O Canada -The Disability Movement North of the Border

by Douglas Lathrop

In recent months, a Molson's commercial has been a big hit on Canadian television. In the ad, a young man in a flannel shirt stands in front of a giant maple leaf flag and runs down a list of things that make him distinctly Canadian: "I have a prime minister, not a president....I believe in peacekeeping not policing, diversity not assimilation, and that the beaver is a truly proud and noble animal.

"Canada," he concludes passionately, "is the second largest land mass, the first nation of hockey, and the best part of North America! My name is Joe, and I AM CANADIAN!"

 O Canada - The Disability Movement of the North Border

Yeah, so it's a beer commercial. But this minute of tongue-in-cheek jingoism has become something of a phenomenon - recited at sporting events, in bars and at political rallies. The implied joke, of course, is that such chest-thumping is so, well, un-Canadian. Canadians don't wear their patriotism on their sleeves like Americans do. At least that's how the stereotype goes.

Americans, for their part, know precious little beyond the stereotype. When most of us think of Canadians, we think of TV characters like Dudley Do-Right and Bob and Doug MacKenzie. For us, Canada is a place with lots of snow, socialized medicine and polite, friendly people who end every sentence with "eh?" but are otherwise just like Americans.

In fact, the two countries are far more different - politically, culturally, - than most Americans realize, although perhaps less different than many Canadians like to believe.

As a disabled American who's made several visits to Canada, I've often wondered how those differences affect the two countries' approaches to disability issues. A recent trip to Toronto suggests that the level of access there is at best uneven. There are curbcuts throughout the downtown area, but many public buildings remain inaccessible. The transit authority has only just started to improve access to the city's subways and buses. On the other hand, if you've been mistreated by an American HMO you might find Canada's health care system quite appealing. And while Canada has no equivalent of the ADA, its counterpart to the U.S. Bill of Rights - the Charter of Rights and Freedoms - specifically prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability.

People with disabilities in either country might be inclined to envy what the other has. So on which side of the border is the grass greener?

Independent Living

The Centre for Independent Living in Toronto (CILT) is similar to any independent living center you'd find in the States. It reminds me a lot of the center I used to work for. But a closer look reveals differences.

In the States, legislation such at the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 commits federal funding to ILCs. Up North, federal funding is catch-as-catch-can.

"In Canada," says Traci Walters, National Director of the Canadian Association of Independent Living Centres (CAILC) in Ottawa, "we have existed on precarious, temporary, band-aid funding solutions on a year-to-year basis. We don't have anything in writing."

Nevertheless, the Canadian Independent Living Movement is growing, with 24 centers currently operating in all provinces and territories, and more on the way.

Another difference lies in the services Canadian centers offer. They commonly refer to themselves as ILRCs, or Independent Living Resource Centers, stressing their role as sources of information and self-empowerment rather than agents of social or political change. Like American ILCs, they provide information and referral, peer support and independent living skills training ; unlike our centers they expressly stay away from systems advocacy - primarily so they don't step on the toes of advocacy organizations that existed long before the ILRCs were founded.

"A lot of us are getting away from the word advocacy," says Vic Willi, Executive Director of CILT. In his view, this division of labor helps the disability movement overall. "We work well with advocacy organizations where they do the bad cop and we come up with the solution."

One of CILT's solutions concerns personal assistance services. Americans are often forced into nursing homes to receive them, whereas disabled Canadians get funding directly from the government. Thanks to a pilot project developed by CILT, a qualified person with a disability is eligible for up to $40,000 per year (about $27,000 U.S.) To hire and pay a PCA. "We give the money directly to the people," says Willi, "and they purchase in and become employers." So instead of relying on an outside agency, disabled Canadians with disabilities can be their own service providers if they choose.

Other issues aren't as easy, however. In Ontario, Willi says, "We are now just beginning to see what will become a crisis for people with disabilities who need subsidized, affordable, accessible housing." He says it's largely because of an increase in the number of disabled people living independently, combined with the ending of housing subsidies by the provincial government. Willi adds that Wheel-Trans, Toronto's well-regarded paratransit system, is overloaded and subject to funding cutbacks, and-- as in the U.S.-- the unemployment rate among people with disabilities hovers at around 70 percent.

"Canadians with disabilities for the most part are unemployed, living in poverty, facing discrimination on a daily basis in a huge range of aspects of their daily lives," says Laurie Beachell of the Council of Canadians with Disabilities, a national advocacy group based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. "We've had to fight on very fundamental human rights (issues)."

Fighting, adds Walters, doesn't come easily to Canadians. "(They) are more complacent in general, and that includes people with disabilities," she says. "You folks got the ADA and 504 because there was less fear by people with disabilities. Here there is fear that if you rock the boat too much the government might pull the little bit of funding they've given you."

Parliamentary Procedure

Complacency? Fear? Or are there other factors at work?

Although both federal and provincial funding for disability organizations has been cut back steadily throughout the 1990s the money allocated still exceeds that received by feminist groups or minority rights advocates. In large, sparsely populated country this has been an important factor.

"It's very difficult, as it is in the U.S. to get people with disabilities out and organized," says Fraser Valentine, a researcher at the University of Toronto who has studied the disability movements on both sides of the border. "The support that the federal government has provided to disability organizations has gone some distance in allowing people with disabilities to have a continued voice in debates."

