Episode 41: For Disability Justice

Disability activists have been working in Ontario and all across Canada for decades to improve their living conditions and social supports. The pandemic, of course, made things worse -- reliance on expensive delivery services increased, while people with disabilities were cruelly excluded from programs like the CERB. In Ontario, the provincial government even chose to deduct CERB dollars from ODSP recipients, so that they wouldn't see any gains in monthly income.

 

Disabled people in this province face abundant systemic barriers: poverty wages through Ontario Works and ODSP; a narrowed housing market due to inaccessible units; and an overall anti-disability stigmatization that creeps into all corners of public and private life. A better, more just, accessible world is possible. To make it happen would require a significant re-thinking of city planning, health care, governance, and community.

 

For this Breezy Breakfast, recorded on April 22, 2021, we hosted a panel of local disability activists: Erin Caton, Mike Greer, and Christina Faith Cameletti.

 

 

Erin Caton is a project manager, business owner and the chair and founder of the Environmental Sensitivities Coalition of Canada. She founded the ESCC to provide a collective voice in conversations about accessibility after realizing that people with Environmental Sensitivities are often left out of discussions.

 

Mike Greer is a disabled activist and Chair of the City of Guelph Accessibility Advisory Committee, as well as an ambassador with the Rick Hansen Foundation. Born with a condition called Osteogenesis Imperfecta, he learned to adapt and deal with many challenges over the course of his life. Mike has a strong interest in motivational speaking and accessibility advocacy, with a goal to help organizations better understand the benefits of hiring people with disabilities. He holds a degree in Information Technology and has worked for the past nine years as an IT sales professional.

 

Christina Faith Cameletti is a lawyer in Guelph with a general practice focusing on real estate law, wills and estates. Christina has had an episodic disability since childhood, and has volunteered and advocated for Disability Rights since she was 7 years old, for organizations like the Arthritis Society, Easter Seals Canada and the AODA Alliance. During law school, she interned at ARCH Disability Law Centre, a specialty legal clinic in Toronto that advocates for accessibility, disability rights and policy reform.

 

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