Bill C-81 (Historical)

Accessible Canada Act

An Act to ensure a barrier-free Canada

This enactment enacts the Accessible Canada Act in order to enhance the full and equal participation of all persons, especially persons with disabilities, in society. This is to be achieved through the realization, within the purview of matters coming within the legislative authority of Parliament, of a Canada without barriers, particularly by the identification, removal and prevention of barriers.
Part 1 of the Act establishes the Minister’s mandate, powers, duties and functions.
Part 2 of the Act establishes the Canadian Accessibility Standards Development Organization and provides for its mandate and structure and its powers, duties and functions.
Part 3 of the Act authorizes the Accessibility Commissioner to provide the Minister with information, advice and written reports in respect of the administration and enforcement of the Act. It also requires the Accessibility Commissioner to submit an annual report on his or her activities under the Act to the Minister for tabling in Parliament.
Part 4 of the Act imposes duties on regulated entities that include the duty to prepare accessibility plans and progress reports in consultation with persons with disabilities, the duty to publish those plans and reports and the duty to establish a feedback process and to publish a description of it.
Part 5 of the Act provides for the Accessibility Commissioner’s inspection and other powers, including the power to make production orders and compliance orders and the power to impose administrative monetary penalties.
Part 6 of the Act provides for a complaints process for, and the awarding of compensation to, individuals that have suffered physical or psychological harm, property damage or economic loss as the result of — or that have otherwise been adversely affected by — the contravention of provisions of the regulations.
Part 7 of the Act provides for the appointment of the Chief Accessibility Officer and sets out that officer’s duties and functions, including the duty to advise the Minister in respect of systemic or emerging accessibility issues.
Part 8 of the Act authorizes the Governor in Council to make regulations, including regulations to establish accessibility standards and to specify the form of accessibility plans and progress reports. It also provides, among other things, for the designation of the week starting on the last Sunday in May as National AccessAbility Week.
Part 9 of the Act provides for the application of certain provisions of the Act to parliamentary entities, without limiting the powers, privileges and immunities of the Senate, the House of Commons and the members of those Houses.
Parts 10 and 11 of the Act make related and consequential amendments to certain Acts.

Accessible Canada Act

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Waterloo, ON]

I've been told to shut up by your colleague.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

Order, please. There is a lot of going back and forth. I can assure government members, including ministers and parliamentary secretaries, that they will have an opportunity to ask a question.

The hon. member has 15 seconds to wrap up.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, AB]

Madam Speaker, 15 seconds just to say we support the legislation. We want to see the legislation pass and it will pass with the support of all parties. We hope to have the opportunity to ask some questions of the government to address some of the outstanding questions that stakeholders have.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

Again, I will just remind members that they have plenty of time to ask questions and comments, so please refrain from shouting at the person who is talking or other people. That will work out a lot better.

Questions and comments, the hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Science and Sport.

[Kate Young, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Science and Sport and to the Minister of Public Services and Procurement and Accessibility (Accessibility)]

Madam Speaker, what is really happening here is that we are drawing out debate on legislation that as the member says, we all support.

There have been people here from the disabled community throughout the day and they are still here tonight, which is good to see. However, it is difficult to see them having to stay here and listen, knowing we will pass the legislation. It is unfortunate that this has happened. It is truly important historic legislation that we all want to come to fruition. I hope we can wrap up this debate so we can make this the historic law that it is.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, AB]

Madam Speaker, it is an interesting assertion that the member makes, and we have heard it made by Liberal members before, that because the bill will pass, we should not debate it. The Liberal government has a majority in the House. If we did not debate legislation that we knew would pass, we would never debate any legislation in the House.

My hope is that the member will take an opportunity to stand and speak in support of the legislation. When she does, I might ask about the fact that one such weakness, as pointed out by stakeholders, is the use of permissive language “may” rather than directive language “shall” or “must”. Then after she speaks, we might also have the opportunity to ask her to reassure stakeholders that this will not impact the ability of the legislation to have meaningful action that would benefit their lives.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Madam Speaker, the member for Edmonton—Wetaskiwin is a very strong advocate for the disability community and has spoken passionately many times in the House. Having worked with the disability community as well, I share his concern and I share his passion.