According to Valentine, much of the contrast between the U.S. and Canada has to do with the ways each country's political system is structured. Americans may like to think of Canada as a centralized welfare state, but in truth the federal government there wields less power than in the U.S." says Valentine, "the federal government can exert its power over the states and over private industry and local municipalities in a much more significant way than is the case in Canada."

"A lot of services (for people with disabilities) are in fact controlled by the public sector," says Bill Owen, who with his wife, Lucille, has been involved in disability rights activism in Toronto since the late 1960s. "That makes it easier for persons with disabilities to get the ear of legislators and politicians. In a strange way, though, this means that it's actually harder to get the private sector to do anything."

Canada has a parliamentary system of governmentmeaning that both the legislative and the executive branches are controlled by the ruling party or coalitionthat is not conducive to the lobbying of individual legislators that occurs in the States. David Lepofsky, chair of a committee pushing for passage of an Ontarians with Disability Act (see sidebar), says activists have to fight "a more focused, central battle" to target a party leadership that has enough votes to pass any legislation it wants.

And what about in-your-face advocacy, the crawl-up-the-Capitol-steps, chain-your-wheelchair- to-the-bus variety? Do groups like ADAPT or Not Dead Yet even exist here?

"Oh, no," says Lucille Owen, laughing. "We're Canadian."

Different Styles

It's frequently said that Americans believe in Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness while Canadians cherish Peace, Order and Good Government. And all of the people I interviewed agree that Canadian culture is less confrontational or protest-driven than that of the U.S.

"Canadians don't use terms like civil rights," Valentine says. A civil rights model based on the grievances of individuals or minority groups simply hasn't evolved in the same way. "We talk about human rights, not civil rights."

Even when ADAPT-style protests do occur, the official response to them is differentand puzzling to Americans. In 1979, Valentine says, a group of activists in Ottawa threw themselves out of their wheelchairs and blocked the entrance of the parliament building to protest its inaccessibility. Were they arrested? Hardly. Rather, members of parliament helped carry the protesters into the building. That same day, a resolution was passed to make the building accessible.

The litigation and activism that drive policymaking in the U.S. "are embedded in your culture," Lucille Owen says, "and it's not in ours." In part, this has to do with our own recent history. In the U.S. we're still feeling the effects of the 60's, especially of the Vietnam War. Many of our disability rights leaders came of age politically at that time, and the needs of disabled veterans after the war contributed directly to the movement in the decade that followed.

"The United States has a long tradition of active civil rights advocacy," says Lepofsky. "That is something we don't have." Consequently, he says, Canada also lacks our lobbyists and strong civil rights enforcement agencies.

The difference in style is strikingly apparent in the discussion over whether to push for a Canadians with Disabilities Act. In the U.S., among disability activists, there was little question; the need for the ADA was self-evident. For Canadians, the need is not so obvious.

"There's still some debate as to whether or not one simply needs to beef up the existing (enforcement) processes...or if in fact you need some kind of omnibus disability rights bill," says Stephen Little, National Director of Client Services for the Canadian Paraplegic Association. Little adds that in Canada, discrimination complaints, instead of going directly to the courts, go to Human Rights Commissions in each provincecommissions seen by many as slow moving and narrow in their interpretation of existing law.

According to Valentine, Canada already has in place constitutional protection of disabilities that surpasses what the ADA tries to accomplish. "Trying to get something like a Canadians with Disabilities Act passed by Parliament would take up all of the organizational and emotional energy of the movement," he says. "And many people in the movement feel that (its) energies are better placed elsewhere." Valentine does support such legislation at the provincial level, including the proposed ODA in Ontario.

"We can't even have a sweeping ADA here in Canada because the federal government can only enact a law that deals with federal jurisdictions." says Walters. "It wouldn't affect what the provinces are doing." But, she adds, "We definitely need something, because when you travel around the States now, it's incredible how [people with disabilities] can get around."

Americanization

In his research, Valentine has repeatedly asked people with disabilities in the U.S. and Canada what they think of the movement across the border.

"Americans for the most part don't have much to say," he says. "Their impressions of the movement [in Canada] are the stereotyped impressions of Canadians that most Americans hold - that we're friendly and polite. Then I ask Canadians what they think of the American movement, and immediately they'll talk about things like the ADA." But he adds that they don't know much about it.

According to the stereotype, Canadians are leery of becoming too much like Americans. You can hardly blame them; as an American myself, I'd rather we didn't inflict our gun violence and profit-hungry HMOs on other countries, too. But in the area of disability rights, some activists do see a degree of Americanization taking place. That change in perspective has grown since the passage in 1982 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms with its explicit protection of people with disabilities.

"Our political debate is shifting," Valentine says. "I do think both individual and group rights have become more prominent in our debates."

"In the Sates," Lepofsky says, "it may look to you like the ADA hasn't had the impact it could have. On the other hand, when a Canadian like myself goes to the States, we see considerably more accessibility in the United States than we have in Canada. It's actually quite ironic for Canadians, because there are a lot of areas where we are very proudand properly soof being way ahead of the United States."

Originally appeared in New Mobility, September 2000