Welcome back to the Blogging to Berlin series, where I try to cram in as many blogs as possible before the 2025 Global Disability Summit!
I’ll be so honest – this was supposed to be the last blog in the series. However, Canada’s review by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is simply too good to ignore.
So make sure to stay tuned for that, or to see if I can survive midterms on top of all of this advocacy work! Whatever floats your boat.
With all that being said, I am very excited to get into federal disability and accessibility legislation across Canada! This blog will cover the Canadian Human Rights Act, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the multiple bills around Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD), the Accessible Canada Act, and more!!
Trigger Warning: Medical Assistance in Dying
1977 Canadian Human Rights Act
Read Here
The CHRA is best known for prohibiting discrimination against a number of protected groups – including on the basis of disability, age, race, and sex. More recent court interpretations have also expanded this clause to include gender identity and sexual orientation, reflecting how the Act is able to evolve to meet the times.
The Act prohibits discrimination against any of its protected groups in terms of employment, goods and services, accommodations, compensation, and policy. AKA, everyone deserves equal access to everything.
As disabled people face unique accessibility barriers around the built environment, the Duty to Accommodate is most often referred to when detailing what employers, business owners, and policymakers must do to ensure persons with disabilities have that equal access to all aspects of life.
Of course, whenever there is a duty to accommodate – some people will try to get out of it. The Act outlines that there must be a bona fide reason to not provide the accommodation on the basis of health, cost, or safety. A bummer it has to be included, but very much so time saving as the bar to not accommodate is quite high!!
The Act also created the Canadian Human Rights Commission, and the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. These two institutions are central to human rights-based legislation at the federal level. The Tribunal is the highest human rights court in Canada, and often presides over high-level human rights cases that have made their way through the lower courts. The Commission takes on a wider variety of tasks, including the monitoring of the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD)!
1982 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
Read Here
The Charter was introduced as part of a larger effort to update Canada’s 1867 Constitution and further cement its independence from Britain.
While many Canadians are familiar with the 1982 Constitution Act that introduced the Charter, fewer know that the Charter is only Part I of the Act – with the second Part recognizing and affirming Indigenous treaty rights!
The Charter itself guarantees all sorts of fundamental freedoms, democratic rights, mobility rights, equality rights, and official and minority language rights to everyone residing in Canada.
The Charter is the overarching law in Canada, and proposed or enacted laws can be challenged through “Charter Challenges” – when people argue that the law violates any article under the Charter.
This means that the Charter effectively acts as an important safeguard to ensure all future laws honour the key values of the entire country, while ensuring the safety and inclusion of protected groups.
Section 15 of the Charter, like the Canadian Human Rights Act, provides equality rights to protected groups on the basis of race, ethnicity, mental or physical disabilities, and more. Interestingly, sub-section 15 (2) allows for discrimination when it benefits protected groups, such as targeted employment programs or women-only spaces.
And maybe even more interestingly (or frustratingly) – disability was almost excluded from the Charter.
You heard me. They almost passed the Charter without including disability as a protected ground.
Why? (GREAT question!)
They argued that disability was “too vague”, and would cover too many people. To which I immediately point out that sex would protect 50% of Canadians!
However, thanks to the tireless efforts of the disability community – including a protest on Parliament Hill led by what is now know as the Council of Canadians with Disabilities – the committee drafting the Charter would finally give in.
As someone who grew up with the Charter, I think it is so important for us all – disabled and not – to realize just how close we were to passing this landmark document while excluding disability.
Disability rights have always been precarious – and just because they’re now included in our Charter, doesn’t mean we can stop fighting to ensure disability rights are respected, protected, promoted, and fulfilled by the courts.
2016-2020 Medical Assistance in Dying Provisions
MAiD is legally complex – and I will not pretend to be an expert on it! But I have pieced together a timeline of the rulings and Federal Acts that have brought us to where we are today.
The 2015 Supreme Court case Carter v Canada ruled that physician-assisted suicide must be decriminalized, to provide equal access to end of life and to ensure the liberty of persons.
To fulfill this SCC-required change, Bill C-14 introduced MAiD as an option for those with reasonably foreseeable deaths seeking physician-assisted suicide in 2016.
However, in 2019, the Superior Court of Québec ruled in Truchon v Attorney General of Canada that MAiD discriminates against disabled people without reasonably foreseeable deaths.
Shockingly, this ruling was accepted at the provincial level – meaning the Attorney General chose not to appeal this decision for the Supreme Court of Canada to review!
Instead, the government introduced Bill C-7, which expanded the eligibility criteria as required by the Truchon ruling. This expansion is generally referred to as “Track Two MAiD”.
As MAiD expansion began, Parliament had to study who would become eligible under potential future interpretations of the law, what safeguards were in place, and the potential impacts it would have on the wider public.