I am glad to see he is provoking the debate tonight. He is right to say that members of the deaf community are here, that they are listening, and we salute them. Their presence here is extremely important.

In the 15 years I have been here, disability discussions have been marginalized and put off. Therefore, discussing this throughout the evening is an important step to take.

As the member for Edmonton—Wetaskiwin mentioned, we need to speak about disability issues. The Liberals need to defend a bill that is so weak compared to what it could have been.

The member for Edmonton—Wetaskiwin understands fully how in the United States the Americans With Disabilities Act, passed under former president George Bush, was a sea change in disability rights. There was an obligation on government to provide disability services and provide access. I would like the member to comment on that difference.

We have a very weak bill before us tonight that would permit the government to provide accessibility, as if members of the disability community do not require anything more than some permission from the government. That is not the case. We have seen strong compelling legislation in the United States. Would the member prefer to see an approach that is strong and rigorous like we see with the ADA?

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, AB]

Madam Speaker, I love the question, a question from a member of the New Democratic Party for a member of the Conservative Party, talking about how we can create better legislation despite the fact that I believe both of our parties will support it and ensure it passes before the House. However, the conversation tonight is about how we can make it better, which is the point of debate in the House of Commons is. It is always the challenge to do better and raise the concerns.

One of the things the Senate committee did right, and a proper amendment that we all looked at and believed needed to be made, was the measure to include recognition of American sign language, Quebec sign language and indigenous sign language as the primary languages for deaf people in Canada. It is one step forward, but many other things could have been done to give the legislation more teeth and have more impact for Canadians. This is an opportunity to talk about that.

[Paul Manly, Green, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is an honour for me to speak in favour of the bill, the proposed accessibility Canada act.

I ran in 2015. I was a filmmaker, and it kind of destroyed my business. However, I took a job after that with Nanaimo Foodshare, doing work with people with diverse abilities, as they like to say, rather than disabilities, and people with barriers to employment. I worked with a group called the Self Advocates of Nanaimo, and I would like to give a shout out to my friends Kara, Crystal, Pat, Barb, Sara and Charmaine. They had a saying “Nothing about us without us”.

Advocacy groups have asked for more input on the bill, saying it could be better. However, I am glad to see we are making this historic change. I hope we can improve the bill at a future date.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, AB]

Madam Speaker, that was not really a question. However, it is questions and comments, and so that is fair. I welcome the hon. member to the House. It is always a big moment to get elected, especially in a by-election when we kind of get the shining moment to ourselves.

I love the fact that the member is using one of his earliest opportunities to bring up this point. One of the great learning experiences for me as a parent of a child with autism who is non-verbal is to have the opportunity to hear from people with autism who are verbal, such as the Self Advocates, who are just amazing people. They have taught me so much by articulating the very views that the hon. member is bringing forward. Even though my son is non-verbal, that is challenging me to pay more attention to his voice. He has something to say, but we have to be patient. We have to wait sometimes and hear what he has to say in different ways.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Madam Speaker, this has come up many times over the debate today, but I want to stress the fact that we are debating this because our stakeholders have told us that there are shortcomings within the legislation. As much as we support Bill C-81, there is no question that our stakeholders have told us there are still some gaps that they would like addressed. This was very clear when we had every opposition party in the House agree on more than 60 amendments to the bill. However, the Liberals at committee voted down each and every one of those amendments. In fact, we sat until midnight to try to get this through committee as quickly as possible. Therefore, I am thankful the Senate agreed with our amendments and that the minister has agreed to support some of them.

However, one amendment was not supported, and that was the fact that there were too many doors to try to address an issue. That was from stakeholders. For example, there is the Accessibility Commissioner, the CRTC, CTA, the Federal Public Sector Labour Relations and Employment Board. There will be no consistency in how these regulations or complaints will be addressed.

I would like my colleague to address one of those major concerns as brought up by our stakeholders.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, AB]

Madam Speaker, in our experience, and in my life experience working with people with developmental disabilities, one of the things that has been repeated time and again is that so many people are dealing with so many challenges that consume their lives and create a busyness to try and address those challenges, the last thing they need is confusion over a bureaucratic process that is difficult to navigate to get to the place they need to get the help they need.

