The Charter of Rights and Freedoms, enacted in 1982, as well as, beforehand, federal and provincial human rights codes that were introduced in the 1960s and the 1970s has paved Canadian disability rights legislation to evolve through the lens of a human rights advocacy approach. The Canadian Human Rights Act and provincial human rights codes prohibit discrimination against persons with disabilities. Conversely, the Equality Rights Section (section 15) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees people with disabilities equal access and protection before and under the law.
Though, acknowledging the barriers that persons with disabilities have tackled historically and persist to tackle with, the legislative approach which proposes …show more content…
An advantage is the range of judicial review permissible under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms which in turn comes closer to embracing a social model of disability. Nonetheless, limitations within the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms persist. For example, judicial interpretations depend on medical definitions of disability and reproduce medicalized perceptions of disability. Additionally, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a reactive tool rather than proactive tool. This meant individuals had to file a legal complaint which is a slow process for generating substantial change because of time, efforts, and money it takes for a case to reach its way up to the Supreme Court of Canada. Furthermore, the emphasis that accommodations must be "reasonable" has limited the scope for the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to aggravate substantial change concerning barriers for persons with …show more content…
This is constituted predominantly through discourses such as medicine, law, psychiatry, social work, and the like. These discourses act as technologies of power utilizing informal disciplinary power which put emphasis on the body by constituting particular bodies and behaviours as healthy and ‘normal’ while stigmatizing contraries of these ideals. Therefore, these discourses construct relations of power with those who fit the ideal or norms receiving advantages, privileges, rewards, and those deemed ‘other’ being cast as unworthy and stigmatized which in turn becomes justification for exclusion, subordination, and marginalization. David Lepofsky outlines this when he claims societies are physically constructed and socially organized with the unacknowledged assumption that everyone is non-disabled. As a consequence, this creates an excessive deal of disability through the negligence of what most people need in order to participate in all aspects of the social sphere. Moreover, much of the public world is also structured as though all bodies are moulded the same, as though everyone could walk, hear, and see well, etc. The architecture, as well as the entire physical and social sphere assumes that we are able to do what the average, young, non-disabled ‘paradigm’ citizen can do or that we are
Though, acknowledging the barriers that persons with disabilities have tackled historically and persist to tackle with, the legislative approach which proposes …show more content…
An advantage is the range of judicial review permissible under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms which in turn comes closer to embracing a social model of disability. Nonetheless, limitations within the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms persist. For example, judicial interpretations depend on medical definitions of disability and reproduce medicalized perceptions of disability. Additionally, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a reactive tool rather than proactive tool. This meant individuals had to file a legal complaint which is a slow process for generating substantial change because of time, efforts, and money it takes for a case to reach its way up to the Supreme Court of Canada. Furthermore, the emphasis that accommodations must be "reasonable" has limited the scope for the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to aggravate substantial change concerning barriers for persons with …show more content…
This is constituted predominantly through discourses such as medicine, law, psychiatry, social work, and the like. These discourses act as technologies of power utilizing informal disciplinary power which put emphasis on the body by constituting particular bodies and behaviours as healthy and ‘normal’ while stigmatizing contraries of these ideals. Therefore, these discourses construct relations of power with those who fit the ideal or norms receiving advantages, privileges, rewards, and those deemed ‘other’ being cast as unworthy and stigmatized which in turn becomes justification for exclusion, subordination, and marginalization. David Lepofsky outlines this when he claims societies are physically constructed and socially organized with the unacknowledged assumption that everyone is non-disabled. As a consequence, this creates an excessive deal of disability through the negligence of what most people need in order to participate in all aspects of the social sphere. Moreover, much of the public world is also structured as though all bodies are moulded the same, as though everyone could walk, hear, and see well, etc. The architecture, as well as the entire physical and social sphere assumes that we are able to do what the average, young, non-disabled ‘paradigm’ citizen can do or that we are