Welcome to the final instalment of the Blogging to Berlin Series, where I attempt to cram as many blogs on Canadian disability rights and accessibility legislation as I can right up until my plane takes off for the Global Disability Summit.
While I was originally going to keep it to three blogs, Canada’s recent appearance before the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in Geneva is simply too good to leave out. Unfortunately, the whole process is honestly super confusing and hard to summarize – but that’s what I’m here for!
So buckle up, because I’m going to do my very best to explain what Periodic Reporting is, summarize key reports to the Committee, share some highlights from the actual hearing, and suggest some practical next steps in anticipation of the upcoming Concluding Remarks.
Trigger Warning: Brief Mentions of Disability Rights Violations (Institutionalization, Sterilization, Detainment, Forced Treatment, Medical Assistance in Dying)
Ratification
Before we get into the Periodic Reporting process, we’ll need to start with understanding how ratification works. Stay with me.
When a country signs on to a UN Convention, they become a State Party – which means they accept certain obligations and responsibilities detailed in the Convention they just agreed to follow.
Once a country is a State Party, they must begin the ratification process: this means domestic actions that incorporate the international convention into a country’s law. This can be done in a few different ways.
Most effectively, States can ratify international law through a large, national bill like the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, which explicitly makes all articles of the international law legally binding in Canada!
More commonly, States will pursue a patchwork approach of reforming old, outdated laws and introducing programs and policies designed to gradually implement more of the Convention domestically. In Canada, we’ve seen initiatives such as the Disability Inclusion Action Plan and Canada Disability Benefit address parts of the Convention, with varying degrees of success.
Additionally, courts at all levels can choose to claim rights provided by international conventions, even if they haven’t explicitly been incorporated into domestic law yet. Once a court rules in favour and recognizes rights from an international convention, future rulings must take note of this and more often than not comply.
(For my international friends, Canada has TWO legal systems and I do not have it in me to get into it here.)
Periodic Review
Alright, let’s start with our key players.
As part of its obligations as a State Party, and to help with the ratification process, signatories to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) must submit a report detailing their ratification progress to the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and attend an in-person committee hearing in Geneva.
The Committee also considers reports from National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) and civil society organizations, both of which can also attend the committee hearing in Geneva.
Some countries, including Canada, will fund a coalition of civil society organizations to develop a “Parallel Report”. While funded by the government, they do not control or guide any of the content – which means that Parallel Reports are often more critical than the official government report!
Now that we know our key players, let’s attempt to break down the periodic review process:
- After the previous Periodic Review, the Committee issues a number of Concluding Observations. These will highlight impressive areas of progress, note continued or new areas of concern, outright condemn certain government actions, and provide a number of highly relevant and useful suggestions for the State Party to work on implementing.
- After a few years (COVID-19 messed up the scheduling), the Committee will inform the State Party its due for a Periodic Review, and share a List of Issues Prior to Reporting. This List covers all articles of the CRPD, and requests information from the State on what they’ve done to implement certain clauses.
- Once the State Party has received notice and the LOIPR, they begin developing their Report to the Committee. The Report must answer every single issue or question raised by the Committee in the LOIPR with concrete examples and in-depth references.
- National Human Rights Institutes (NHRIs) and Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) will also generally begin work developing their own reports to the Committee at this time – but much of the work for civil society occurs in response to the published State Party report.
- With all reports finalized and submitted to the Committee, the government sends a delegation to Geneva for the hearing. This often includes high-level bureaucrats and provincial officials, with federal political officials’ participation greatly fluctuating.
- During the hearing, the Committee questions Canada on its ratification progress – drawing from the government’s report, the NHRI report, and CSOs reports. The hearing is livestreamed, and the questions and responses are all summarized and published online.
- Following the hearing, usually within 1-2 weeks, the Committee will issue their Concluding Observations – and State Parties are expected to get right to work implementing their suggestions!
Deep breath, we made it.
This whole process was INCREDIBLY confusing for me at first, but I hope this boils it down into a more approachable step-by-step explainer!
In summary, Periodic Reviews are when the CRPD Committee questions a country on how it is implementing the CRPD, and provides recommendations for future action.
NHRIs and CSOs are invited to the party to provide a critical perspective and supply additional information, but it’s mostly a dialogue between the country reviewed and the Committee.