This is about creating and offering help to people. We all need help at different points in our lives, and we hope the system will be designed to help us access that help when we need it and in the way that we need it. The proposed legislation complicates that. We have heard that from stakeholders. Again, it would be nice to have the opportunity to ask some of the government members about that.

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Families]

Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak to what I think is one of the most important pieces of legislation that this term of Parliament is managing. I pay my respect in particular to David Lepofsky, a lifelong friend who I first worked with when I was the chair of the accessibility and advisory committee at the City of Toronto. We tried to push forth as many progressive and enlightened ideas about how to make sure that people with disabilities, in the full range of what that means, had access to not just the city and city government, but participation in our communities in ways that we can only learn about if we sit in concert with people with disabilities to understand the various challenges that are required.

I would like to say this. If this was the only piece of legislation that our government had dealt with regarding disabilities, it would be a good piece of legislation. However, I also want to bring to the attention of the House all of the other measures we have taken across other forms of legislation and other forms of programs that I think are contributing to a change in this country and give people with disabilities the absolute place of citizenship they deserve simply by being Canadian.

For example, one of the requirements of the national housing strategy is to overshoot and make accessible housing a stronger requirement than it is in any provincial or municipal building code across this country. Of all units built as affordable housing in this country, 20% must be built to a universal design standard. A universal design standard is something that often brings to mind people who use mobility devices. However, the reality is, and we have heard it from the members opposite, that disabilities are much more complex, diverse and subtle than simply the ones that spring to mind in a stereotypical way. Therefore, a universal design is being brought to bear through the national housing strategy, which is also enshrined in a human rights approach to housing so that we make sure that we build housing for everybody when we use public dollars to create affordability. In the housing sector itself, some of the most progressive organizations in this country have pushed back against it for being too expensive. The cost of not doing it is what is too expensive. The cost of not making sure that when we use public dollars to build housing we build it for everybody is critically important to understand.

Additionally, when we look at other issues, such as the passengers' bill of rights, there is a nod to it. When we talk about the income supports that are designed to lift individuals out of poverty, we know that poverty impacts people with disabilities in ways that are far more complex and far more serious than simply addressing poverty for poverty's sake. Therefore, some of our programs have been intentionally designed to make sure that those programs are also stepped up.

I will provide an important example around public transit. Our investments in public transit are designed on a per-ridership basis and are invested into communities that provide transit right now. As well, they are designed to make sure that accessible transit is spoken to, not only in terms of providing new service, which is critical, and making sure things like elevator programs and subway stations in the city of Toronto are eligible to receive federal funding, but also that repairs to accessible buses are eligible.

We know that many communities have made the initial investment to get accessible community buses or DARTS into various parts of this country. Some of those communities were investing the first time with new dollars, but without the operating dollars for investment, they were losing that service to disrepair. One of the reasons we changed the infrastructure program to include state of good repair for public transit was specifically to address the issue of the fragility of some of those accessible buses. We need to make sure that accessible transit is available in many more communities right across the country.

We have also included active transportation in the infrastructure fund. This is important because we have built cities and communities across this country that do not accommodate mobility. Not every city in this country has a dipped curb at every intersection, which should be a standard design right across the country. There is also the retrofitting of traffic lights and intersections for people who require audible assistance to get across intersections. All of these things are part of what active transportation now funds. It is not just the big-ticket items of big subways, big pipes or big sewer plants, it is also the fine-grain infrastructure of cities that have to be built to accommodate everybody in this country. Our national infrastructure program accommodates that.

To speak specifically to the legislation here today, I want to explain, from the perspective of someone who is a parliamentary secretary and has to manage the flow from parliamentarians to minister's offices and manage the way in which amendments come forward, why it appears sometimes that an opposition amendment that is accepted eventually by the government is not accepted in its written form and has to be woven into the legislation because legislation often covers more than one bill and more than one form of federal regulation.

If the legislation is not written in a particular way, gaps are created within the system and those are the loopholes that quite often create the cracks that people fall through. For example, when we talk about the words “shall” or “must”, in drafting when I was a councillor at city hall we always looked for the words that were operative or provided permissions as opposed to instructions and tried to tighten legislation as much as possible.

