It's over and over again. Why? Why should disabled people get treated any differently than you or me? They have so many challenges with just the way they are treated, and with the system that's supposed to be helping them. It's most discouraging.
I had to advocate with SAID and social services. They're so set on policies—policies that are not invested in the people. They are harming the people. They are not flexible, and they will not change. If you try to connect with a person, they don't answer you. They pretend you don't exist. They won't phone you back. You have to phone another person. You try to find out who made these policies. You finally find out, and it takes maybe four months to get a meeting with them. When you do get a meeting, they're just stern on their policy, which is set up to fail some clients—not all clients, but some clients. They're strict and stern, and they won't change.
It's a very hard life being a disabled person. If you don't have an advocate, you're in big trouble. Many of the social problems right now in the communities and in the cities, with the homeless or the justice system, stem from a lot of these. I worked in the education system for a while, and some of the students had problems, because they couldn't learn. It wasn't their fault; they had intellectual disabilities. I moved on several years later and I worked in the RCMP. I'd see these people trickle down into that system, and it was a culture that wasn't changing. There was nobody there to help them. It started right in the school years where they never had the supports they needed. Then they're adults, and they don't have an education. They may not have an advocate. Some of them go into the justice system, and that fails them too. With many of the people we see—the drugs, the alcohol, the mental health problems, the homeless—a lot of it stems from the beginning, having intellectual disabilities.
If you're a disabled person, it's a long, hard road, and you are at a disadvantage compared to people like you or me.