Effective Enforcement is Missing

David Baker: Cost is a big issue. It's a big issue primarily because people acted in this discriminatory way when they created the barrier which excludes a person with a disability. But we cannot allow those barriers to go on forever. And we can't allow new barriers to be created. So, systemic litigation is one way of going. The problem with systemic litigation is that it is expensive. It -- and it takes many years. Lawyers may be willing to step in and argue an appeal, but you know, who's going to build a case that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars just for experts and the research and the discoveries or cross examinations and so on? Those are huge costs. And we no longer have a human rights commission that is able take on a significant number of those cases. Individuals are responsible for carrying that forward themselves. The Human Rights Legal Support Centre is challenged with it. Charter litigation, there was something called the Court Challenges Program. And actually that program sponsored the most important systemic litigation there has been on behalf of people with disabilities. Mr. Steven Harper, upon becoming Prime Minister, cancelled that program so that those systemic barriers no longer can be confronted. So litigation on behalf of people with disabilities has gone through what I call a golden age. It's recognized in the UK, the United States and everywhere else in the developed world that Canada has been very successful through its litigation in addressing these systemic issues. Is there a future to it? I suspect that it's in some considerable jeopardy and that's why many of the important human rights issues in this country, if we're not to reinvigorate the litigation process, involve systemic legislation such as the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act and efforts at the national level to address human rights issues prospectively on behalf of people with disabilities, all of which requires an effective enforcement mechanism which at this point is missing.