The Disability Rights Coalition is collecting signatures to an open letter to Premier Stephen McNeil, asking his government to stop warehousing people with disabilities and focus on investing in community living options instead. Alternatively, the group is asking people who are institutionalized and/or waiting for a community living space to file an individual human rights complaint.
Dr. Cynthia Bruce on the recent Human Rights decision on institutionalization and what it says about the pervasive force of ableism in Nova Scotia. “Describing ableism only in terms of discrimination against disabled people fails to capture the essence of ableism’s power to oppress. Discrimination is an intensely felt outcome of ableism, but the origins of such discrimination rest in deeply held beliefs that disability is undesirable, unwanted, and a burden on individuals, families, and society.”
News release: Krista Carr, Executive Vice-President of CACL, explained, “When it comes to pursuing justice for Canadians who are or have been institutionalized, CACL will do whatever it takes for as long as it takes. Even if it takes 1,500 individual complaints – as these rights are secured in the CRPD, which Canada has ratified with Nova Scotia’s agreement.”
Joint media release by People First Canada and People First Nova Scotia tackles the decision in the recent Human Rights tribunal on warehousing of people with intellectual disabilities. “To completely dismiss the idea that people with disabilities are discriminated against in most every system in our society is not someone being ‘un-woke’ – this is someone who is completely unaware and obviously not paying attention.”
Scott Neigh of Talking Radical interviews Liane Tessier and Judy Haiven on the remarkable success of Equity Watch, the workplace anti-bullying organization that is making a real difference.
Gus Reed is not happy about government inaction after the Human Rights Commission decision that Environment must enforce the requirement that restaurants provide accessible washrooms.
Raymond Sheppard: “It is African Heritage Month. Our struggles continue, yet now it is time to celebrate our glorious history. It is also time for the government of Nova Scotia to step up to the plate and do the right thing as it pertains to African Nova Scotians.”
It’s been a year since Halifax Fire chief Ken Stuebing publicly apologized to Liane Tessier, and both Halifax Fire and the Human Rights Commission are reluctant to share what changes were made at the organization to deal with the misogyny that was so prevalent. “We’re dealing with issues that were hidden, now we are letting it out of the bag and HRM and the NS Human Rights Commission don’t like it, because now they are being held to account,” Tessier says, pointing to the work of Equity Watch, the anti-bullying organization she co-founded.”
“…we have to fight our own battles. The government would still be gleefully discriminating against us if we didn’t sue them,” writes disability activist Paul Vienneau.
Almost two years after a judge ordered the NS Human Rights Commission to change its intake process we still don’t know what those changes look like.