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The Accessibility for Manitobans Act (AMA) was enacted in December, 2013. Manitoba is the second Canadian province to enact accessibility standards legislation. The first province was Ontario, which enacted the Ontarians with Disabilities Act in 2001, and, later, a more fortified and enforceable Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005. The AMA presents a strong set of philosophical and social goals. Its philosophical goals mark accessibility as a human right, and aim to improve the health, independence and well-being of persons with disabilities. The AMA’s social goals have the potential to make a positive impact on the development of equality law norms within the context of disability discrimination. Nevertheless, the AMA would be strengthened with a more robust and explicit appreciation of how disability discrimination issues are experienced. The Act should show a greater recognition of the relevance of embodied impairment to individuals with disabilities, and there should be more significant scope for the statute to address intersectionality within disability discrimination. These two challenges replicate the two principal critiques of the social model of disability –the model of disability on which the AMA is based. Finally, for the legislation to be successful, issues of compliance and enforcement that require positive uses of discretion on the part of the civil service should be addressed early on. The findings of this article may be useful for the implementation of the AMA and for the design of future accessibility legislation in Canada and elsewhere.
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This paper examines one of the most recent and widespread cases of consultation to occur in the development of lawmaking in Canada: citizen participation in the enactment of accessibility standards for persons with disabilities. Canadian provinces are attempting a new politico-legal experiment to combat disability discrimination. Through consultation processes leading to binding regulations, they are enacting mandatory standards of accessibility under legislation such as the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005 (AODA). These statutes create an antidiscrimination regulatory process designed to offer participatory rights to persons with disabilities and other interested stakeholders in the development of accessibility standards. The standards address conditions of social inclusion in areas such as customer service, employment, transportation, and information and communication, and aim to break down a host of barriers including architectural and attitudinal ones. Collaborative standard development is a new and proactive approach to addressing disability barriers in society. The first part of the paper presents a comparative overview of Canadian accessibility legislation with a focus on citizen participation.
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The Accessibility for Manitobans Act (AMA) was enacted in December, 2013. Manitoba is the second Canadian province to enact accessibility standards legislation. The first province was Ontario which enacted the Ontarians with Disabilities Act in 2001 and later a more fortified and enforceable Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005. In this article, we provide an overview of the Accessibility for Manitobans Act highlighting its purpose, philosophical and social goals; the standards to be developed and the process for developing the standards; information on the compliance and enforcement of the statute (including penalties and appeal mechanisms) and statutory review of the statute and standards.