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ACCESSIBILITY FOR ONTARIANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT ALLIANCE
Where’s the Wynne Government’s Plan of Action to Ensure that Ontario becomes Fully Accessible by 2025?
Analysis Of Premier Kathleen Wynne’s December 23, 2014 Letter and Economic Development Minister Brad Duguid’s December 8, 2014 Letter to the AODA Alliance
CONTENTS
ITEM PAGE
1. Summary 1
2. Premier Wynne’s Unkept Promise to Direct Cabinet Ministers and
Senior Officials on the Government’s Accessibility Duties and Promises 5
3. Our Call for the Premier to Show Leadership on Disability Accessibility 6
4. Keeping The Government’s Longstanding Promise to Effectively
Enforce the AODA 7
5. Deciding which New Accessibility Standards to Create under the AODA 12
6. Ensuring that the Built Environment Becomes Fully Accessible by 2025 13
7. Improving Employment Opportunities for People with Disabilities
Especially in the Private Sector 15
8. Ensuring Public Money is Never Used to Create or Perpetuate
Accessibility Barriers 16
9. Ensuring a Strong Disability Accessibility Legacy for the Huge
Public Spending on the 2015 Toronto Pan/ParaPan American Games 17
10. Re-Engineering the Ontario Public Service to Become a Barrier-Free
Employer and Service Provider 20
11. Integrating Disability Accessibility Action into All Programs of the
Economic Development, Employment and Infrastructure Ministry 23
12. Ensuring Provincial and Municipal Elections Become Fully Accessible
for Voters and Candidates with Disabilities 24
13. Speeding Up the Long-Delayed Promised Government Review of All
Ontario Laws for Accessibility Barriers 27
14. Educating School Children and Key Professionals on Accessibility for
People with Disabilities 27
15. Accelerating Efforts at Making Ontario’s Courts Fully Accessible to
Court Participants with Disabilities 28
16. Other AODA Alliance Questions to Cabinet Ministers that the
Government Has Not Answered 29
17. Annual Budgets and Expenditures by the Accessibility Directorate of Ontario 30
18. Key Links 30
ACCESSIBILITY FOR ONTARIANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT ALLIANCE
Where’s the Wynne Government’s Plan of Action to Ensure that Ontario becomes Fully Accessible by 2025?
Analysis Of Premier Kathleen Wynne’s December 23, 2014 Letter and Economic Development Minister Brad Duguid’s December 8, 2014 Letter to the AODA Alliance
January 19, 2015
1. Summary
The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) requires the Ontario Government to lead Ontario to become fully accessible by 2025. Ontario now lags behind schedule for reaching that goal. Ten years have passed since that law was passed. Fewer than ten years are left before the legal deadline for becoming fully accessible.
In the 2014 Ontario election, we asked Premier Kathleen Wynne to promise that if re-elected, she would direct her cabinet ministers and senior public officials to keep the Government’s disability accessibility duties and commitments. On May 16, 2014, she gave that pledge in writing.
To help the Premier and her Government, last summer the AODA Alliance separately wrote Premier Wynne and ten cabinet ministers, to ask for their specific plans to fulfill the Government’s accessibility pledges and duties that fall within their mandates. The AODA Alliance gave each politician a specific list of needed actions.
As another way to help the Government, last June, the AODA Alliance made public a detailed 368-page brief. It shows that the Government’s past and current actions on accessibility to date are far too little to ensure that Ontario becomes fully accessible by 2025, or indeed, at any future time. That brief gave the Government recommendations to get Ontario back on schedule for full accessibility, and to keep its accessibility promises.
Despite our efforts, Premier Wynne has not kept her promise to direct her cabinet and senior officials to keep the Government’s accessibility promises and to fulfill its accessibility duties. On September 25, 2014, the Premier sent detailed “Mandate Letters” to each cabinet minister to list their priorities, totaling 100 pages. She snubbed over 1.8 million Ontarians with disabilities, by systematically leaving out most of the Government’s accessibility pledges from those Mandate Letters.
In December 2014, after waiting for months, the AODA Alliance finally received responses from the Government to our letters sent the previous summer. We received a December 23, 2014 letter from Premier Wynne and a December 8, 2014 letter from Economic Development Minister Brad Duguid (who is responsible for implementing and enforcing the AODA).
