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
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Why are New Buildings Still Being Constructed with Accessibility Barriers in Ontario? This Month’s Metroland Guest Column by AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky Offers Answers
July 31, 2024
SUMMARY
We are delighted to share with you this month’s guest column on disability issues by AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky published in the Toronto Star’s 25 local Metroland online papers on July 30, 2024. Set out below, it probes the important question why we keep finding new buildings in Ontario that are not properly and fully accessible to people with disabilities.
On this important theme, we also share below an article from the July 11, 2024 Toronto Star. It announces how a huge area in the north of Toronto is now opened up for a major development, with tons of new housing. That article does not discuss the critical problem that under current Ontario legislation, it is very likely that this new development will have disability barriers built into it simply because that is what so often happens.
How You Can Help
As the July 8, 2024 AODA Alliance Update announced, the Ontario Government is now accepting feedback on draft recommendations to address this problem which have been prepared by the Design of Public Spaces Standards Development Committee. Please quickly send us your thoughts on those draft recommendations! The AODA Alliance is preparing our brief to the Design of Public Spaces Standards Development Committee and we’re eager for your thoughts and suggestions.
For just one example of a new recent building that has many serious accessibility problems, get friends and family to watch the captioned AODA Alliance Video on the new Ryerson Student Learning Centre in Toronto. Also, get them to take a look at the AODA Alliance’s captioned video on the awful design of new bike paths in Toronto that are an accessibility nightmare.
Learn more about the AODA Alliance’s efforts over the past 15 years to tear down disability barriers in Ontario’s built environment by visiting the AODA Alliance website’s built environment page.
There are now only 154 days until 2025, 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.
MORE DETAILS
Inside Ottawa Valley July 30, 2024
Opinion
Why are new buildings still being constructed with accessibility barriers in Ontario?
By David Lepofsky
David Lepofsky is a retired lawyer who chairs the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance.
This monthly column, written by a retired lawyer who is blind, offers insights into various disability issues faced by individuals in Ontario. It emphasizes the importance of advocating for the rights of persons with disabilities.
In Ontario, why are so many buildings and outdoor spaces like sidewalks still not accessible to people with disabilities? After all, two decades ago, the Ontario legislature gave itself a standing ovation after unanimously passing the landmark Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act. It requires Ontario to become accessible by 2025, including buildings. We, in the disability community, tenaciously fought for a decade to win that law.
When I say “inaccessible,” you’d likely first think about barriers in the built environment obstructing people who use wheelchairs. Built environment barriers also impede people with many other kinds of disabilities, such as blind people like me. The built environment, this month’s column’s topic, is only one of the many contexts where 2.9 million Ontarians with disabilities face far too many barriers.
Ontario’s government has let this fester for decades. The Ontario Building Code has woefully inadequate accessibility requirements. The government hasn’t used the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act to address the vast majority of disability barriers in our built environment. Built environment disability barriers can lead to a disability case under the Ontario Human Rights Code, but enforcement takes years. Ontario cities have a patchwork of different bylaws. Some are better than weak provincial laws.
A building can comply with the building code and other Ontario accessibility regulations, but still be an accessibility mess. Watch this online video shot six years ago as I tour you through barriers at Toronto Metropolitan University’s Student Learning Centre, which opened in 2015.
Link to Video: Accessibility Problems at Ryerson University Student Learning Centre
Money should never be used to create new disability barriers. Yet, new public buildings — hospitals, university buildings and transit stations — keep getting built with accessibility blunders, using your money. The Ford government is spending over a billion dollars on new school construction, without ensuring it’s accessible to students, teachers and parents with disabilities. It appears to be ignoring detailed recommendations to fix this, which I took part with others in preparing.
Faculties that train new design professionals like architects don’t ensure that they learn to design places that are disability accessible.
At some point in your life, these disability barriers will impede you, even if you have no disability today. Wait till you get older.
What happens if you can walk up steps, but your dinner date cannot? If there’s a restaurant with steps out front, you’re not going to strand your date outside and dine alone in that inaccessible restaurant. Instead, you’ll together find an accessible restaurant. The inaccessible restaurant loses two customers.
We disability advocates have been trying without success to get the Ontario government to fix this for years. So did three successive government-appointed investigations.
In 2017, the government was required to appoint an expert committee to advise on how to improve regulations governing accessibility of our built environment. It only appointed it five years later. Draft recommendations were also kept secret for eight months, even though the disabilities act required the government to make it public upon receiving it.