With the federal drafting guidelines, because of the shared jurisdiction in many components of this bill with provincial, federal and municipal jurisdiction, and sometimes indigenous governments, we cannot force federal laws into those areas. We have to literally fit federal laws into those areas. That is why some of the language had to be fine-tuned to make sure it was consistent. We could not get to that in time for the committee. As the opposition has said, there have been 70 amendments. It is good in spirit, except in principle. We had to workshop and wordsmith them into the legislation to make sure they were operable across all the clauses, all areas of federal jurisdiction and all the intergovernmental realities this legislation governs.

On that point, when the legislation went forward to the Senate, we were still working with the spirit of those amendments knowing that senators were going to be working on them as well. We were having dialogue with senators about what amendments might be coming forward and how to fine-tune them to better fit them into the legislation, as well as looking at what legislation might come back to this House and whether it would have to be fine-tuned after having gone through the screen of the Senate.

It is a complex process of forming the language around the legislation. If it is not done properly, unintended consequences can have real impacts. On this issue, impacting people with disabilities unintentionally is doing harm to a community that has already suffered enough. Getting the law right was just as important as the timing of that legislation.

I do not really care who puts the legislation around the deadline to make sure that some of the elements of this bill must be enacted by a certain point in time. It does not really matter to me whether it is an opposition member, a Senate member, a government member or a bureaucrat who comes up with the notion. The idea is that we have to work together to evolve it into the right language and the right legislation.

We have taken the good advice of the opposition, the stakeholders and the senators and come up with an excellent bill that moves this agenda forward in a progressive and smart way, in the right way for people with disabilities.

As part of this process, the opposition has asked why it has taken so long. When one is in government, one is criticized for doing one of two things by one of two ways. One is either told that this was rushed to the House and time was not taken to consult, and one should have slowed down and consulted with stakeholders before bringing the legislation forward, or else one is criticized for consulting too much and not getting it to the House fast enough.

On this particular issue with landmark legislation, our government deliberately chose to consult widely across all of government. We chose to consult with provincial, municipal and indigenous governments. Fundamentally and most importantly, at the centre of every one of those consultations were the people with lived experience. We decided deliberately that because of the complexity of the community, the difference in geography of this country and the different reaches and federal regulations that had to be addressed through this legislation, that consultation ahead of introduction was critically important.

In fact, my conversation with David Lepofsky first started when we began to look at this legislation three years ago. It was not even a responsibility of the file I was carrying at the time. However, having come from the city, I had some experience with how legislation moves forward with government and I knew some of the experts in the field, people like Sandra Carpenter and others we had worked with previously with the city. I knew that if I could establish those relationships, bring them into the consultation, make that conversation robust, check with ministerial staff and my colleagues, monitor the work on committee and do the consultation properly, that we would get as big and strong a bill, as well as the most robust set of changes possible. That is why I thought consultation was important.

The opposition asks why we are waiting until the third year of our term to get through the House, and it is for that reason and that reason alone. It is not a sense of not having an urgency to address these issues. It is important to address them and the urgency is important, but getting it right is just as important. It is about having time to make sure that the Senate can give it a second look, that the committee has a proper process and that people with disabilities are involved. It is also about taking a look at what the committee did and the lessons that were learned. For example, making sure we had an inclusionary process, sign language, Braille and all the different forms of accommodation, including time for people with intellectual disabilities to speak without having the clock run out on them. It also includes making sure we had different ways of reaching out to these communities. This was the work of a Parliament seized with this issue and a government that seized this issue. As a result, it has the legislation here today.

The last point I want to address is this notion of why the Liberals are not all standing up and speaking one at a time. Every one of us has a story we could tell about the experience we have had in our families, our communities and our political life as we have come to a stronger understanding of some of the challenges we face or others face in our communities or in our families. There are disabilities in so many of the stories of people who sit in this legislature and it is one of the reasons why so many people are engaged in this file the way they are engaged. It comes from a very good space.

