Nova Scotia Disability Rights are Human Rights
The Disability Rights Coalition is expressing profound disappointment with the Province’s progress in implementing a Human Rights Board of Inquiry Order to Remedy the systemic discrimination against persons with disabilities in Nova Scotia.
A disability rights advocate is raising questions about the Nova Scotia government’s assertion Monday that it is making substantial progress in implementing a five-year plan to ensure people with disabilities receive better support.
As Year 1 of the Human Rights Remedy ended on March 31, 2024, here’s a two-minute exchange in the Nova Scotia legislature from March 27th about whether the Province was actually going to carry out its legal obligation to adopt a DSP Policy—by March 31, 2024
The DRC welcomes the Premier’s apology to persons with disabilities as an important first step towards reconciliation with a community whose members have experienced extreme forms of systemic discrimination over decades. This important gesture by the Premier comes at a key moment as the Province moves toward addressing & ending its practices and policies that lead to the discriminatory treatment.
Jen Powley, author and advocate for people with disabilities, has died. She was 45. [photo: contributed]
Having filed its human rights claim in 2014, the Disability Rights Coalition is very happy to report that we have achieved what we feel is a tremendous remedy to the systemic discrimination found by the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal in October 2021.
On June 28, 2023, the human rights Board of Inquiry approved an Interim Consent Order, which will start a step by step 5 year plan for the government to end the systemic discrimination of persons with disabilities in their access to social assistance including supports and services to live in community.
A settlement agreement has been approved in the case of the province’s systemic discrimination against disabled Nova Scotians, stipulating the closure over the next five years of all institutions for people with disabilities. [photo: Ryan Taplin]
Plan based on recommendation to move most people in institutions into housing in communities by 2025, [photo: Evan Mitsui/CBC]
The Board of inquiry will hear from the parties with respect to a systemic human rights remedy and the details of an interim agreement with respect to monitoring and enforcement of that agreement to end discrimination against persons with disabilities in their access to social assistance.
The hearing will begin at 9:30 a.m. at Holiday Inn Express & Suites Halifax-Bedford, 980 Parkland Drive, Halifax.
Manitoba Premier Heather Stefanson formally apologized in the legislature Thursday to former residents of the Manitoba Developmental Centre, one of the country’s last large institutional facilities for people with intellectual disabilities. [photo: Manitoba Archives]