We’ve just had a federal election in Canada. The focus, quite rightly, was on urgent matters of sovereignty threats and trade war practices posed by our vast and powerful southern neighbour. We hope the new government will successfully combat these threats so Canada can continue to be distinct from America, particularly in its championship of human rights and community values of diversity, equity and inclusion — values so detested by the current powers in the United States. Canadians know that diversity is our strength and the source of our pride, however imperfectly those values are realized.
The new government will by necessity be prioritizing economic issues, but they may need to be reminded that people with disabilities are disadvantaged in our economy, and have been since well before Canada became a signatory to the UNCRPD. Signing that Convention committed the government of Canada to realize educational, transportation and employment supports that are essential in order to permit disabled people to participate meaningfully in the economy. Furthermore, people who are unable to join the workforce should not be consigned to living in conditions of abject poverty. The newly minted Canada Disability Benefit introduced by the last government falls FAR short of raising disabled Canadians out of poverty, and must be either greatly increased or scrapped altogether, in favour of something perhaps like a Guaranteed Basic Income. Learn more at Basic Income Canada Network.
The new Prime Minister has made affordable housing one of his top priorities, and LWD supports that aim. The new government may need to be reminded of the obligation to make all new housing ACCESSIBLE as well as AFFORDABLE, in order to comply with its international treaty obligations under the CRPD.
Probably way down their list of urgent priorities — yet it should be at or near the top — will be repealing Track 2 MAiD in order to bring Canada into compliance with the UN CRPD’s basic principle of the right to life of persons with disabilities. The recent review of Canada’s CRPD performance by the UN Committee was explicit in its recommendation. The Committee was baffled by the previous government’s failure to appeal a lower-court decision (Truchon and Gladu) that declared end-of-life limits on MAiD unconstitutional. The Committee was baffled by Canada’s refusal to listen and take seriously the point of view of organizations of people with disabilities, not only in Canada but around the world. The oppression people with disabilities endure is not remedied by offering an early death in lieu of the means and resources to raise their living conditions up to a tolerable level, as required by the CRPD.
One discouraging fact we learned recently is that one of Mark Carney’s trusted advisors is one of our staunchest opponents, David Lametti, former Minister of Justice. When he was Minister of Justice, before the law was expanded to include non-dying people with disabilities, he convened a series of meetings (see The Vancouver Roundtable, at pages 63-64) of community leaders from disability rights organizations, ostensibly to seek their input on the coming Bill C7. They responded to the proposal with a unanimous “NO”, fully articulating their reasons for opposing the government’s 2-track approach. However Lametti, speaking for the government, perversely and dishonestly declared that the disability community was onside and that the law would proceed. Lametti is not to be trusted on this issue and Carney needs to have different voices entering his head.
In front of the UN Committee in 2025, the government repeatedly claimed to have adhered to a ‘nothing about us without us’ standard, and yet Bill C7 was definitely done without disabled people and their organizations. The committees of government set up to hear from the people on the issue refused to take seriously the point of view of disabled Canadians and their friends and advocates. (To see, hear and learn more about this, visit the Testimony to Government pages on this website).
This is a complicated history and a delicate subject to present to a man who’s busy trying to save Canada’s sovereignty and economy. Do disabled lives matter in a time of such urgency? Well, of course they do. They matter for their intrinsic value to the people living those lives. But furthermore, they matter as a sensitive barometer of how well a society is doing morally, as measured by how central the needs of its most vulnerable members are to its sense of itself. Canada is proud of its open-mindedness, its small-l liberal attitudes, its attitudes about community engagement and voluntary service, and its human rights commitments (with glaring exceptions, such as its historical and ongoing treatment of indigenous peoples). We think of ourselves as “nice people”. And we’ve elected a “nice guy” to lead us in a fractious and difficult moment in our history.
But it scarcely needs saying that “nice” only goes so far. PM Carney, on the night of his successful bid for leadership of this country, committed himself to three values:
– humility
– ambition and
– unity
The leaders of this country need to swallow a healthy dose of humility in order to admit to mistakes they’ve made on the MAID file. They should be ambitious in their effort to make sure every disabled person has the opportunity, support and means to participate and contribute to Canada’s social self-image to the best of their ability. And they should strive for unity in their commitment to the human rights of every citizen of Canada, regardless of ability.
There should be no unique right for suicidal people with disabilities to “qualify” for a quick and easy death when they are not otherwise dying. They should receive sensitive, responsive and life-affirming suicide prevention counselling, support for their material security, non-institutional shelter, healthy and adequate food, access to assistive technologies that make participation possible, and other guarantees of support for their well-being. Repeal of Track 2 MAID, along with a guaranteed basic income with additional disability supports would go a long way towards ensuring that Canada has something really positive to report in its next command appearance before the UN Committee on the CRPD in 2030.
Yes, it is bad timing that Trump has decided to turn the economy to chaos but we must not let our leaders forget about issues that make our country different than others. I wonder if anyone who reads this, might have the knowledge and determination to turn this into a letter writing campaign to catch the attention of our new government!
Great idea, Brenda! I’m open to the idea, for sure. Any volunteers?
The other thing the government is committed to through the CRPD is to establish and nurture a real dialogue with organizations of people with disabilities — not to “rubber-stamp” their pre-cooked plans, like MAiD or the Disability Benefit, but to actually work on creating real, life-sustaining support for community inclusion and participation. Honestly, if they can subsidize the oil industries to the tune of billions of dollars, why can’t they offer meaningful support for citizens who need it? The money is there!