Monitoring the Human Rights of People With Disabilities in Canada - Toronto Monitoring Site Report
Copyright 2012 Disability Rights Promotion International Canada (DRPI-Canada)
All rights reserved. Published 2012.
Printed in Canada.
Published by Disability Rights Promotion International Canada (DRPI-Canada)
York University
4700 Keele Street, 5021 TEL Building
Toronto, ON M3J 1P3
Canada
Telephone: +1 416 736 2100 x.20718
Email DRPI Canada
DRPI Canada Website
Project Collaborators and Contributors
- Miha Dinca, Panaitescu DRPI-Canada Project Coordinator
- Marcia Rioux, Project Director and Principal Investigator
- Bengt Lindqvist, Project Director
- Paula Pinto, PhD, Researcher
- Vishaya Naidoo, Researcher
- Sandra Carpenter, Executive Director, Centre for Independent Living Toronto
- Centre for Independent Living, Toronto
- Iphigenia Mikroyiannakis, CILT Toronto Project Coordinator
- And many others.
DRPI-Canada - Monitoring Individual Experiences Theme:
- Marcia Rioux, DRPI-Canada director
- Normand Boucher, university theme leader
- Steve Estey, community theme leader
- Sandra Carpenter, community theme member
- Isabel Killoran, university theme member
- Mihaela Dinca-Panaitescu, DRPI-Canada coordinator
This Report has been financed by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). SSHRC does not necessarily share the views expressed in this material.
Responsibility for its contents rests entirely with the authors.
Acknowledgements
Many people contributed to this project. We would like to acknowledge the Centre for Independent Living in Toronto (CILT) for it’s role in acting as the site coordinator for Toronto and the team involved in the project. Sandra Carpenter, Executive Director of CILT, Jamie Wong, Information and Systems Manager, CILT, Iphigenia Mikroyiannakis, Project Coordinator, CILT, and Melanie Moore, Robin Simmons and Matthew Christie, Researcher/Interviewers.
We would also like to acknowledge the dedication, attention to detail, overall project coordination of Michaela Dinca-Panechescu, DRPI Project Coordinator who was key in moving this work forward.
Paula Pinto (Assistant Professor, ISCSP, Technical University of Lisbon, (Consultant, DRPI) also needs to be acknowledged for her role in coding, analyzing and presenting in a variety of forums the information that the site team collected in the interviews and with Vishaya Naidoo for compiling and drafting the report.
Marcia Rioux (DRPI Project Director and Principle Investigator) and Bengt Lindquist (DRPI Project Director) have to be acknowledged for their vision and leadership in making this project possible and for understanding that monitoring disability rights and establishing a database of evidence-based information is an essential step in bringing about social change.
But mostly it is the people with disabilities who were engaged in the project and who contributed through their stories who were the primary contributors. They have been pioneers in recognizing the importance of letting people know the degree to which rights are realized and rights are not realized in Ontario. Thank you to them and we hope this report can be used as a base for further reports and as a means to tracking positive change.
“I’ve been in Toronto for 15 years and I still cannot go east and west through the downtown core on regular TTC service because streetcars are not wheelchair accessible in any way, shape or form. They’ve got more accessible buses but if I could take the regular TTC I wouldn’t have to rely on Wheeltrans at all to go to work and to go home” (man, 43 years old)
“I was going from high school to college and I was denied an application. They called us all in through the guidance office and my turn came they told me they’d run out of applications. But the kid after me got one. Then I realized that the guidance counselor was making a judgment. In her mind she didn’t think I warranted the opportunity because she didn’t think I could do it.” (woman, 50 years old)
“I sent an email to Ottawa to say that I couldn’t access the information because I’m vision impaired and I’d love to apply for that position because I knew I had all the qualifications and more for that position. I got a response two days later from somebody in Ottawa. There was a name but I know it was a secretary who said to me: ‘Well, if you can’t access the website, why do you think that you need that job?’ I was really hurt by that.”
(woman, age n.a.)
“I have some mental health issues. They [the ambulance attendants] don’t always understand that. They label you as crazy instead of just depressed or having post-traumatic stress symptoms.”
(woman, 61 years old)
“Movie makers and the producers and the theater owners think for some reason that people are going to be inconvenienced or offended or confused by having captions on the screen. They will not, but the point is - they value those people much more than they do deaf people.” (man, 41 years old)