I had told the Ford government that I wanted to apply for a spot on that advisory committee. Other great candidates like my friend David Onley would also have been great additions, but there was no open competition to serve on the committee.
There is a glimmer of hope. The Ford government invited public feedback on draft recommendations on how to fix this built environment inaccessibility mess. They need to hear from you.
We disability advocates soldier on, undeterred. Let your MPP know whether you think people with disabilities deserve better.
Toronto Star July 11, 2024
Originally posted at https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/its-hard-for-even-planning-staff-to-get-their-heads-around-five-ways-downsview-s/article_737d010c-2ccb-11ef-a706-3b6cdee99dca.html
Runway cleared for major development
Bombardier plant closure unlocks plans to eventually house 115,000 new residents
David Rider Senior Politics Reporter
With airplane manufacturer Bombardier gone from Downsview, work can start on what will essentially be a city within a city – 15 transit-oriented neighbourhoods, without any single-family homes, to be built from scratch.
The runway that Bombardier used to test jets is now clear to be repurposed for walking, biking and event spaces linking communities that will need schools, libraries, community centres and other amenities for which funding must be determined.
“The scale of the opportunity is the headline” for the 540 acres (219 hectares) unlocked by Bombardier’s departure, said Sarah Phipps, the city planner overseeing the project.
The city’s 30-year plan, with fellow large landowners Northcrest Developments and Canada Lands Co., a federal Crown corporation, envisions 115,000 new residents – roughly the population of Peterborough or Niagara Falls – and 52,000 new jobs on the swath of land north of Highway 401 and west of Allen Road.
“It’s hard for even planning staff to get their heads around” how big they can think for Downsview, Phipps said, noting the site is even larger than Toronto’s other massive redevelopment that is well underway in the Port Lands.
For Downsview, she said, “because we’re designing the roads, buildings, parks – everything – we’re able to set the whole community up in a way that maximizes green infrastructure, community development, walking, cycling and transit.”
Here are five key features of plans for the live-work-play neighbourhoods:
- The runway
Bombardier’s last jet screamed into the sky from Downsview on March 23 as the company moved to a new plant near Pearson airport.
The Star recently visited the 2.1-kilometre decommissioned blacktop, which, end to end, is about the distance of Yonge Street from Front to Bloor streets. Thanks to elevation, the former airstrip provides a commanding view south to midtown, the buildings at Bloor and Yonge streets, and the CN Tower.
Northcrest, owned by PSP Investments, the public-sector pension plan board that bought the 370-acre Bombardier site in 2018 for $816 million, says the transformed runway will be privately owned, publicly accessible space developed in segments with the new districts.
Chris Eby, Northcrest’s executive vice-president, says the “pedestrianized boulevard and community space will serve as the connective tissue for the new neighbourhoods being built.”
It will eventually feature parkettes, cafés and public art as well as performance spaces, skating trails and restaurant patios. Bits of the strip awaiting redevelopment will host temporary uses, such as festivals and markets.
Phipps says a series of parks will connect to the runway, which will be off-limits to vehicles. “That is different than what we have anywhere else, even along the waterfront – it’s the only place where we have this kind of scale,” she said. “It’s going to take a while to develop but it’s going to attract people from all over the city.”
- Housing
The city’s recently released Downsview secondary plan envisions 63,000 new housing units in midrise buildings and towers, including skyline-forming clusters around the area’s three existing subway stations – Wilson, Sheppard West and Downsview Park.
The only lowrise housing will likely be some stacked townhouses to act as a buffer with the existing Ancaster neighbourhood. “Single-family homes wouldn’t get the job done,” to meet targets set by the province and the city, Eby said. “We need places for our kids and grandkids to live.”
All of the districts will require housing, ranging from seven per cent to 20 per cent depending on ownership. The city is looking at opportunities for “deeply affordable” and rent-geared-to-income units. Forty per cent of total units will have two or more bedrooms, encouraging family use rather than towers full of the single-bedroom units favoured by investors.
Northcrest, Eby said, is “planning for a range of housing options: different income levels; different stages of life, including families, students and seniors; plus rental and ownership options.” The redevelopment will also include housing with supports for people escaping homelessness.
Planned amenities to service the new residents include schools, child-care centres, community space, community recreation centres, a library and permanent public art. There is a question mark over funding, however, thanks to new provincial government limits on what municipalities can charge developers to help fund services for new residents.
“Due to recent changes to the Planning Act, the community benefits charge will be insufficient to fund the full package of community benefits required to support 115,000 new residents anticipated for Downsview over 30 years,” according to a city report. “Other funding sources may be leveraged to fill any gap for provision of these facilities.”