Background Information That Is Important I Promise
Because previous Concluding Observations and the List of Issues Prior to Reporting basically shape the structure and content of a country’s Report and its review, I’m going to attempt to break down what you need to know.
Canada’s last Periodic Review was in Spring 2017 (the 2021 Review was postponed because of the pandemic, they didn’t ditch anything I promise!) – which means this Report worked with Concluding Observations from 2017!
In terms of key concerns, the Committee criticized Canada for continuing to uphold substitute decision-making, where non-disabled people speak for disabled people without their consent. Canada has been incredibly stubborn about reforming their guardianship laws in favour of supported decision-making, which is essentially just a more accessible and inclusive approach to how disabled people navigate the legal system.
The Committee also criticized Canada on a number of key issues: institutionalization, segregation of disabled children in school, the involuntary detention and treatment of psychosocially disabled people, and coerced and unwanted sterilization in medical settings.
The suggestions were fairly straightforward: remove outdated laws, develop monitoring mechanisms for MAiD and institutionalization, publish national policies on inclusive education and employment, and create a CRPD implementation monitoring body with full participation from civil society. Remember these suggestions, because you are definitely going to see them again, and again, and again.
Flash forward to 2019, when the Committee provides Canada with its List of Issues Prior to Reporting. There’s a lot of overlap with the Concluding Observations (suggesting slow progress towards ratification) – so I’ll focus here on more in-depth or new points raised.
By 2019, the Committee had really embraced an intersectional approach to ratification, and paid particular attention to children, women, migrants, asylum seekers, indigenous persons, and 2SLGBTQIA+ persons with disabilities.
Additionally, the Committee had generally been pushing all States to pay more attention to persons with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities, and autistic people – noting they were often excluded from disability rights-based programs.
There was also a clear emphasis on the need for quality, timely, disaggregated data on disability – which generally means recent, relevant, appropriate, accessible data that examines how different groups of disabled people are impacted by issues differently.
In Canada, our survey on disability occurs every 5 years, and largely focuses on employment, education, income, and housing for persons with disabilities ages 15 and up. And while it occurs every 5 years, the general public is still working with the 2017 Survey, as more recent ones are behind what I am told is a SEVENTY THOUSAND DOLLAR PAYWALL.
Do you have seventy thousand dollars? I don’t!
(If you do hit me up though…)
The Reports!
I know what you’re thinking – “how are we STILL not at the hearing?” But you’re reading this. Imagine writing this. My whole day is cleared.
I will say this, though: the Reports are where the majority of the work and content is. These are lengthy, nerdy, in-depth reports with tons of data and references and sources. They are also incredible resources to inform your own advocacy work, projects, and briefings – if you have it in you to trudge through them.
If you don’t though, you’re in the right place! Hopefully.
While any civil society organization can submit a report to the Committee for their consideration, I’ll focus on Canada’s report, the Canadian Human Rights Commission’s (CHRC) Report, and the civil society working group Parallel Report.
I’ll also be opting more for a vibe check than a comprehensive breakdown, because if I even attempt to do that, I will have a comprehensive breakdown.
So here goes.
Canada’s Report (Read Here)
Canada’s Report, as required, responds to the Committee’s List of Issues Prior to Reporting with all the work they’re doing to implement the CRPD.
However, in true Canadian fashion, some believe the Report glossed over key issues and chose to emphasize the more positive aspects of ratification, instead of explicitly noting where there is significant room for improvement.
As Canada uses a identify, remove, prevent approach to remove accessibility barriers at the federal level, this lack of identification is frustrating.
Further, the majority of examples of implementation were from the provinces. Now, this makes sense to a certain degree: provinces in Canada are responsible for key areas like education, employment, and disability income supports.
However, there was a clear emphasis on provincial actions that prevented a better evaluation of federal initiatives. This can also be seen by some as the federal government pushing responsibility for CRPD implementation onto the provinces.
While I could go into all the federal initiatives underway (but won’t), I do want to note that some of the initiatives mentioned as CRPD ratification did not explicitly include disability, but emphasized intersectionality.
Here’s why this is different, and why it’s important.
While disability is an identity factor and a marginalized group part of intersectionality like all other equity-denied groups – disability is the only group requiring modifications to the built environment, processes, and procedures.