To read Premier Wynne’s December 23, 2014 letter to the AODA Alliance, visit http://www.aodaalliance.org/strong-effective-aoda/01192015a.asp
To read Economic Development Minister Brad Duguid’s December 8, 2014 letter to the AODA Alliance, visit http://www.aodaalliance.org/strong-effective-aoda/01192015.asp
These letters were offered to answer all our inquiries. This gave the Government a chance to set out a clear and effective plan for concrete action to keep its promises and to get Ontario back on schedule for full accessibility.
Instead, the Government’s two December 2014 letters are little more than a polished public relations response. They give Ontarians with disabilities real cause for concern.
To our immense frustration, the Premier and Economic Development Minister offered no comprehensive plan of new action to get Ontario back on schedule for reaching accessibility by 2025. This is a cruel irony. In our letters to each minister last summer, we tried to prevent this from happening, cautioning:
“We have often written Ontario cabinet ministers, to make constructive proposals for specific actions on accessibility. To often our letters have simply been routed to a communications branch official for a "public relations" response. We too often end up receiving a letter, authored by communications officials, that thanks us for writing, praises our advocacy on accessibility, and voices support for making Ontario accessible. Such letters then simply repeat lists of things the Government has already done or promised. Too often these responses do not actually answer our inquiries or proposals.
Please don't let that happen here. We are eager to know what you are open to doing from among the proposals we here set out. We would be happy to discuss our ideas with you. Your Ministry officials have been brief over and over on these issues, so they should be able to bring you and your office up to speed in very short order.”
Today we make public our detailed issue-by-issue analysis of the Government’s two December 2014 letters to us, measured against the letters we sent the Premier and ten of her cabinet colleagues last summer. We also provide links to the Premier’s and Economic Development Minister’s letters, to our letters to which they are responding, and to other key documents.
In summary, Premier Wynne’s and Minister Duguid’s new letters announce virtually nothing new. They almost entirely re-announce things the Government has already done. What little that is new in these letters is so vague as to add very little. What is found in those letters will not get Ontario back on schedule for full accessibility by 2025.
This flies in the face of Kathleen Wynne’s pledge to us in a December 3, 2012 letter, when she was running for the Ontario Liberal Party’s leadership. She pledged that she would ensure that Ontario is on schedule for full accessibility by 2025.
Our analysis of the Government’s two December 2014 letters shows that the Premier’s and Economic Development Minister’s letters leave unkept too many key Government election promises on disability accessibility. They sidestep important accessibility promises and questions from us.
For example, after reading these new letters from the Government at the highest level, we have no idea
* the number of organizations the Government will investigate, audit or inspect to keep its promise to effectively enforce the AODA.
* when the Government will at last take the simple step of establishing its promised toll-free number for the public to report AODA violations.
* when the Government will end its 3.5 year dithering over which accessibility standards it will next create.
* what the Government will do to keep its promise to increase private sector employment opportunities for people with disabilities.
* what the Government will do to ensure that the 2015 Toronto Pan/ParaPan American Games leave a strong legacy of improved accessibility of tourism and hospitality services, as well as public transit, for tourists and Ontarians with disabilities.
* what the Government will do to remove the barriers that still prevent voters and candidates with disabilities from fully participating in provincial and municipal elections in Ontario.
To explain away its continued lethargy and dithering on accessibility, the Government cannot blame the provincial deficit, or a lack of funding for the office charged with implementing and enforcing the AODA, the Accessibility Directorate of Ontario.
Minister Duguid’s December 8, 2014 letter reveals that the Economic Development Ministry’s Accessibility Directorate left unspent a staggering $2.4 million of its 2013-2014 budget. This happened while the Government remained systematically derelict in fulfilling its duty to enforce and effectively implement the AODA. Minister Duguid’s December 8, 2014 letter states:
“Lastly, for 2013-2014, the Accessibility Directorate of Ontario’s budget was $16.1 million, with actual expenditures being $13.7 million.”
As the data set out near the end of this Analysis shows, in each year since 2005 (the year when the AODA was enacted), the Government has failed to fully use the funds it gave itself to implement and enforce the AODA. Taken together, a stunning 26.2 million of budget for the Accessibility Directorate over the years since 2005 has languished, unused.
