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
New CBC Report on Another Disability Barrier Shows How Ontarians with Disabilities are Hurt by the Ford Government’s Failure to Effectively Implement the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act
June 24, 2025
SUMMARY
Here’s yet another news report that shows how Ontarians with disabilities suffer the consequences of the many years of the Ontario Government’s failing to effectively and fully implement and enforce the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act. People with disabilities fought long and hard for a decade to get that legislation passed in 2005 with a mandate for Ontario to become accessible to people with disabilities by the start of 2025.
A detailed June 23, 2025 CBC news report set out below describes a serious accessibility barrier to get into the municipal building in the northern Ontario town of Callander. A resident has had to resort to filing a complaint with the backlogged Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario.
The whole reason people with disabilities campaigned year after year to get the AODA enacted is so that individual people with disabilities would not have to battle against one accessibility barrier at a time by filing individual human rights complaints. No one should have to go through that undue hardship.
In this article, the Ontario Government responded to this problem by entirely and inexcusably ducking the issue. It said it is not appropriate to comment on the case since it is before the Human Rights Tribunal. Put simply, that is nonsense.
This is a bogus excuse that governments regularly use when they want to avoid an issue. Nothing forbids the Government from commenting on a case before the Human Rights Tribunal. Cases there are not decided by a jury that could be affected by media coverage. Moreover, given the current delays at the Tribunal, this case will not be heard for at least five years. A public comment by the Government five years earlier hardly poses a risk that the Tribunal could not provide a fair trial.
The Ford Government’s record on making the built environment accessible in Ontario is abysmal:
- Ontario still has no comprehensive Built Environment Accessibility Standard enacted under the AODA. Ontario only has the weak and inadequate Ontario Building Code’s accessibility requirements and the extremely limited AODA Design of Public Spaces Accessibility Standard (which leaves out the vast majority of disability barriers in the built environment.)
- The Ford Government violated the AODA by not appointing a Standards Development Committee to review the weak Design of Public Spaces Accessibility Standard until around five years after the legal deadline for doing so. Making this worse, the Ford Government has already received the final report of the Design of Public Spaces Standards Development Committee but has not yet made that report public. The AODA required the Government to make that report public upon receiving it. We’ve not heard a word about when they plan to obey that legal requirement. AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky applied to be appointed to that Standards Development Committee. The Ford Government did not accept his application.
- The Ford Government has been sitting on the final report of the K-12 Education Standards Development Committee for over three years and has enacted nothing to implement it. It includes 20 pages of recommendations for new school construction and retrofitting old schools to make them accessible.
- The Ford Government is using billions of public dollars to build new infrastructure without requiring it to be accessible. As an example of new provincially funded infrastructure replete with disability barriers, see the AODA Alliance video about the billion-dollar accessibility bungle that is the new Toronto criminal courthouse. There’s a 4-minute trailer, a 14-minute version, and a 49-minute unabridged version.
How You Can Help
- Send this news report to your MPP. Demand that the Government take action to make sure disability barriers like these are removed without people with disabilities having to become private accessibility cops, fighting barriers one at a time at the Human Rights Tribunal.
- Check out the AODA Alliance website’s built environment page to learn about our advocacy over the past 16 years or longer to prevent the creation of new disability barriers in the built environment and to remove existing barriers.
Get others to watch the new 4-minute trailer video about the billion-dollar bungle at the new Toronto courthouse.
As of today, 174 days have passed since the deadline which the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act set for the Ontario Government to lead this province to become accessible to people with disabilities. Where is Premier Ford’s plan of action?
Send us your feedback. Email us at aodafeedback@gmail.com
MORE DETAILS
CBC News June 23, 2025
Originally posted at https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/callander-accessibility-complaint-1.7566773
Woman in Callander files Ontario human rights complaint arguing municipal building isn’t accessible
Chantal Cormier, who uses a wheelchair, says ramp is needed as 2nd entrance is too steep
Jonathan Migneault CBC News
A woman in a wheelchair next to a road and painted path.
Chantal Cormier has filed a complaint with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario that argues a path and second entrance to the municipal building in the town of Callander aren’t accessible. (Submitted by Chantal Cormier)
A woman from Callander has filed a complaint with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario against the municipality and the province over her concerns around accessibility at the northern town’s municipal building.
Chantal Cormier uses a wheelchair due to an accident a decade ago that left her unable to walk.
She argues the municipality of Callander, located south of North Bay, has failed to make its municipal building accessible for people with disabilities. The building is where town council meets and residents go to access some municipal services.
In an online survey in 2021, Cormier pointed out that the building was not wheelchair accessible. The main entrance was near a hill too steep to safely use in a wheelchair.