The original plan for Villiers Island, being built in the Port Lands, was criticized for inadequate housing density given the size of the site and the scope of Toronto’s housing crisis. Phipps said she believes Downsview’s planned density is appropriate, adding that it’s higher than in the Railway Lands development near the Rogers Centre.
To give the residents places to work, shop and eat, the non-city partners are required to build a total of one million square metres of non-residential space.
So far, said Mark Richardson of advocacy group HousingNowTO, Downsview density targets look appropriate, but the scale and guarantees of affordability on the federal lands that make up part of the site need to be “locked in stone.”
“We’ve spent billions of dollars putting transit from Wilson Avenue up to Vaughan – we need to now exploit the government-owned lands adjacent to those transit stations to deliver all kinds of housing at speed, at scale, with the affordable rental component that the city needs.”
- Sustainability and resilience
You might not associate the former manufacturing site of luxury business jets with environmental innovation. Downsview developers are hoping to change that.
“The plan is to have the Northcrest lands become one of the first master-planned communities in Canada powered entirely by electricity, with no on-site use of fossil fuels,” Eby says. “Heating and cooling will be done using technologies such as geothermal exchange. As well, stormwater will be managed on-site using green infrastructure such as parks, grasslands and landscaped areas.”
Phipps says building from the ground up gives planners a chance to incorporate into parks and other public spaces “bioswales” – landscape features that collect polluted stormwater runoff, soak it into the ground, and filter out pollution. “When we have big, big storm events,” she said, “we’re able to use parks as dry ponds and that opens up a whole bunch of land because we don’t have to use stormwater ponds.”
- Equity and inclusion
Unlike most real estate projects, the Downsview redevelopment plan is unfolding with social justice principles, including Indigenous reconciliation and confronting anti-Black racism, built in from the start. City staff are overseeing a community development plan to “support social, economic and cultural development within defined neighbourhoods or geographic boundaries as well as tools and commitments made by the property owners to deliver a complete, thriving, equitable and resilient community.”
Much of the Indigenous community engagement is focused on the need for affordable housing, jobs and economic opportunities, as well as a new community development plan, said Bob Goulais, an Anishinaabe from Nipissing First Nation who is acting as a consultant on the project.
“The city and proponents also heard the importance of meaningfully and collaboratively including Indigenous culture and design elements in parks, natural spaces, community spaces, and creating new ceremonial spaces,” added Goulais.
Goulais said he foresees a Downsview community “inclusive of Indigenous Peoples, that appreciates our needs and ways of life, and is filled with First Nations, Métis and Inuit that live, work and enjoy this community of the future.”
Mark Tenaglia, executive director of the Oaks Revitalization Association, a skilled trades group, said he’s working with Northcrest on a program to give people from neighbourhoods such as Jane-Finch and Lawrence Heights construction training through LIUNA Local 183 and possibly other unions. The trainees, including those who have had trouble with the law, can move into full-time construction jobs at Downsview and other sites that will pay six-figure salaries with pensions and benefits, he said.
- Green Spine
The site will have a cycling “highway” and walking paths – three kilometres long and between 15 and 18 metres wide – dubbed the Green Spine.
The full corridor will eventually run from Sheppard Avenue West, in the north end of the redevelopment area, along the western edges of former National Defence lands and the TTC’s Wilson Yards, and connect to Dufferin Street in the south.
The Green Spine, which will have trees, other foliage and public art including murals, is intended to encourage residents to cycle or walk, rather than drive, to transit stations. That’s key to efforts to make the new districts less car-centric than surrounding communities.
Currently, about 75 per cent of trips in the area are by vehicle. The goal is to flip that within the redevelopment so three-quarters of the trips are by bike, foot or transit. “We can actually do that because we have subway stations, plus a GO station that will take you downtown in 22 minutes,” Phipps said. “We’re designing the community with the aim of making that easy, that will make that the obvious choice.”
At a recent city hall meeting, Coun. Dianne Saxe, a former Ontario environment commissioner, urged city staff to get the infrastructure in place right at the start, lest new residents get used to driving and continue out of habit. Phipps said she is aware of the concern and that the TTC has said it will run buses from Wilson subway station into the first developed district, which will be the farthest from already established transit.
“We are absolutely going to build this community so that people can work there, they can go to school there, shop there, without driving,” Phipps said.”I think people will look to be able to live in a different way (but) it will take time to get those services there – it’s a 30-year development.”
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