In November 2013, we revealed and the media widely reported that the Government was breaking its promise to effectively enforce the AODA. The Government knew that fully 70% of private sector organizations with at least 20 employees were violating the AODA. Yet the Government had not inspected any of those organizations, or imposed any compliance orders or monetary penalties on them. Blasted in news headlines and editorial coverage for this, the Government announced in November 2013 that it was immediately taking enforcement steps for 2,500 of the known 36,000 law-breaking organizations.
From new statistics in Minister Duguid’s December 8, 2014 letter, we discover that since that initial flurry of new enforcement efforts, the Government has only issued Notices of Proposed Order against a mere additional 750 of the remaining 33,500 organizations which the Government knows were violating the law. That drop in the bucket trivializes the AODA.
Minister Duguid’s new letter revealed that up until the start of this year, the Government has still done nothing whatsoever to enforce any requirements for the private sector in the important areas of accessibility of transportation, employment or information and communication. There are obligations in those areas that have already been in effect. The Government already gave public and private sector organizations extravagantly long time lines before those duties kicked in.
Minister Duguid’s December 8, 2014 letter shows that the Government still only has a tiny staff to do full time AODA enforcement. Under the AODA, the Government must appoint one or more directors and inspectors to audit and inspect public and private sector organizations across Ontario, and to impose monetary penalties. Back in November 2013, Government records revealed that to oversee the hundreds of thousands of public and private sector organizations in Ontario, the Government then had a mere two directors and one inspector, to enforce the entire AODA. According to Minister Duguid’s December 8, 2014 letter, this has been marginally increased to four directors, up from two, and two inspectors, one full time and one temporary (up from one). We have no idea what, if anything the Government plans to do now to deputize other Government inspectors with AODA inspection mandates.
In her letter, Premier Wynne made palpably exaggerated claims about the Government’s progress on accessibility. Prominent among these, she claimed that
“Hospitals, and all members of the broader public service, are 100 per cent compliant with current AODA standards.”
Our analysis of these two Government letters explains that Premier Wynne had no basis for making such a claim.
The Premier’s December 23, 2014 letters’ description of the Government’s work on disability accessibility lists some helpful past efforts on accessibility. However, these have been proven to be insufficient.
The Premier’s letter clouds the fact that the Government has treated disability accessibility issue as a sidelined low priority on the front lines. Over the past four years, we have had to deal with a revolving door of four different cabinet ministers and three different deputy ministers shuffled in and out of lead responsibility for the AODA. Ministers in other portfolios appear not to have been directed to treat this issue as a real priority.
We have no voice at the cabinet table. At her cabinet table, Premier Wynne has appointed a Minister Responsible for Women's Issues, a Minister Responsible for Seniors Affairs, a Minister Responsible for Aboriginal Affairs, a Minister Responsible for Francophone Affairs, and a Minister of Citizenship responsible for needs of newcomers to Ontario. Yet there remains no Minister Responsible for People with Disabilities. The Economic Development Minister is responsible for implementing and enforcing the AODA. However, he is not responsible for overall oversight of all disability issues across Government.
This is certainly not the first time the Government has responded to our offers of detailed proposals for concrete action with evasive “public relations” letters that mainly trumpet the Government’s past actions. On December 2, 2011, right after the 2011 Ontario election, we wrote seven cabinet ministers to offer recommendations for action on accessibility, and asked each minister for their plans. Over the next weeks, we received answers from each minister. Those responses, like the Government’s December, 2014 letters to us, avoided most of our proposals and instead requests, and recited past Government actions on accessibility.
To read our December 3, 2011 letters to seven Ontario ministers to seek their plans on accessibility, visit http://www.aodaalliance.org/strong-effective-aoda/12052011.asp
To read the largely non-responsive letters to the AODA Alliance from seven Ontario cabinet ministers early in 2012, visit http://www.aodaalliance.org/strong-effective-aoda/05042012.asp
On May 28, 2013, the previous minister responsible for the AODA, Eric Hoskins, told the Legislature that accessibility for persons with disabilities is a top priority for you and your Government. He also said that “Talk is important, but it will only get us so far. We need action." The letters from Premier Wynne and Minister Duguid do not demonstrate that that needed action will be forthcoming.