Nova Scotia Disability Rights are Human Rights
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
As Year 1 of the Remedy is very nearly complete, the DRC wants everyone to recall what exactly the Province has agreed to do by March 31st. Here you’ll have the complete list of obligations which are supposed to have been completed. We have highlighted several – the Province’s progress on these outcomes should be evident in communities across the Province.
The Disability Rights Coalition invites you to a community forum and celebration of the systemic human rights remedy to end the discrimination against persons with disabilities in their access to social assistance and supports and services to live in community.
And we want to celebrate with you this important milestone in the struggle for equality for persons with disabilities in Nova Scotia. We hope that you will join us!
[Image by Kohji Asakawa from Pixabay]
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.
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.
The DRC is today releasing the Expert Report that formed the foundation of its Interim Settlement Agreement with the Province and the NS Human Rights Commission. In the wake of the landmark October 2021 NS Court of Appeal ruling finding systemic discrimination by the Province against persons with disabilities, the DRC and the Province agreed to obtain independent expert advice as to how the systemic discrimination identified by the Court of Appeal in its provision of supports and services could be resolved in a human rights compliant way. Here’s their Expert Report along with a five-page plain language Summary.
On Wednesday April 26, 2023 the Disability Rights Coalition will release an important update concerning its human rights complaint and the finding of systemic discrimination against persons with disabilities in their access to social assistance by the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal as well as the independent expert report that was prepared as a result of a collaborative process with the Province towards a systemic human rights remedy.