Ahead of his election in 2018, Doug Ford, in a letter to the advocacy group AODA Alliance, acknowledged the goal of Ontario’s flagship accessibility legislation is to remove barriers for people with disabilities that can impede their daily lives.
“Making Ontario fully accessible by 2025 is an important goal under the AODA (Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act) and it’s one that would be taken seriously by an Ontario PC government.”
Not only did he break the vow to improve accessibility and meet a legislated 2025 deadline for Ontario to be fully accessible—he made Ontario less accessible for those living with disabilities.
Since taking office, the Ford government has not enacted a single new standard under the AODA, nor has it strengthened any preexisting accessibility standards—despite evidence highlighting the dire need. The last new accessibility standard in Ontario was enacted in 2012—two premiers ago.
Three years ago, the PCs received a report from experts appointed to its Health Care Standards Development Committee on how to remove accessibility barriers within the healthcare system. It has done nothing with the report.
Four years ago, the PC government received an expert report from its Information and Communication Standards Development Committee on ways to bolster accessibility in the digital space. It has done nothing with the report.
The same year the PCs also received a report filled with recommendations for improving accessibility in the workplace. The PCs did nothing with that report either.
Seven years ago—months before the PCs took office—the government received recommendations from its Transportation Standards Development Committee on how to make it easier for everyone to travel across the province. The PCs have done nothing with the report.
Despite his letter in May of 2018 and his commitment to the AODA Alliance, after being elected the very next month, Ford froze the ongoing work of six committees studying ways to improve accessibility standards in the province.
“This delay added to Ontario’s being behind schedule for becoming accessible,” a press release from the AODA Alliance points out.
The PCs twice violated the AODA, first by failing to meet a deadline for appointing a Standards Development Committee to review the 2012 Design of Public Space Accessibility Standards. The PCs missed the deadline by four years. They also failed to appoint a committee to review the Customer Service Accessibility Standard for two years after the legislated deadline.
The PCs have committed billions in public money to build new schools in Ontario without any guarantee they will be fully accessible; have refused to conduct an audit of Ontario’s Provincial Demonstration Schools for the deaf and blind despite government officials paying $23 million in class action lawsuits to settle these claims and avoid any admission of wrongdoing. Ford has gutted funding for autism programs in the province, leaving families scrambling to find adequate programs for their children. The PCs spent nearly a billion dollars on a new courthouse in downtown Toronto which documents from the AODA show is “replete with preventable disabilities barriers” which the government had been warned of ahead of construction. Bike paths are built on top of sidewalks, putting those with disabilities at risk; e-scooters were approved in many municipalities across Ontario despite widespread concern from those with disabilities; and during the COVID-19 pandemic, the implementation of a triage protocol was delayed, putting those with disabilities at potential risk, and then when it was finally shared with hospitals, it was clearly discriminatory toward those with disabilities.
“It's infuriating, and there is a real sense of betrayal,” David Lepofsky, Chair of the non-partisan AODA Alliance told The Pointer. Lepofsky has been at the forefront of advocating for accessibility improvements for 30 years. He led the decade-long campaign from 1994 to 2005 to get the AODA passed in the first place.
“The fact is, the government knew the deadline was coming up. They knew they would not meet the deadline. They should have met the deadline by saying ‘this is not good enough. People with disabilities deserve better.’”
Ford and his PCs ignored the deadline and blocked advocates demanding change from having a say in the provincial legislature. He is the first Ontario Premier in two decades who has refused to meet with the AODA Alliance. Ford’s Accessibility Minister Raymond Cho met with Lepofsky early in his mandate, but over the last three years has refused to even answer emails from the group.
“The government clearly doesn't treat it as a priority. The Premier does not see it as something worthy of his time,” Lepofsky said.
The failures of the PC government under Ford speak to what Lepfosky calls a “troubling pattern” from this government which has completely disregarded the need to improve accessibility standards for those living with disabilities.
Angered and frustrated, and with a provincial election now a month away, disability advocates are calling on Ontario’s party leaders to commit to its Accessible Ontario Pledge, a plan with specific action items and deadlines for improving accessibility in the province and committing the government to following the laws laid out in the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act.
