I’ve started sending out Freedom of Information (“FOI”) requests to ministries of Canadian provinces who administer disability benefits, to find out if they too, started automatically paying rent directly to housing services providers on behalf of beneficiaries residing in social or affordable housing. Today, I started looking into the Nova Scotia Disability Support Program (“DSP”) and that’s when I discovered the province of Nova Scotia was recently sued by three people with disabilities, as well as the Disability Rights Coalition (“DRC”), over their right to live in the community.
Interestingly, this case started in 2014. The Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission Board of Inquiry ruled in favour of the three individuals in 2019. The Nova Scotia Court of Appeal agreed in its decision released in October 2021, which said that people with disabilities were being treated unfairly by the Government of Nova Scotia. The DRC summarized the ruling as discrimination based on four grounds: unnecessary institutionalization, right to assistance, denial of community of choice, and delays in assistance. In 2023, a ‘Human Rights Review and Remedy for the Findings of Systemic Discrimination Against Nova Scotians with Disabilities’ was published. You can also read about the entire case here, if you’re interested.
The Nova Scotia Court of Appeal’s decision was ground-breaking regarding the rights of persons with disabilities, as this court awarded the largest human rights general damages award in Canadian history.
Amazing! What a sight for sore eyes: justice.
Change is the Remedy
One of the interesting things about this Nova Scotia case is that in order to fix its systemic discrimination, the DRC and the Province of Nova Scotia agreed to work together on a Human Rights Remedy. During the review process, it was decided that changes must be led by the voice of people with disabilities and their families, and that the changes must address racism and prejudice.
As seen in my last blog post, the County of Simcoe “found no discrimination” in Barrie Housing’s inability to tell me that the Ontario Ministry of Community, Children and Social Services (“CCSS”) had been paying my rent directly to Barrie Housing, on-and-off for seven years, which it never actually told me. I only found out because I submitted an FOI request to the CCSS, to get my ODSP ledger, which was initially left-out of my ‘entire ODSP case file’. I guess the County of Simcoe doesn't think there's anything wrong with me having to ask for the amount of my overcharge four different times between September 2021 and April 2022, and then threaten to tell national news outlets, before I was even told the amount of the overcharge. However, if you take a look at the Disability Rights Coalition v. Province of Nova Scotia case, the province had consistently denied its discrimination against disabled persons too. The County of Simcoe also conveniently decided not to find out how many other social or affordable housing residents were also overcharged, and also not returned their overcharged monies. This is called willful blindness.
But who’s fault is this anyway?
Is the CCSS responsible for telling its beneficiaries that a portion of their disability benefit had decreased because it was being paid directly to their housing services provider? Or is the housing services provider responsible for telling its tenants that their rent is being paid directly by the Ministry, so they can stop paying their rent as well? And when the Service Manager, which is the County of Simcoe, is publicly informed of all of this, does it have a legal right to continue ignoring what’s happening right in front of it? Or does it need to ensure the performance of the responsibilities of its delegated Service Agent, which is Barrie Housing, and make sure that all Barrie Housing tenants who started having the CCSS pay rent directly to Barrie Housing on their behalf are notified?
In any case, the CCSS has pointed its finger at Barrie Housing and Barrie Housing has pointed its finger at the CCSS. Neither parties have any interest in taking accountability for their role in this mass-scale fraud scheme… that is still happening. The Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing is also sitting silently as all of this unfolds right in front of them, probably praying its name doesn’t get added to the list of perpetrators.
How do you think it feels to know that this many people in positions of authority have been told about what’s going on, and who've been provided the evidence, yet continue to do nothing?
It feels awful.
It feels like we live in a foreign country where human rights laws don’t exist.
It feels like we’re not seen as human beings at all.
Finding out that another Canadian province has been forced to start treating its disabled residents as human beings has been very encouraging though. The seven years it took to get the ruling isn’t encouraging at all, but at least the truth eventually came out.
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