Disability rights advocates rally

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This article was published 22/09/2023 (643 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A province-wide rally aiming to push the voting and other rights of people with disabilities arrived in Steinbach at the busy corner of Brandt and Main Street Tuesday, garnering honks of support as motorists drove by.

Fittingly, political campaign signs were scattered all over the intersection. The three main goals of the rally are to ensure all Manitobans with disabilities can participate fully in election activities and those who are eligible to vote can do so; to promote priority attention for disability issues in the provincial election; and to support Manitobans in making informed voting decisions.

Several organizations representing people with all types of disabilities were there, according to enVision executive director Jeannette DeLong. She said while Elections Manitoba has done a good job getting people to the polls through voting at home and helping them from their vehicles, there was a need to prioritize disability issues in the election.

People with disabilities themselves were the ones who highlighted the priorities. These include people with affected vision, hearing, mobility, and intellectual abilities, as well as people affected by the environment. DeLong said that last group includes people affected by things as varied as chemicals, scents, and electromagnetic hypersensitivity – a condition the World Health Organization said studies have shown does not have proven connections to electromagnetic fields.

“Ten years ago, Manitoba passed the Accessibility for Manitobans Act legislation, and through that process of working towards getting accessibility legislation, that barrier-free Manitoba steering group had connections with groups from just about every disability group and they had a process of inviting feedback,” explained DeLong.

There are some obvious things to help people. DeLong said a big change from the original plan was training employees on simple solutions like grabbing a notepad and pen when a deaf person walks into a store.

A watering down of the original plan from 10 years ago affects over 200,000 Manitobans, said DeLong.

“Public agencies were supposed to have a plan and make public there plan of how they were going to take steps to be more accessible to people with a variety of disabilities,” said DeLong.

“Now 156 of those agencies are no longer required to,” she added.

Details on the five priority issues can be found on Disability Matters Vote’s website dmvote.ca. Every candidate was asked to provide answers around these issues and their responses were expected to be published this week.

Those issues include making Manitoba more accessible, employment, gaining workforce skills, better services and resources, and basic needs.

Basic needs was something recently brought to politicians’ attention at a luncheon on the issue. Candidates from every party were invited. Each was given a different meal based on the incomes of someone on disability support, employment and income assistance, a living wage for Winnipeg, and an MLA’s salary. Videos of the result are on the website.