The Green Party was the first among Ontario’s political parties and the only to date to make the pledge. The Pointer contacted the Minister for Seniors and Accessibility’s office regarding whether the PCs will be committing to the plan, which draws on the Alliance’s years of experience with accessibility, but did not receive a direct response.
The Act, Canada’s first comprehensive disability accessibility law, was the product of a promise made in the Ontario legislature over two decades ago that by 2025, the Province of Ontario would be fully accessible to people with all kinds of disabilities.
The 20 years since have been filled with disappointment for those living with disabilities in Ontario as subsequent governments have failed to prioritize the needs of the province’s disabled population.
“Over the 30 years of advocacy in this area, we've found that people always come forward with an excuse about why it's not the right time. It is more of the right time now than it has ever been, because we have categorical proof that the government's implementation of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act failed to live up to its legislative promise,” Lepofsky said on January 6, during a press conference at Queen’s Park announcing the new Accessibility Pledge.
Disability advocates have warned elected officials for over 15 years that the province was behind schedule and that the legislated 2025 deadline would not be met unless successive governments increased their response.
The Alliance attributed the failure to several factors. Achieving accessibility gradually dropped as a government priority with strong leadership slipping with each subsequent premier in power. While there has been some progress on the AODA accessibility standards regulations enacted to date, the Alliance says they are not strong enough and “do not even remove or prevent a majority of the recurring barriers that people with disabilities face.” The provincial government has never presented a comprehensive multi-year plan with targeted deadlines to ensure that Ontario would reach the legislated goal by its 2025 deadline.
Several reviews since the Act’s implementation have repeatedly pointed out how successive governments have failed to implement measures under the Act or enforce the standards it mandates. The Act, which allows the Ontario government to implement and enforce standards around accessibility on everything from technology to the physical design of all spaces in the province, has largely been recognized as a failure by those living with disabilities in Ontario who have criticized its implementation, or lack thereof, since the legislation came into effect almost 20 years ago.
The latest review, completed in 2023 by Rich Donovan, CEO of Return on Disability Group, concluded the entire regime for enforcing and applying the AODA in Ontario is “an unequivocal failure”.
The reasons for this, he wrote, are “straightforward and predictable”. Donovan points to a lack of data collection by the Province and the total absence of any plan to change how “Ontario will get from where it currently is to where it needs to be.” There are no accountability mechanisms, and “the result is a series of failures and missed opportunities that has spanned 17 years.”
Donovan concluded Ontario is currently in the midst of an “accessibility crisis”. In another violation of the AODA, the PCs refused to release Donovan’s report. It was only after urging from the AODA Alliance that it was made public.
On a similar grim note, former lieutenant governor David Onley told Ford and his PC government in 2019 that progress toward implementing the AODA was “glacial”, leaving Ontario filled with “soul-crushing barriers” for people with disabilities.
“Having missed the legislative deadline, the government has the obligation to get us to that goal as soon as possible after that legislative deadline,” Lepofsky said on January 6. “We drew on our sense of being ambitious but being realistic. We proposed things that are required but that are also completely doable.”
The Ford government has consistently failed to take any action, despite having the power to do so. Under the AODA, the government has the ability to create and enforce accessibility standards around information and community; employment, transportation, design and public spaces, and customer service. The latest review of the Act found the Province failed to uphold and enforce these standards.
“If obligated organizations don’t believe there are any consequences for breaking the law, they are far less likely to obey the law,” an AODA Act press release states.
Despite the repeated failures of Ontario governments, Lepofsky remains optimistic about the potential for a better future for those living with disabilities in Ontario. During the course of more than three decades of advocacy, he has observed a shift in how people with disabilities view themselves. Reflecting back to his teenage years and into his early 20s, Lepofsky, who has been blind for much of his life, remembers how the prevailing perception of having a disability was associated with charity.
“Some people with disabilities just felt like whatever services or opportunities we get, that's what we get, and others found it unacceptable,” he told The Pointer.
Fast forward four decades and he finds himself motivated by a new generation of people who see themselves as rights holders.
“I am really motivated… meeting the next generation of future advocates who were born after this law got passed, accepted that these are their rights as a given — as they should — and who are fighting because the failure to honor their rights is not good enough, that they're not going to just accept that,” he told The Pointer. “To see more and more of them get active is a powerful force that drives me forward.”