https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/62030/archive/files/c8b0ba6089c44c7fd78cd94db26dd2af.pdf?Expires=1785369600&Signature=NsoTLCExqbADuVf-93ZmNXruKpo7I-Crget28036GHoR-4S6zhTzdmFxT1hsrm-6ev72jTSCc7rytOGCyHD5tFy56%7EQ5aE97Ck%7EDVtszaf9aV4%7E0g0k2x4HuKmhlTmyePfgGkdDiU2jMJ4L6%7E1IchyECgVMtXk-TfTZXVk-1ny28uwgMQFIQDfGzG7VLlbGpo8xqnYQB0GB2Sy4smhq35ts83uZMwM1RUauHiKD5idZtSH2j8mBllAz65uvRbBlrxsuwxyIpWgaBytuzN0mis-moKwnoxejoA6Od2l8jnwmQUWCbkhLUoxa1Fauk5BFRcIEo8sgsewOQhv5cbLLIAg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 82fd4ba01bc45ba65667c9a0b39b4c1c PDF Text Text News The McGill Daily • Monday, March 12, 2007 7 Moving toward a Lack of University funding for barrier-free society renovations prevents accessibility implementation. In law school you learn how to interpret the law, but the huge subject of great importance to us is taking what looks good on paper and turning it into a practical reality. FROM THE HORSE’S MOUTH Despite numerous legal advances since the 1970s, disabled people still face systemic oppression in Canadian society. One man acutely familiar with this is David Lepofsky, founder of the Canadian Association of Visually Impaired Lawyers and one of the country’s most prominent disability-rights activists. Fully blind himself, he has argued for disability rights before Parliament and will speak at McGill next week in a lecture entitled “Achieving equality for persons with disabilities – What works?” To preview his talk, The Daily spoke with Lepofsky about disability, Canadian law, and a question of faith. The McGill Daily: What does equality mean as it relates to disabled people? David Lepofsky: The right to live in a barrier-free society in which everyone can fully participate based on their individual talents. What that means is [having] a society where we gradually identify and remove the barriers that are there now, and prevent new ones from ever being created. You participate fully based on your talents, not based on arbitrary things that aren’t really quite fair. MD: What is the current legal situation that disabled people face in Canada? DL: We’ve got court decisions that interpret the Charter and the Human Rights Code pretty well for us. What we don’t have is effective MD: Where does resistance to tougher implementation come from? DL: There’s no kind of “enemy.” This isn’t like racial bigotry or something. It comes from organizations in the public and private sector that just don’t think about including everybody as employees or customers or users of their services. They design their products under the false assumption that they’re only going to be used by people who don’t have disabilities. Everybody eventually gets a disability, so they’re doing it in a way that hurts everybody. One of the problems in human rights case law is that they all talk about good faith versus bad faith. It isn’t a question of good faith versus bad faith – it’s a question of doing it versus not doing it. I don’t care what the “faith” is. MD: What are the next steps that the disability rights movement needs to take? DL: What we really need right now is for the legal profession and legal education to change dramatically on a couple squares. Number one, they need to teach [lawyers] how to act for clients with disabilities and how to meet their needs. Number two…law students don’t get trained how to do legislative advocacy very often. There’s a whole lot of knowledge, skill sets, [and] analytical skills that could be brought to bear, and we need to teach people how to do that – because we’re not going to serve people if [we] do not know how to fight in that venue. David Lepofsky will speak at Chancellor Day Hall on Wednesday, March 14 at 12:30 p.m. – compiled by Alex O’Brien KELLY EBBELS THE MCGILL DAILY T he two full flights of wooden stairs up to the McGill Centre for Research and Teaching on Women will not be replaced by a ramp or elevator any time soon. The Centre, at 3487 Peel, is just one of more than a dozen McGill buildings on the street that lack basic wheelchair access. Because they are old limited-capacity buildings, renovation laws and low prioritization in McGill’s funding has kept them from being renovated for years. Blossom Schafer, an Administrative Officer who has been involved with the Centre for 12 years, said that its members have been unsuccessfully pushing for full accessibility for nearly a decade. “There’s no funding. They – the big ‘they,’ McGill – feel the money would be better spent in other ways,” said Schafer. McGill currently allots its Office of Students with Disabilities (OSD) an annual spending budget of $100,000 for capital accessibility projects. Director Joan Wolforth said that a part of the budget is sometimes put toward larger on-campus accessibility projects like renovating an old building. “It’s amazing how fast that money disappears,” said Wolforth, adding that the OSD pledges part of its own budget to larger accessibility projects undertaken by McGill’s Planning Office as a way of encouraging progress and stretching the $100,000 budget. According to Brian Karasick, physical developer for office of Planning and Institutional Analysis, the greatest hurdle to making McGill fully accessible is the great cost associated with fixing the smaller buildings on campus, like the ones on Peel Street. “[We] accomodate academic buildings and buildings with students first,” said Karasick, adding that their priority also depended on the cost of renovations. Wolforth agreed that the older Kelly Ebbels / The McGill Daily Blossom Schafer, top centre, has asked for wheelchair access to the McGill Centre for Research and Teaching on Women for years. of every building complex be barrier-free.” Some heritage architecture advocates find full accessibility a bitter pill to swallow, since it often means compromising an old or unique building’s structural integrity. But Dinu Bumbaru, director of politics at Heritage Montreal – a citizens’ group for education and advocacy on what they call “responsible development” – said that in most cases, “intelligent application” of design principles could find a solution. “We need to be more imaginative. We have great resources, great architects and engineers in Montreal. There should be a goal of accessibility…but it needs to be done responsibly,” he said. However, Bumbaru added that such renovations could be costly – which, according to Karasick, is the problem. He said that there is a severe lack of funding for renovations – whether they be for accessibility projects or others. “The University remains extremely short of capital renovation funds in general, and to date no significant government funding programs are available to address this issue,” he said. buildings along Peel Street were a problem area at McGill, and pointed out that the University faces unique environmental challenges in renovating buildings on the steep Mount Royal slope. According to the OSD’s Access Services Provider Gordon Dion, renovating old downtown buildings was also tricky because heritage groups fought against having the facades touched, making establishing a wheelchair ramp at the front of a building difficult. He added that bylaws requiring renovations on any old building to bring them entirely up to current building codes were another hurdle, since getting rid of wooden staircases and adding wheel-chair accessible bathrooms to each building would be expensive. Schafer said that a third-floor fire exit at the back of the Centre could be converted into a wheelchair ramp, if McGill would not touch the main entrance and Victorian-style wide wooden staircase. However, she acknowledged that a back entrance could be perceived as a second-class entrance, and would still violate the McGill Standards for Barrier-Free Campus and Universal Design, which demands that “the main entrance(s) – with files from Sarah Colgrove CITY LIVING, AT ALL COSTS... Visit our model condos Buy, get your key and move-in! starting at $139,200 Financing available 5.12% for 5 years Tel: 514-396-4600 98, rue Charlotte, Montreal www.ledistrict.ca Promotion: Hours: • Mon-Thurs. 12-7 p.m. • Fri. - Sat. - Sun. 12-5 p.m. Receive wood floors or a 3000$ rebate* 5 stainless steel appliances *if occupancy before April 1st, 2007 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Coverage from The McGill Daily Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data PDF Volume 96 Issue 40 Page Number(s) 7 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Lack of University funding for renovations prevents accessibility Description An account of the resource Discussions about how the McGill Centre for Research and Teaching on Women is not wheelchair-accessible. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Kelly Essels Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The McGill Daily Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007/03/12 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Language A language of the resource English accessibility disability McGill Centre for Research and Teaching on Women (MCRTW)