Province announces $30-million Disability Strategy
June 16, 2009
Plan includes immediate action, long-term goals for accessibility
Manitoba’s disabled community has received a significant boost from Opening Doors, a $30-million provincial disability strategy that calls on public opinion to facilitate long-term change.
Family Services and Housing Minister Gord Mackintosh announced the strategy on June 4, less than one month after Manitoba’s Disability Health and Wellness Conference drew attention to the precise issues the strategy highlights: accessibility, inclusion and adaptation.
“There’s been such a positive response … and many people coming up to me commending the province for continuing to move forward,” Mackintosh says. “We’ve gotten the unprecedented thumbs up from Manitobans with disabilities in particular.”
Two weeks ago, Mackintosh unveiled Place Bertrand – Winnipeg’s newest completely accessible housing development.
Days later the province unveiled plans for Manitoba’s first accessible campground, to be located at Winnipeg Beach.
And as recently as Monday, a bill to protect on-the-job service dogs and proposing fines for those who interfere with the animals’ work was introduced into legislature.
Mackintosh says that’s just the beginning.
“There remains too many barriers that are unacceptable for Manitoba,” he says. “By and large, Manitobans are not disabled. People have disabilities, sure, but they more so have abilities. What is disabling are the attitudes we have and the environments we’ve created. We are now (using the strategy to deal) with the environment that we as a province have created.”
The strategy, which calls on the disability community for input that will shape long-term projects, contains a number of immediate actions including more inclusive housing, a six per cent increase to disability services, $500,000 earmarked for employment services and what Mackintosh calls a “barrier-busting infrastructure initiative” in which 39 public buildings will be made more accessible before the current fiscal year is up.
According to Mackintosh, the Province has a number of areas it wants input into and posed a series of questions for upcoming consultations with key disabilities stakeholders and interest groups:
- How can we better enable the use of technology in allowing Manitobans with disabilities to pursue their dreams?
- How can we expand the availability of visitable housing?
- How do we get beyond taking down the barriers just one complaint at a time?
- What are the pros and cons to the long-term approach Ontario has in place?
- What are the pros and cons of looking to human rights code or mandate?
- Are there other pieces of legislation in all different policy areas that can break down barriers in an effective and fair way?
- What is the role of changing the building code or other acts of legislature?
“There’s been some debate within the community of how to put in place a stronger framework,” Mackintosh says. “I look forward to seeing whether those views can be reconciled and what the best approach is. We want to make some decisions about how we can proceed with an action plan.”
Barrier-Free Manitoba’s Patrick Falconer says Manitoba has moved partway toward securing accessibility-rights legislation with the development of the strategy, but emphasized the province’s disability community must take critical next steps to ensure goals are met.
“We have critically important work ahead,” he said in a recent email. “First, in speaking clearly and resolutely in support of legislation during the consultations, and, thereafter, in working to ensure the legislation enacted at least meets the nine principles set out by Barrier-Free Manitoba.”
David Lepofsky, one of Canada’s foremost constitutional lawyers and the disability advocate who delivered the keynote at SMD’s recent Disability, Health and Wellness Conference, says Manitoba is poised to go where no government has gone since Ontario implemented disability legislation – which he was a driving force behind – more than a decade ago.
“In our lifetime there are very, very few opportunities when a door gets opened to make a huge difference,” says Lepofksy. “This opportunity has just happened in Manitoba and it’s one which Manitobans are strongly encouraged to grab and use to the advantage of the whole society.”
Lepofsky says he encourages each member of the disability community to become catalysts for community action and to guide the project along from a grassroots level to full-on legislative change.
“When the province asks whether Manitobans want disability legislation, the only answer is yes,” he says. “The question isn’t whether we want an act. The question is as to what disabilities act Manitobans want.”
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