These modifications often require additional financing and organizational flexibility, and disability-specific needs are rarely addressed by a “regardless of” approach.
It’s great that I’m entitled to services regardless of my disability. But it’s a completely different thing to be able to access services that accommodate my disability.
I’ll leave it there for the Canada Report, but I would encourage you to read it if you have the time and capacity to see what areas the federal government is prioritizing, and what programs it chose to highlight.
Canadian Human Rights Commission’s Report (Read Here)
My initial impression of the CHRC Team was already very positive – they’re incredibly personable, responsive, and cooperative, and I wouldn’t say it’s a stretch to claim that they’re well respected by civil society.
But this positive impression went absolutely through the roof when I read their report.
Now, I want to make this clear: the Commission is small. And underfunded. And tasked with monitoring CRPD implementation without the capacity to effectively to do so.
So while their overall monitoring of CRPD implementation is obviously not where we want to be (and I don’t think they want to be there either!), this report goes HARD.
Three things stand out to me:
- how the Commission is able to be critical in a constructive way
- how they reference specific events and reports for increased accountability
- and just how well formatted and communicated their findings were
Hear me out on that last point: you can be doing the best work in the world, but it doesn’t help anyone if you aren’t communicating it.
If you read any document referenced in this blog, read the Commission’s report.
The Commission hits the usual suspects: employment, education, decision-making, community living, income, and so on.
But they also highlight some interesting areas: how disabled people disproportionately experience homelessness, how systemic discrimination creates a higher unemployment rate, how the climate crisis disproportionately impacts disabled people, and how PWD are over-represented in prisons.
The Commission also included its own recommendations for Canada’s ratification throughout the Report, so here are a few of my personal favourites:
- Canada must address systemic barriers to accessible education, including a more comprehensive approach to accommodations and learning supports, and coordination to end the use of seclusion and restraint.
- Canada must improve timely access to appropriate and effective mental health and addiction care in a holistic way, including through poverty, housing, and food insecurity relief.
- Canada must ensure services for Indigenous people with disabilities are equitable, adequate, and culturally appropriate – based on their distinct culture and identity and provided within their communities.
I also just love how they call out Canada’s patchwork approach to CRPD ratification, and call for a foundational structure for monitoring and implementation with full participation of civil society.
Canada loves to say it punches above its weight in international affairs. I will now be co-opting this to say that the Canadian Human Rights Commission is the real one punching above its weight.
Civil Society Parallel Report (Read Here)
Full disclaimer, I got to be a part of this one!!
As I previously explained, the government funded a handful of organizations to create a working group of civil society organizations tasked with developing this Parallel Report.
Our internal process consisted of sub-working groups for each Article, feedback from all working group members, further edits, and final submission to the working group secretariat.
I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to lead our sub-working groups on Article 8 (Awareness-Raising) and Article 21 (Access to Information) – and more importantly, so grateful that my colleagues had enough faith in me to let a then-21 year old lead this work!
(Yeah, it was a long process.)
Process aside, I want to highlight the extensive use of footnotes to elaborate on ideas, link to concrete actions, and cite references. If you check it out yourself, you’re gonna see it’s like 60% footnotes.
Why? Because civil society submissions have a limited word-count – but the word count does not include footnotes.
(We had a field day, what can I say.)
Fortunately for me, the Report summarizes its key themes itself:
- increased funding and individualized services enabling independent living in dignity
- developing an effective CRPD-specific ratification monitoring mechanism with civil society
- and the need to abolish harmful and outdated laws such as institutionalization, forced treatment, and Track Two MAiD (solely on the basis of disability, not foreseeable death)
The Report also offers its own recommendations for further implementation:
- Enact a comprehensive national action plan to implement the CRPD in coordination with PT governments and disabled persons organizations, including legislative reform and increased investments in disability services.
- Ensure youth with disabilities are engaged, and that their feedback is reflected in the development, implementation, and monitoring of the laws, policies, programs, and services concerning them. (I didn’t even write this one!)
- Repeal Track Two MAiD, and investigate and fully address the root causes and systemic inequality driving PWD to seek MAiD.
- Abolish all legislation violating and denying the decision-making rights and legal capacity of persons with disabilities, in favour of a well-resourced framework facilitated supported decision-making.
