Using the Freedom of Information Act, I've unearthed how much of your money the TTC spent on lawyers, opposing my effort to get crews to announce subway, bus and streetcar stops. We blind people need stops announced to know when we reach our destinations. In 2005, I won a human rights ruling ordering TTC crews to announce all subway stops. Despite this, the TTC refused to direct bus drivers to announce all stops. I had to sue again.
Most can't believe the TTC fought the subway case. Once I won it, no one can believe the TTC then fought the bus case. If the Human Rights Code requires the TTC to announce all subway stops for blind passengers, the TTC obviously must also announce all bus stops.
The TTC's law firm bills total $450,000. Of that amount, $268,000 was spent fighting the subway case, even though internal documents revealed the TTC knew the Human Rights Code required announcing all subway stops, and new crews weren't consistently doing this. Another $182,000 went to fight the legally simple bus stops case at a shorter six-day hearing.
This huge waste of public money has important implications. First, the TTC boasts it is gradually instituting automated subway and bus stop announcements. I never asked for automated announcements. The costless option of drivers announcing each stop is sufficient. Each driver has a mouth and should know their stops.
Second, after recent city tax and TTC fare hikes due to budget woes, city council should hold accountable whoever condoned this waste of almost half a million dollars. Last year, then TTC chair Howard Moscoe told the CBC he didn't know how much the TTC spent fighting my subway case. He admitted it was scandalous I had to fight for a decade for that accommodation. Yet he defended the TTC opposing my bus stops request.
Third, city council should institute a vigorous policy to stop its agencies from using public funds to oppose disability accessibility. If they won't spend more to advance accessibility, they must stop using our money to oppose it.
This incident isn't unique. Recently, city heritage officials wasted public resources generating a report to city council obstructing and delaying efforts to make Ontario's highest courthouse at Osgoode Hall more accessible. That report misstates and dilutes the duty to make such places fully accessible. It describes as sufficiently accessible the long, labyrinthine routes that mobility-impaired people must endure to access this courthouse. Installing a ramp to the front door won't deface Osgoode Hall. A courthouse isn't just a pretty building to gaze at. It's an important institution that constitutionally must be fully accessible to all.
Wasting public funds hurts everyone. The TTC's route stop announcements help sighted and blind passengers. Osgoode Hall's inaccessible main door impedes persons with disabilities and lawyers without disabilities hauling heavy bags filled with law books.
Fourth, it will soon be even harder for discrimination victims to battle organizations that spend huge sums opposing human rights. Dalton McGuinty's Liberals recently enacted Human Rights Code changes many of us opposed. These largely privatized human rights enforcement. When I fought the TTC, the Human Rights Commission was public investigator and prosecutor. Starting next July, discrimination victims must investigate their individual cases and find lawyers to prosecute. McGuinty's new legal clinic to help discrimination victims with this will only get a paltry quarter of the budget he now gives the underfunded Human Rights Commission. If that legal clinic matched dollar for dollar what the TTC spent against me (an unrealistic dream), it could only fight six such issues annually.
Fifth, the Human Rights Commission should promptly launch complaints and vigorously enforce the law against each Ontario transit authority disobeying Lepofsky v. TTC. It should conduct proceedings and settlement discussions in close consultation with the blindness community, whose rights are in jeopardy. The Liberals pledged the Human Rights Commission would be freed up to aggressively bring such public interest proceedings.
Finally, transit accessibility recalcitrance isn't limited to the TTC or to announcing stops. While they've made some progress on accessibility over the years, Ontario transit providers opposed strong new transit accessibility standards under the new Disabilities Act that I and others campaigned hard for. They cry poor despite federal and provincial announcements lavishing billions on them. Governments must rein in these transit providers, whose obstinacy hurts those of us with disabilities, and the rest of you who'll get one later. No one should suffer what the TTC unapologetically spent $450,000 putting me through twice.
David Lepofsky is a Toronto lawyer and activist for reforms to protect the rights of persons with disabilities.
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