In a special council meeting the next year, Callander Mayor Robb Noon asked if provincial legislation required the municipality to build an accessible ramp at the main entrance.
“No. It is not a necessity unless major repairs or enhancements are completed to the building,” responded Ashley Bilodeau, Callander’s senior municipal director.
Thea Kurdi, a consultant who specializes in accessibility, told CBC News that doesn’t take into account Ontario’s Human Rights Code, which supersedes the Ontario Building Code.
Building a 2nd entrance
In 2023, council voted to reallocate $50,000 in capital funding budgeted for an accessibility ramp to instead build a second entrance to the building.
The second entrance, completed in September 2024, was meant to improve access for people in wheelchairs. But Cormier has argued a path leading to the entrance — which was made with lines painted along the edge of a parking lot — remains too steep.
“The hill would be very challenging for the majority of wheelchair users and in my opinion, it would be very dangerous to descend,” Cormier told CBC News.
“Personally, I would be very afraid to go down that hill. I’d be afraid that I would not be able to stop and wind up in the middle of Main Street, fearing that I’d be kissing my life goodbye to the front of an oncoming vehicle.”
A staff report to council on March 25, 2025, said the path leading to the entrance does not exceed Ontario Building Code standards of an 8.33 per cent slope.
But Cormier said her husband measured the slope at 13 per cent, which is too steep for a wheelchair. CBC has not independently measured the slope along the path.
Kurdi said there are other issues with the path leading to the building, beyond the slope.
“The most significant issue I could see that was clear from the pictures was the lack of safety for pedestrians because there was no curb edge,” she said.
This barrier didn’t just arise last week, or last year, or in 2023 or 2022.
– David Lepofsky, disability advocate
Kurdi said a height difference between the path and parking lot would help better separate pedestrians and wheelchair users from cars. If a person is blind, a curb edge also lets them know where they can safely walk.
Kurdi also noted a lack of wayfinding, handrails and the proximity to parked cars.
“Unfortunately in parking spaces like this, where people and cars are in conflict, a seated person in a wheelchair or a shorter-stature person can easily, and often are, sadly hit by cars,” she said.
Kurdi said painted lines are also often covered by snow and ice in the winter, which makes them difficult or impossible to see.
Cormier said the ideal solution to make the entrance accessible would be for the municipality to build a switchback ramp, which zigzags back and forth. It’s a way to ensure the slope is never too steep for a wheelchair.
The municipality’s March 2025 staff report, however, estimated the cost of building a switchback ramp would be over $350,000, which would result in a five to six per cent municipal tax increase.
The report also said there is not enough space for such a ramp without encroaching into the neighbouring road allowance.
Disability advocate David Lepofsky, who chairs the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance (AODA Alliance), argues the Town of Callander should have thought about making its municipal building accessible at least 20 years ago.
“This barrier didn’t just arise last week, or last year, or in 2023 or 2022,” he said.
lobbied for the creation of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, which became law in 2005.
The act gave organizations in the province, including municipalities, 20 years to meet accessibility standards outlined in the law. That deadline was reached in January 2025.
“When the question is, ‘Why was the province given 20 years?’ The answer was because there’s a bunch of old buildings out there. Society, the business community, municipalities said, ‘We need time to get this all fixed,'” Lepofsky said.
“Now when you suddenly decide in 2022 or 2023, ‘Oh my gosh, maybe we should fix this.’ That’s squandering 17 of the 20 years for no good reason.”
Cormier is also including Ontario’s ministries of Municipal Affairs and Housing, and Seniors and Accessibility in her human rights complaint.
She argues they have failed to uphold accessibility standards and inspect Callander’s municipal building to see if it meets current standards.
In an email to CBC News, the Ministry of Seniors and Accessibility said it “would be inappropriate” to comment on Cormier’s case because it is now before the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario.
Noon and senior municipal director Ashley Bilodeau also said they cannot comment for the same reason.
A long process
According to Lepofsky, it could take years for a resolution from the tribunal.
He had his own fight against the City of Toronto decades ago. In that case, he argued the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) was not accessible for blind people because there was no audible information about upcoming stops.
Because of his win at the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, upcoming stops are now announced over speakers. Many other cities in the province also have the same system for their transit services.
But Lepofsky said it took years for that change to happen.
“It can take half a decade to just get a hearing, and cities know that. So they can just sit on their hands and not worry about it. Or politicians could go, ‘Let the next council worry about it.'”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jonathan Migneault
Digital reporter/editor
Jonathan Migneault is a CBC digital reporter/editor based in Sudbury. He is always looking for good stories about northeastern Ontario. Send story ideas to jonathan.migneault@cbc.ca.