By William Miller
Impunity Watch Reporter, North America
TORONTO, Canada – The Canadian Human Rights Commission ruled against Elections Canada on Friday, February 15, finding that they needed to take steps to improve accessibility to disabled voters across Canada. The complaint was filed by Reverend Peter Hughes after he had difficulty accessing a polling place in Toronto.
Rev. Hughes problems with Elections Canada began in March 2008. When Hughes arrived at the polling site, he found that the voting booths where located at the bottom of a long flight of stairs. Hughes uses a walker to get around and was unable to negotiate the stairs standing up.
Hughes was forced to sit on the stairs and slide down them one at a time in order to access the polls. As Hughes described the experience, “I sat down on the edge of the stairs and I went down on the seat of my pants down to the bottom of the stairs while somebody carried my walker.”
Hughes problems only got worse when he complained at the polling site. Elections Canada told him it was not their problem and that he was in error. They told him to exit using a snow covered ramp used for maintenance and garbage. “There was no way that a disabled person could easily get up that ramp. It was very difficult for me to struggle up the ramp in the middle of the snow,” said Hughes.
When Hughes found out that the same site would be used again for an election in October he took his complaint to the Human Rights Commission. Hughes said the complaint was not just for himself but for all disabled people across Canada.
Last Friday the Commission ruled in favor of Hughes, finding that Elections Canada had not done enough to address the needs of disabled individuals in Canada. They ordered Elections Canada to improve accessibility in all Canadian polling places, to improve their complaint system, and to report to parliament on the issue of accessibility for physically impaired.
In their ruling the court said “it is disappointing that in the disability rights/accessibility heightened time in which we find ourselves living as we enter the second decade of the 21st century, that Mr. Hughes would have had to experience the humiliation and indignities of those two voting events, followed by the tardy investigation, inaccurate conclusions and poor handling of his verbal and written complaints.”
Human Rights Tribunal decisions can be appealed in the Canadian Federal Courts. Elections Canada is planning to appeal the decision.
For more information, please see:
Canada News Wire – Elections Canada Ordered to Stop Using Inaccessible Polling Stations by Canadian Human Rights Tribunal when Disabled Voter forced to crawl to polling station on seat of his pants – 12 February 2010
CBC – Elections Canada ordered to make voting accessible – 13 February 2010
680 News – Elections Canada ordered to ensure polling stations accessible to all – 13 February 2010
