ODA Committee Update
October 3, 2002

ODA Committee Writes Chair of Government-Appointed Accessibility Advisory Council to Offer Our Help and to Ask for Council's Plans for Consulting Ontarians With Disabilities SUMMARY On October 2, 2002, ODA Committee Chair David Lepofsky wrote to Mr. David Shannon, chair of the Government-appointed Accessibility Advisory Council. Under the Ontarians with Disabilities Act 2001, this Council is created to advise the Government on steps for implementing this new legislation. In this letter, the ODA Committee again offers to help the Council. It also asks for the Council's plans for consulting with persons with disabilities across Ontario, an activity that is central to its mandate. The ODA Committee encloses for the Council with our 100-page 1998 brief, originally submitted to the Ontario Legislature, which details many barriers we face. We ask the Council to use this in its work. We also ask the Council to recommend to the Government that it announce the date when it will proclaim section 21 of the ODA 2001. That is the only provision of the legislation which the Government has not scheduled for proclamation. Below is the text of our October 2, 2002 letter to Mr. Shannon, as well as the letter we sent him back on June 13, 2002. If you want copies of the enclosures, visit the ODA Committee website at: http://www.odacommittee.net or write to us at: oda@odacommittee.net Send us your feedback on this letter at the above email address. In ten days, it will be ten months since the ODA 2001 was passed into law. ***** ONTARIANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT COMMITTEE c/o Marg Thomas 1929 Bayview Avenue, Toronto ON M4G 3E8 Tel: (Voice direct) 416-480-7686 Fax: 416-480-7014 Voice mail: 416-480-7012 email: oda@odacommittee.net TTY: c/o Susan Main 416 964-0023 ex. 343 Web site: www.odacommittee.net October 2, 2002 David Shannon, Chair, Ontario Accessibility Advisory Council c/o the Accessibility Directorate, 400 University Avenue, 3rd floor, Toronto, Ontario, M7A 2R9 and c/o David Shannon 101 Syndicate Avenue, Suite 310 Thunder Bay, Ontario P7C 3V4 Dear David, Re: Ontarians with Disabilities Act I am writing to follow up to my June 13, 2002 letter to you. The ODA Committee is eager to work closely with the provincial Advisory Accessibility Council on the implementation of the Ontarians with Disabilities Act 2001. We would welcome the chance to get the Council's views on the matters raised in our June 13, 2002 letter to you. When the Government brought forward its ODA bill last fall, it emphasized that an important role of the new Advisory Council that it was creating and appointing was to consult with the broad disability community, and to give the Government input. We are eager to learn from you what specific plans your Council has for conducting consultations around Ontario, and when these will begin. We also would welcome any information on how we might be able to assist you in ensuring that your consultations are open, accessible, comprehensive and inclusive. The ODA Committee has a great deal of experience in conducting public forums in this area, and in helping others who wish to do the same. We would be delighted to share that experience with your Council and to do whatever we can to help you. For example, we have developed an excellent network for getting word out around the province, and would be pleased to use it to announce public consultation meetings that your Council might hold. Now that the Ontario Government has proclaimed in force most of the Ontarians with Disabilities Act 2001, it is important that your consultation process begin as soon as possible. It must be frustrating for the first five members of your Council, whom the Government appointed at least five months ago, that the Government has not yet appointed the seven other members of the Council, as of the time I am writing this letter. However we hope that delay does not hold up your Council's preparation for conducting broad consultations around Ontario. In anticipation of your Council's forthcoming work, we want to provide you with an important document that we prepared. We ask that you share it with the other members of the Council and take its contents into account in giving input to the Ontario Government. We know it is long and detailed, but it will be worth the time needed to read and carefully study it. I enclose our April 22, 1998 comprehensive brief to the Ontario Legislature on our proposals for the Ontarians with Disabilities Act. It is entitled: "MAKING ONTARIO OPEN FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES - A BLUEPRINT FOR A STRONG AND EFFECTIVE ONTARIANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT". It is the product of over three years' work on our part, consulting with people with disabilities and disability organizations across Ontario. It includes the result of public consultation forums we held in many cities around the province between 1995 and 1998, and very detailed research and reflection. This brief received very substantial endorsement by the broad disability community when the Government held consultations on the ODA issue back in the summer of 1998. This brief includes three elements that will be particularly helpful for you and the Council. First, Chapter 2 contains our detailed blueprint for the ODA we have been seeking. The legislation which the Government passed last December does not include many of the elements that we proposed. However, the ODA 2001 gives the Government the power to make regulations which can incorporate many of our suggestions. Your Council is given a mandate to make recommendations to the Government on what regulations should include. We ask that you recommend regulations that incorporate as much of our blueprint as possible. Second, Appendix 1 of the brief, entitled "Life in a Province Full of Barriers" provides an extremely detailed list (about 50 pages) of barriers facing persons with all kinds of disabilities. We learned about these from very extensive consultations around the province. We ask that your Council recommend that the Government pass regulations which address these barriers, and that you take whatever additional steps you can within your Council's mandate to ensure that action is taken to remove and prevent these barriers. Third, Appendix 2 of our brief sets out the results of an important public opinion survey conducted for the ODA Committee in 1997. It shows that there is strong public support for mandatory measures to require that barriers facing persons with disabilities be removed and prevented. We ask that this strong public support be incorporated into your advice to the Ontario Government. Please note that the text of this brief is also available on our website. We can also send you an electronic copy of it as well, if you wish. We also wish to raise one other matter with you at this time for consideration by your Council. The Government proclaimed in force most of the provisions of the Ontarians with Disabilities Act 2001. It has scheduled December 1, 2002 to proclaim the provision requiring Ontario Government websites to be made accessible. However, it has not said whether or when it will proclaim in force section 21 of the Ontarians with Disabilities Act 2001. That important provision provides the ODA's only mandatory enforcement. That unproclaimed provision would impose a fine if public sector organizations do not make an annual accessibility plan, or if municipalities with a population over 10,000 do not establish a local disability accessibility advisory committee. We ask your Council to recommend to the Ontario Government that it now announce the date on which that provision will be proclaimed in force, and that it be proclaimed in force as soon as possible. We look forward to hearing back from you on the matters raised in this letter and in my June 13, 2002 letter to you. We again offer our help in ensuring that the Government-appointed Advisory Council succeeds in fulfilling its mandate. As an administrative matter, when we spoke back in early July, you had said that my June 13, 2002 letter had not reached you. I immediately emailed it to your Thunder Bay office. It was also posted on the ODA Committee's web site, www.odacommittee.net back in July, and was emailed to our broad ODA email list. I am also now including a copy of it again with this letter, to ensure that it reaches you. I am also sending this letter to you both at the Ministry of Citizenship address that Citizenship Minister DeFaria provided to us for you, and to your Thunder Bay office. Please let me know that you received this letter. Please also let me know whether there is a more appropriate address for us to use in the future. Yours sincerely, David Lepofsky, C.M. Chair Ontarians with Disabilities Act Committee cc: The Hon. Ernie Eves 325-7578 Carl DeFaria 326-9338 Chris Stockwell 325-7755 Dalton McGuinty 325-9895 Dwight Duncan 325-2201 Steve Peters 325-7262 Ernie Parsons 325-4757 Howard Hampton 325-8222 Peter Kormos 325-7067 Marilyn Churley 325-3252 Tony Martin 325-3720 Nadia Temple Enclosures: 1. ODA Committee's 1998 Brief to the Ontario Legislature 2. ODA Committee's