A particularly controversial route of expansion was to provide MAiD to those solely with mental illnesses, including “mature minors.” After significant public pushback, Bill C-39 permitted the delay of further MAiD eligibility as required by Bill C-7.
As you can see, MAiD did not come around in the same way as other disability and accessibility legislation did. Instead of a conscious government effort to create legislation, bills around MAiD were reactions to court rulings.
2019 Accessible Canada Act
Read Here
The 2019 Accessible Canada Act is a key component of Canada’s CRPD ratification strategy, and builds upon the commitments Canada has made by signing onto the CRPD.
The Act sets out a goal of realizing a barrier-free Canada by 2040, and applies to areas of environment, the built environment, transportation, communication, information and communication technology, the design and delivery of programs and services, and procurement.
The Act mainstreams the principles of dignity, equal opportunity and participation, meaningful choice, disability considerations and consultation in policymaking, and striving for the highest level of accessibility.
Virtually all federally regulated entities are subject to the ACA, and must publish both accessibility plans and progress reports within a 3-year cycle. As of 2024, government departments and crown corporations have completed their first accessibility reporting cycle! These Accessibility Plans and their progress reports are available to the public, as well as an anonymous feedback mechanism.
The Act also created the Chief Accessibility Officer, the Accessibility Commissioner, and Accessibility Standards Canada.
The Chief Accessibility Officer is tasked with advising the Minister on accessibility and providing updates on the completion of accessibility plans, while the Accessibility Commissioner operates out of the Canadian Human Rights Commission and is able to issue fines and legal warnings to departments failing to comply with the Act.
While the Act can seem very nerdy and restrained to the federal fishbowl, as I like to call it, it has actually been a very impactful tool with a wide scope of impact!
Requiring every federal department – such as Environment and Climate Change Canada, Employment and Social Development Canada, and the Justice Department – to identify their own accessibility barriers and identify concrete plans to remove them on an ongoing basis means that the programs and services they provide to Canadians will become more accessible and disability-inclusive over time!
2023 Canada Disability Benefit Act
Read Here
The 2023 Canada Disability Benefit Act aims to address the pervasive poverty impacting working-age Canadians with disabilities through enacting a federal monthly direct cash transfer, on top of provincial disability supports.
The Act required that the Government enact regulations detailing the development and delivery of the benefit within 12 months, and that two progress reports detail commitments to engaging and collaborating with the disability community.
The proposed total amount of $6.1 Billion for the Benefit was introduced in the 2024 Federal Budget, and the proposed $200/month amount and Disability Tax Credit eligibility requirement was fiercely protested by the disability community.
Interestingly, this budget line included a clause I’ve never seen before that explicitly states the overall $6.1 budget line cannot be increased. Despite this clause in the budget, consultations largely revolved around raising the rate and removing the DTC requirement.
Despite the consultations, the Canada Disability Benefit Regulations came into force on March 3rd, 2025, identical to what was promised in the 2024 budget despite extensive consultations.
Federal Accessibility Standards & Regulations
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Accessibility Standards Canada was created by the Accessible Canada Act and mandated to coordinate technical committees responsible for drafting accessibility standards for consideration to become legally enforceable regulation.
ASC is Canada’s first majority disability-led federal entity, with the Board of Directors and Technical Committee both required to maintain a disabled majority to ensure appropriate and diverse representation in the policymaking process!
ASC has successfully completed draft standards on accessible-ready housing, emergency measures, outdoor spaces, plain language, and the built environment, and successfully published standards on employment and Information Communication Technology (ICT).
While the standards and regulation process is particularly nerdy, legally-enforceable standards (regulations) will require the removal of many pervasive and persistent accessibility barriers.
Further, the technical committees bring together incredible disability advocates with lived experience and in their own areas of professional and academic expertise to ensure the standards include a wide variety of considerations!
Carly Commentary
While I had the bullet points laid out, I generally wrote this bad boy in bed with the flu. So I’m 50% sure it will make some sense.
Generally speaking, it so interesting how Canada consistently emphasizes accessibility over disability. Of course, accessibility is the entry requirement of inclusion – but when the Americans with Disabilities Act is just over the border (for now…), it makes you wonder why our approach was so different.
The whole federalism thing is also on my mind. Canada is a massive country with a lot of regional differences and considerations – so it makes sense a lot of the work is devolved onto the provinces. However, I am shocked at the lack of required collaboration and coordination.
More importantly, most Canadians don’t follow the legislative process. It’s a confusing process that took me years to learn how to follow. And I was only able to pick up that skill because I had the time, funding, and energy!
One of the reasons I am such a policy/legislation nerd is because I want to help more Canadians understand their rights, the legislative process, and how all of these bills impact their everyday lives.
So I hope this blog could help you better understand the federal disability and accessibility legislation in Canada, how it came to be, and how it impacts you day-to day!
(I am going back to sleep now.)