> In any case, it would be great to know if other countries were interested and what issues are considered most important.
There is alot of interest and debate in Canada right now. At the
provincial (state) level Ontario, the largest province, is the most
actively engaged in the area. This is the result of a very
well-organized grass-roots movement and commitments by government
leaders (many of which have not been kept). At the federal level, the
national cross-disability group recently held a one-day session at their
annual meeting to have preliminary discussions about this type of
legislation. Several years ago, plans for comprehensive legislation
gave way to a much more modest series of amendments to legislation
through an omnibus bill. However, in recent years there have been some
Parliamentary Committees looking at these issues.
In terms of issues, the ones that arise most often fall in to two
categories: is this type of legislation effective or are there risks of
losing ground and how to make the legislation effective.
In the former category, there is a healthy debate about whether this is
the best way to achieve the goal particularly since there is always a
risk of legislation that is not strong enough to reach the goal. It
would be interesting to look at the different approaches and assess the
strengths and weaknesses of them.
In terms of the content of legislation, the issues mot frequently
arising are the definition of disability, the costs of legislation (this
is more of a political than substantive question), how to make
enforcement effective, what is covered, how to develop standards.
In terms of other jurisdictions, in addition to the UK and Australia,
Thailand has been working on legislation, India has legislation and
Israel passed legislation last year. Early reports are mixed on the
effectiveness of the legislation, but it would be very interesting to be
able to talk to people actually involved to better understand what the
expectations were from the legislation and to what extent they are being
met by the model chosen.
I would be really interested in hearing more about conference plans and
whether there would be an opportunity to expand it through partnerships
with other countries.
Patti Bregman
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