Strengthening Canada’s disability community in a post-pandemic world

David Onley, Mayo Moran and Charles Beer, The Toronto Star, September 15, 2020
The past six months have been among the most challenging in our history. Over the past decade each of us was asked to carry out the first legislated reviews of Ontario’s groundbreaking Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA). During the course of our work, we had the opportunity to meet with a number of extraordinary people, all living with disability. The disability community is often invisible or ignored. But in fact almost 25 per cent of Canadians live with some kind of disability. According to Statistics Canada, that population is more likely to be single, female, un-or-underemployed, and living in poverty with more than one type of disability. Since COVID-19 hit our shores, meaningful support has been extended to various parts of our society, including the unemployed, small and medium sized business, students, renters, and the health and social services sectors. But one key population has not received the focused support it needs: our fellow citizens who live with physical, mental and developmental disabilities. Statistics Canada released a new report in late August that surveyed some 13,000 Canadians with disabilities. The fallout from the pandemic has negatively impacted their employment, income, housing payments, basic utilities and prescription medication. Simply put, the disabled face grave economic hardship.