- Replace discriminatory legislation, policies, and practices facilitating detention, discipline, and coercive and involuntary treatment based on impairment or disability in favour of a human rights-based approach that prioritizes self-determination.
The Actual Review
Alright, home stretch. We made it through the reports. We are finally at the CRPD Committee hearing.
If you’ve made it this far, congratulations.
Delegation
In my opinion, you can tell a lot about a country’s priorities based on who they send to different conferences, negotiations, and reviews.
This year, Canada’s delegation was headed by Elisha Ram from Employment and Social Development Canada (who is absolutely lovely to work with by the way), and included representatives from a handful of federal government departments – Indigenous Services, Refugees and Citizenship, Statistics, Global Affairs, Heritage, and Justice.
3 of 10 provinces (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Québec) also sent representatives – which is odd, when you consider 8 of 10 provinces have accessibility legislation.
Notably, there were no federal-level political officials. Quite honestly, I’m not the most knowledgeable about this whole prorogation thing, but I’m pretty sure Ministers could still attend events and reviews in their official capacity.
However, with the government’s political party leadership race and an upcoming federal election, I’m not shocked they chose to emphasize domestic priorities.
(Learning about electoral incentives has permanently altered how I approach advocacy work. Someone please remind me to write a blog on that one day.)
That being said, Canadian civil society made the trip – with representatives from Arch Disability Law, Inclusion Canada, the Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work, the National Network for Mental Health, the ASÉ Foundation for Black Canadians with Disabilities, and so on.
And this was despite the Zero Project occurring about two weeks earlier in Austria, and the annual UN Conference on the Status of Women in New York occurring at the same time!
Proceedings
While the proceedings occurred through two 3-hour sessions, they are surprisingly hard to summarize.
I first want to highlight how iconic the CRPD Committee is, quite honestly. Markus Schefer and Rosemary Kayess in particular did not hold back – and weren’t afraid to call Canada out for resorting to prepared statements and not constructively engaging in dialogue (which they did, more than once!)
Of course, Canada’s nominee to the CRPD Committee, the incomparable Dr Laverne Jacobs, was excused from this hearing. Which means I’ll have to watch another committee hearing to watch her in action – from her tweets alone, I hear she also isn’t afraid of asking the hard questions.
Going back to the governmental delegation, the reliance on prepared statements was frustratingly felt throughout the proceedings. While some statements were relevant, well-delivered, and informative (shoutout Catherine Ivkoff’s points on climate change and gender-based violence) – there was this very odd disconnect that I believe really limited how relevant, and even transformative, these hearings can be.
The usual suspects were again brought up: education, employment, MAiD, disability poverty, data collection, and decision-making. However, there were also less expected discussions on the role Canada plays in weapons exportation and mass disabling armed conflict, the decision not to appeal the Québec MAiD ruling to the Supreme Court, and how Canada’s immigration system continues to discriminate on the basis of disability.
One moment that particularly caught my attention was when, after Canada shrugged off a number of questions on the basis of federalism, multiple committee members from federalist countries called them out.
This process is really important and serious, of course – but hear me out: a courtroom-like drama about CRPD Committee hearings. We just need a little editing, because the drama was there. I felt like I was watching RuPaul’s Drag Race with some of the (well-delivered and serious, of course) clap backs.
Again, very serious process. However, we could call it awareness-raising.
Back to the actual hearing, I don’t really have any insightful takeaways here. While the Committee asked some great questions, there was a lot of overlap from the LOIPR and 2017 Concluding Observations. Not their fault, of course, but it shows how slow implementation progress can stall more innovative action and prevent timely responses to emerging issues.
What’s Next?
So glad you asked.
We’re now waiting for the CPRD Committee to issue their 2025 Concluding Observations – which provides a fantastic resource to government in guiding future policies and initiatives, and an even better resource to civil society in their advocacy work.
However, again because of slow implementation, I’m honestly not expecting anything too exciting. What needs to be said has been said, several times, in many different formats.
These Periodic Reviews are very much what the country makes of it: if they commit to authentic and honest dialogue and focused implementation strategy, they’re going to get more niche questions and illuminating insights.
If a country treats these PRs like PR (public relations), relies on prepared statements, and shrugs off important questions – it’s going to get very repetitive, very fast.