June 13, 2002 letter to David Shannon, and its enclosures ***** ONTARIANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT COMMITTEE c/o Marg Thomas 1929 Bayview Avenue, Toronto ON M4G 3E8 Tel: (Voice direct) 416-480-7686 Fax: 416-480-7014 Voice mail: 416-480-7012 email: oda@odacommittee.net TTY: c/o Susan Main 416 964-0023 ex. 343 Web site: www.odacommittee.net June 13, 2002 David Shannon, Chair, Ontario Accessibility Advisory Council c/o the Accessibility Directorate, 400 University Avenue, 3rd floor, Toronto, Ontario, M7A 2R9. Dear Sir, Re: Ontarians with Disabilities Act On behalf of the Ontarians with Disabilities Act Committee, I want to congratulate you as well as Jeff Adams, Dean LaBute, Barry McMahon and Duncan Read on your being appointed by the Ontario Government to the Ontario Accessibility Advisory Council. We look forward to working together closely with all of you and with the entire Council on the implementation of the Ontarians with Disabilities Act 2001. As you know, the ODA Committee is widely recognized for leading province-wide efforts to secure the enactment of a strong and effective Ontarians with Disabilities Act. We are also recognized as a leading centre of expertise in this area. Having launched grassroots regions in 23 parts of Ontario, our membership and network enables us to reach and hear from a wide range of individuals and organizations across Ontario. Our activities over the past seven and a half years have involved, among other things, holding numerous public forums on the ODA. As a core message, we have been very active at urging the Ontario Government to hear directly from persons with disabilities, as well as from their families, friends and supporters. To assist you and the Council, as well as the new Citizenship Minister and Accessibility Directorate, we have prepared the enclosed "PROPOSED ONTARIO GOVERNMENT ONE-YEAR ODA WORKPLAN." In it we have identified a list of important tasks that we recommend that the Ontario Government undertake over the next year to implement this legislation effectively. As our June 13, 2002 letter to the new Citizenship Minister indicates, (a copy of which we are sending to you) in preparing the Proposed Workplan, we solicited input from our membership across Ontario and carefully analyzed the terms of the ODA 2001. We hope that you and the Government find this Proposed Workplan helpful, that you find our suggestions reasonable, that you recommend that the Government adopt it or that you will recommend that the Government adopt comparable strategies and time-lines in its final workplan. During the public discussion and legislative debates over the ODA 2001 last fall, the Ontario Government made a series of 13 important commitments to Ontarians with Disabilities. To assist you and the Council we enclose both a list of these 13 commitments, and a list of the public statements by the Government in which these commitments were made. We hope that the Council will voice a strong public commitment to the mandatory removal and prevention of barriers against persons with disabilities in all sectors. The ODA Committee looks forward to working together with the Council on developing strong, effective and mandatory regulations to ensure the timely removal and prevention barriers against persons with disabilities in the public and private sectors. We encourage the Council to begin an open consultation process as soon as possible across Ontario with persons with disabilities on what those regulations should include. Our Proposed Workplan includes specific recommendations regarding such a consultation. Finally, we also encourage the Council to make its proceedings and deliberations open to all. Again, congratulations to you and the other members for being selected by the Government to serve on the Accessibility Advisory Council. Yours sincerely, David Lepofsky, C.M. Chair Ontarians with Disabilities Act Committee cc: The Hon. Ernie Eves 325-7578 Carl DeFaria 326-9338 Chris Stockwell 325-7755 Dalton McGuinty 325-9895 Dwight Duncan 325-2201 Steve Peters 325-7262 Ernie Parsons 325-4757 Howard Hampton 325-8222 Peter Kormos 325-7067 Marilyn Churley 325-3252 Tony Martin 325-3720 Nadia Temple Enclosures: 1. PROPOSED ONTARIO GOVERNMENT ONE-YEAR ODA WORKPLAN 2. CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENT'S 13 COMMITMENTS TO ONTARIANS WITH DISABILITIES 3. CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENT'S STATEMENTS SETTING OUT ITS 13 COMMITMENTS TO ONTARIANS WITH DISABILITIES

 

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Last updated October 6, 2002 7:02 pm