The federal government is to be heartily congratulated for deciding that Canada needs accessibility legislation to make this a barrier-free country for over six million people with disabilities. The federal government is also to be heartily congratulated for agreeing that we need new legislation to lift hundreds of thousands of people with disabilities out of poverty, which they do not deserve to suffer from.
However, the Accessible Canada Act, like the Canada Disability Benefit Act, have both proven themselves to be strong on good intentions but extremely poor in implementation and impact.
I invite you, as part of this review, to ask key questions. Since the Accessible Canada Act was passed in 2019, have we made 25% of the progress we need to make towards the goal the act sets, which is a barrier-free Canada by 2040, since we've now used up 25% of the time? What disability barriers has this act caused to be removed? What steps need to be taken to get us to that goal, since this act is not working to achieve its goal with the force and effect that is needed? What are the problems?
The act does not, at present, require any disability barrier to ever be removed or to be prevented in any organization that the federal government can regulate. Not one single accessibility standard that is enforceable in law has been enacted in the five years since this law was passed. As a result, progress towards accessibility has been glacial and agonizingly slow.
I was invited to speak at a conference in Montreal last spring called Accessible Canada Accessible World, with leaders on accessibility from across the country from obligated organizations and with the minister responsible. I don't recall anyone, in their many speeches, ever identifying a single barrier that has been removed in the past five years because it was required to be removed by this act. There may be some out there somewhere, but we should have an impressive list after five years and not be struggling to scurry and find a few.
I'm not saying nobody's doing anything, either to implement the act or to address accessibility barriers; I am saying that the Accessible Canada Act is itself, as a matter of legal force, not significantly contributing towards its own goal. Its implementation and enforcement is labyrinthine because the law is outrageously complicated to read and to even understand.
I have two law degrees. I practised law for over three decades. I now teach law part time, and I think I have a specialty in this area. I can't figure out what the damn thing says, and if I can't, I bet you can't either. If you can't, I bet your obligated organizations are having a tough time. If they're having a tough time, I bet people with disabilities are having at least that tough of a time.
People with disabilities deserve better. Our brief offers you 10 amendments that we need. We recommended all of these five years ago when this bill was before Parliament. Sadly, they were all turned down. Had they been accepted, we'd be in a better place. I'm going to mention a couple now. I invite your questions, if I get more time, to explain more.
Number one, we need to impose a deadline on the government to pass at least one accessible standard that is enforceable by law, not a voluntary guideline or standard that Accessible Standards Canada produces. That's thin gruel. Nobody has to comply with it. Pass one that's enforceable within one year and four more within two years.
We ought to be able to do that at this point.
Number two, this law's implementation and enforcement is splintered incoherently across three different organizations: the accessibility commissioner, the CRTC and the Canadian Transportation Agency, the CTA. Those agencies are in a race to see who can go the slowest.
People with disabilities deserve better. Can we just have a one-stop shopping agency that will do it all, implement it all, enforce it all, and bring the regulations to cabinet to do it all? We have Accessibility Standards Canada, but they can only give advice. It's a good start, but we have to do a lot better. Let's get rid of this splintered, incoherent, unnavigable mess.
It's good that the act requires obligated organizations to make accessibility plans and report on their progress, but it doesn't require them to be any good and it doesn't require them to actually implement them. We can't bring complaints, and those agencies can't enforce anything if the plans aren't any good or if the plans aren't enforced.
I have a final point. For the short part of our list, not one dollar of federal money should ever be used again to create new disability barriers. The act doesn't require that, its implementation doesn't require that, and as a result, the government is free to give out money to provinces and hospitals and others for infrastructure projects that can include disability barriers. Nothing is required in this act to stop it. People with disabilities deserve better.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.