
Never before has the government taken over so many boards, including the two largest in the province, and the move has left families and observers wondering what’s next.
Some say Education Minister Paul Calandra is laying the groundwork for a system without elected trustees, and this is a trial run for a new governance model. Others believe he’s gone overboard in trying to control school boards.
His reasons for seizing control are typically financial – multi-year deficits, questionable budget decisions – though boards argue the main issue is years of underfunding.
But more recently, with additional powers granted to him under new legislation, Calandra has also stepped in or threatened to because of dysfunctional or incompetent leadership – which in one case saw students in Parry Sound learning in a half-demolished building – and, in the Peel public board, in part to prevent imminent teacher layoffs (a claim trustee David Green and others dispute).
Late last week, the York Catholic board submitted a letter to Calandra with its bid to avoid supervision, which the education minister threatened because of trustee infighting and overall ignorance of their roles and responsibilities – plus mounting legal fees as they battled each other in court, costing the public more than $320,000 – along with other financial concerns.
(Calandra is set to rule as early as this week whether to send in a supervisor.)
In an interview, Calandra said what’s happening with boards is not a test run, but “immediate intervention” that’s needed when students and learning are impacted.
“I suppose the easier thing to do, frankly, is just let it continue on the way it’s going – I’ve said right from the beginning, where we avoid responsibility for decision-making, that has to come to an end,” Calandra said. “The ministry has to step up – we have to step up to be able to provide a more consistent level of education across the province.”
But critics see it differently. New Democrat education critic Chandra Pasma said “every time he takes a board under supervision, he gets to do a media tour saying ‘well, the trustees were incompetent. That’s why I had to do it.’
“And board by board, he keeps repeating that narrative, and by the time he takes the next step of getting rid of elected boards altogether, he’s created this public perception that they had to go because they were not only outdated, but incompetent.”
With the Toronto public and Catholic, Peel public and Dufferin-Peel Catholic, Ottawa public, Thames Valley public and the Near North board now being run by a supervisor, that covers about one-third of all students in the province.
“Supervision should always be a last resort,” said Kathleen Woodcock, who heads the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association, adding trustees want to work with the government and “all education partners to innovate, modernize, and strengthen Ontario’s publicly funded education system, but it is getting more and more difficult to do so with each passing week as classroom-level decisions continue to be made at Queen’s Park without local input.”
With widespread governance reforms on the horizon, Calandra reiterated that “school boards are still going to be in existence – but they all have to know what the expectation is, and the behaviour that we expect, regardless of what the governance model is.”
He wants more “clear, concise decision-making – decisions that put kids first. I want less conflict within the system and more focus on results and achievement and how the heck we get there.” He said when boards “fall off the rails, it’s so harmful to kids.”
What does the education minister want boards to do
Case in point, he added, is the Near North board, where construction delays and poor communication meant Parry Sound students didn’t start classes in a brand-new building last fall as planned, forcing some to learn online for two weeks and others to take classes in a half-demolished school.
“It’s kind of gross – we can’t allow this to happen,” he said. “I’ve never hidden the fact that it is my intention to step in when boards fall off the rails. It’s not a trial run for me in any way, shape or form – it really isn’t. These boards need immediate intervention to make sure they’re on the right path.”
Trustees in the seven boards have been shut out – save for Catholic boards, where they still have a say in denominational issues. In January, five of the supervised boards opened parent support offices.
The supervisor in Toronto has made some popular decisions – including reinstating a beloved principal at an arts high school after parent outrage and ending a controversial lottery system for specialty programs – but also controversial ones, such as removing class caps in grades 4 to 8 (though keeping an overall average of 24.5). In Ottawa, the supervisor put an end to an unpopular elementary school restructuring plan the board had been planning that would have changed school boundaries and uprooted thousands of kids.
But many frustrations remain, including why supervisors are needed – with $360,000 salaries – and complaints about less communication than when trustees were in charge.
“I know that the supervisor meets regularly with the province, and I’m smart enough to know that they are driving the bus,” said Ottawa parent Sarah Boardman. “He was brought in to address financial mismanagement; multiple independent audits found none.
“This was a control move by the province from the start.”
Alyson King, a political science professor at Ontario Tech University, said families expect to see the supervisors make a difference.
“They’re saying the words, but are they actually doing the actions that make them improve the lives of teachers?” she said. “We know that the resources going into the classrooms have not really increased, and the teachers themselves are under increasing stress with all the needs that students have.”
Budget troubles ahead
The toughest work has yet to happen, with most of the boards running deficits and spending more in areas than they receive from the government, and the supervisors expected to get boards to balanced budgets when things like school pools or daytime international language instruction are popular, but unfunded.
Supervisors are likely to close schools or sell off buildings to help balance the books, something boards themselves had asked permission to do.
“There is growing concern that these takeovers are part of a broader plan to seize control of school board finances and real estate across the province,” said David Mastin, president of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario.
He said that in the past, supervision has not made much difference in boards’ financial situations in the end, and what the government is doing “follows the same failed playbook Ontario has seen before.”
In Ottawa, supervisor Bob Plamondon sent a letter to parents saying he’s determined the deficit to be $11.5 million, but that “my objective is to find efficiencies within the system and reinvest some savings directly into student learning,” including more educational assistants in classrooms.
He wants to spend “less on solar panels without a clear financial return and more on classroom air conditioning and improving water quality in rural schools,” he wrote, adding he’s also “asked staff to move quickly to divest unused facilities.”
Calandra said supervisors were directed that “if our funding formula isn’t meeting the needs, then you’ve got to tell me and we’ll look at that … but we’ve also said to them, the goal is to put more money back in the classroom.”
He also said it’s time for the province to take over certain responsibilities, such as cybersecurity, in the wake of massive privacy breaches in a number of boards.
Communication issues
Parent involvement advisory committee co-chair Katrina Matheson said while still early, communications with the supervisor in the Toronto public board have improved and he has been providing updates and taking their questions.
“From our side, we see him as a co-operative partner so far, and we’re looking forward to more collaboration in the future,” she said.
But David Lepofsky, who heads the public board’s special education advisory committee, said it should have been advised of an “adverse” decision to increase the size of two types of special education classes.
Before the government considers doing away with public trustees, another union official, who has been critical of the elected officials in his board, said it could look to provide better training or ensure they have resumés with skills the boards need.
“Why such a drastic step?” said Mike Totten, head of the Catholic teachers union in York Region. “I think there are ways to make it better.”