The reality is that as a government we are trying to get this to a vote. The longer I speak, the further away the vote is. We know that we are coming to the end of a term of Parliament and we know that things can happen that interrupt any single process, so we are nervous that we would not get this to a vote. We want this to come to a vote as soon as possible. We know that there are people in the galleries who have come here to watch the vote so that they can be present at the time when this historic legislation is passed.

The reason we are not standing up to repeat the points and to go on with the points endlessly and make the same point over and over again is not because we are afraid of the opposition. None of us on this side of the House is afraid of the opposition. We have dealt with the opposition members for four years and we know exactly where we stand with them. There are good voices, good questions and good points to be made and listened to and the legislation can always be made better; no one is saying that is not true. At the end of the day, we want this vote to happen and to happen in a way that shows that the whole country is behind the transformation of the approach to the rights of people who have disabilities. The whole country is behind the response that we all share to make sure that accommodation is not just reasonable but is progressively realized in a way that respects the dignity and the human rights of all the individuals involved.

I know that we will be revisiting this issue because disability and approaches to disability change over time. We need a fluid and flexible law that allows us to do that. Many of the elements that the community wanted in the legislation are going to be captured in regulation so we do not have to go through a three-year process to make changes to do the right thing, in the right way, in the right time frame. Ministers will be able to do that after the community and people have come forward and asked for those changes. The regulations can be changed without going through a robust, time-consuming and expensive parliamentary process. I am very proud of the fact that the legislation is good, but I am equally proud of the fact that the regulations are just as strong and provide that flexibility and ingenuity to make sure we can respond to the needs of these communities and the individuals as quickly and as effectively as possible, but from a perspective of the Human Rights Commission.

I said that the last point would be my last one, but I failed to address this in my general comments and I want to address it.

There are two approaches that are contemplated when looking at how one adjudicates or forces the government through complaint to respond to shortcomings in our system. One is to have the one-door approach; the other one is for everybody to have shared responsibility.

If, for example, the CRTC does not properly regulate new technologies to make sure they are accessible to and usable by all Canadians, we could have a single office that people go to in order to complain and then the office would have to manage the conversation and the process with the CRTC, or people could set it directly at the door of the CRTC and the CRTC could respond.

What we have in the design of this legislation is the best of both worlds. We have clearly an advocate that is housed at the Human Rights Commission that is part of the process of evaluating the implementation of this bill and the corrections to this bill and creates a living office to make sure this legislation is living and responds in real time to people's needs. However, they also have charged every single federal authority that touches the lives of Canadians with the responsibility that all of us have, which is to make sure the accommodations are progressive, beyond reasonable but effective to make sure people's human rights and dignity are fully respected. I do not think we are going to get a slower, more bureaucratic response. What we will get is a faster, more effective response by having the process established at every single federal institution, because every single federal institution has a responsibility to make sure all Canadians' rights and dignities are respected.

I am proud to be supporting this legislation. I am proud that our government has taken the time to get it right and to work with the communities, the individuals and the advocates involved. I am glad that we have had good input from the opposition and robust debate. Better is always possible. On this file, better must be achieved as a possibility because that is the goal here: how to make sure the rights of every Canadian, regardless of the physical circumstance he or she is born with or acquired, be respected with dignity and how to make sure the federal government responds to complaints and concerns effectively, quickly and in a progressive way.

I am proud our government is the government that has brought this forward. I am proud that we will be passing this legislation, and I am proud to be sitting in the House to vote on it.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

Before I go to questions and comments, prior to the member being recognized, the government House leader actually accused me of being biased and she acknowledged it. I want to say that she may have been busy at the time, but I did recognize a member from each of the parties during the questions and comments. I do not know why the government House leader would say such a thing, given the fact that there was one woman and no other women stood on the other side.

During a 10-minute question and comment period, the party actually giving the speech will get at least one question. That means there were four questions, and at about one minute each, that is about eight minutes. Sometimes it is a little difficult to cut someone off at the one-minute mark.

Given the fact that we are sitting late and that we are nearing the end of the session and people may be getting antsy, I would ask members to be very patient, but also to recognize that other people want to participate. There have been quite a few people who want to participate, and I would ask people to try to keep their questions and comments short.

On that note, I would expect that the hon. government House leader will actually apologize for her comments.

The hon. government House leader.