Now, obviously, I am all in favour of Periodic Reviews. Even if they get repetitive, it provides a wealth of documented evidence on government action or inaction – and can help chart the rise and fall of government attitudes and priorities towards disability.
Looking at the CRPD Committee’s line of questioning and recommendations already published from the CHRC and CSO reports, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect Concluding Observations around a monitoring and enforcement mechanism, a national implementation framework, a shift towards supported decision-making, appealing Track Two MAiD, an inclusive education strategy, and a deinstitutionalization framework.
(Note to self: create Concluding Observations Prediction Bingo Card.)
But that’s what should be done. Based on the current state of Canadian politics, here are my suggestions on what could, more feasibly, be done.
With the recent abolishment of the Ministry of Persons with Disabilities, the Disability Advisory Group is now without a home and may potentially cease to exist. Further, with no Minister dedicated to disability, more ministers may be expected to incorporate disability into their own mandates.
I see this going one of four ways:
- one ministerial advisory group shared between several ministers
- a handful of smaller and more specific ministerial advisory groups
- re-introducing the Standing Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities from the 90s
- abandoning a consistent and predictable approach in favour of one-on-ones and ad-hoc consultation processes
While the Committee, CHRC, and civil society have all repeatedly called for a CRPD-specific implementation body, the government appears quite insistent that the Federal-Provincial-Territorial Human Rights Forum is adequate. (I have been, and it is not.)
With this continued refusal to support a federal body, here are a few alternatives:
- civil society can attempt to build a working group monitoring CRPD implementation among themselves, though this is particularly challenging with uncertainty around non-profit funding in this economy
- the Canadian Human Rights Commission – if granted additional funding past their initial 5-year package (taking a moment to reflect on how wack it is they have to apply for additional funding for such a critical mandate) – could host quarterly roundtables with civil society organizations to at the very least discuss CRPD implementation
- the FPT forum can host ad-hoc roundtables specifically on the CRPD, and make an increased effort to invite Disabled Persons Organizations
In terms of the legal need to repeal certain laws, such as substitute decision-making and psychiatric holds (involuntary detention of the psychosocially disabled), this again can go a number of ways:
- without adequate public and electoral pressure, the government will not act on recommendations to appeal laws violating the CRPD
- with enough pressure, the government could pursue parliamentary reviews of these laws with some consultation of civil society
- with enough funding and capacity (which is already so strained), disability organizations could pursue Charter Challenges against these outdated laws
Carly Commentary
And there you have it, the final feature of our Blogging to Berlin Series.
I won’t lie, this was way too much fun.
The Series was a result of a policy brief I developed for both participants at the Global Disability Summit wanting to learn more about Canada’s disability rights and accessibility legislation, and myself to ensure I could speak to Canada’s disability rights landscape from a more informed perspective.
But it then became something much more than that.
Policy, programs, and legislation at any level impact our lives. Yet for so many of us, we find the whole legislative process too difficult to follow and contribute to. And for disabled people, we often aren’t even consulted in the decisions that impact us.
When I started work at NEADS (love you guys), I had the very unique privilege of getting to dive into disability rights and legislation as part of my paid employment. And from this opportunity, I was increasingly able to leverage policies and legislation to support our advocacy work. Now, I get to use it to share where Canada is at with delegates from around the world!
Call me a nerd all you want, but learning about provincial, federal, and international law gave me the confidence I need to better represent myself and my community. While they may just be words on a page to some, to me, they represent undeniable claims to fundamental rights and freedoms.
But it’s bigger than just policy: accessible education and awareness is empowering. And all too often, it’s hidden behind paywalls, or embedded in way too wordy documents (if you thought this blog was bad, check out some of the raw legislation), or just not properly advertised.
Canada, as part of its CRPD obligations, has a responsibility to educate the public on disability rights and share information in an accessible way. In my opinion, this is the most important step to ratification.
When we know our rights, we can claim them. When we know what is possible, we can achieve it.
So thank you for making your way through the Blogging to Berlin series, and bearing with me as I balance the more nerdy advocacy work with the fun stuff!
You can definitely expect a more personable post-Berlin update summarizing how the conference went, and some (hopefully!) fun and informative blogs as I try something new and take a few months off of work this Summer to spend time with family and prepare for grad school.