Persistent Lack of Leadership Leads to Lack of Action for Ontarians with Disabilities

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Just before the holidays, the Ford Government released a report which provided a review on the provinces progress on achieving public accessibility as defined by the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA). The AODA was passed by the Dalton McGuinty Liberals in 2005 and set a twenty-year target to make all public spaces in Ontario accessible by 2025. With a little over a year to go a recent review of the progress toward the 2025 targets has harshly criticized the province’s ability to even come close to achieving AODA compliance by 2025.

Quietly, on one of the last working days of the year, the government released the Independent 4th Review of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, despite it being provided to the government in June of this year. The report written by Rich Donovan (CEO – Return on Disability Group) points out the persistent failure of government over the course of nearly twenty years to properly implement and enforce effective accessibility policy in Ontario. Donovan calls on the Ontario Government to proclaim accessibility a crisis in the province and thereby enable a number of policy actions to achieve compliance with AODA.   

The report by Donovan is clear that AODA outcomes are poor and Ontarians with disabilities are suffering the consequences. The announcement of AODA in 2005 brought hope Ontarians with disabilities that they would see significant progress in their lifetime toward a more accessible society. Now with only a year left to achieve the mandates contained with AODA, the province is still decades away from achieving the promised actions of the Act.

The persistent failure to address providing adequate accessibility in the province boils down to a lack of leadership and political will to see the AODA through. Since 2005, both the Liberal and Progressive Conservative parties have held decisive majorities at Queen’s Park, yet neither of them have acted to ensure that the AODA has been properly managed, enforced and most importantly funded. Donovan states in his report that lack of funding is the major reason that accessibility outcomes in Ontario have been subpar since 2005.  In an interview with the Trillium Donovan refers to the funding necessary to reach compliance with AODA, and the subsequent risk that building owners face when looking to invest in accessibility solutions; currently the government does not have any risk mitigation strategies for building owners, this has stalled accessibility renovations significantly.

Inaction toward AODA accessibility extends to both the private and public sector. Earlier this year the Toronto Transit Commission announced that it would not reach its goal of AODA compliance by January 1st, 2025. If government and publicly funded organizations are failing to achieve compliance it is almost impossible to expect the private sector to have acted accordingly over the past twenty years. This is not to place blame on the private sector in Ontario, as the provincial government has been unwilling to address the clear and obvious flaws within the AODA which assigns almost all risk to private sector organizations when considering accessibility.

To begin addressing the AODA implementation issues, Donovan recommends that the government, within 30-days of the tabling of the report form a crisis committee chaired by the Premier and begin work to implement the following actions:  

1.  Emergency Response Protocol: establish clear, consistent emergency response protocols for all provincial government buildings that include the immediate and safe evacuation of all individuals within the building regardless of their mobility, vision or other functional difference that the individual may have.

2.  Service Delivery and Employee Experience with the Broader Public Sector: the crisis committee must issue a directive to all Deputy Ministers to identify barriers in customer (public) and employee experiences within their respective ministry and its services…The Crisis Committee must issue a directive to all Deputy Ministers that they must publish the barriers identified during consultations as well as a plan to remove these barriers.

3.  Creating a new Accessibility Agency to be elevated above the legislature: Develop a framework for the creation of a new Accessibility Agency. This agency would be tasked with leading and coordinating provincial and municipal accessibility activities…

4. Creation of a preliminary action plan with corresponding success metrics,

5. Develop initial actions for accessible government procurement.

Donovan also discussed the role in which the federal government can play in helping Ontario in achieving AODA compliance. He concludes that the province does not have adequate resources to collect the necessary data and track progress across over 400,000 organizations in Ontario. The CRA can help in data collection, which can inform decisions for funding and de-risking the accessibility value proposition.

Since 2005, Ontarians with disabilities (nearly ¼ of Ontarians) have been waiting for political leaders to fulfill the promise of accessibility as provided by the AODA and since 2005 these political leaders, both Liberal and Progressive Conservative have failed to act on these promises. Now with only a year to go for the province to achieve compliance with AODA this promise will not be achieved. As Ontario inches closer to the soon to be failed deadline, provincial leaders from all parties have the opportunity to reflect on this moment and commit to stronger leadership on accessibility action wherein deadlines will bring progress and not just broken promises.