Thank you so much.

I know I'm not in the room today, but if you would please put your phones down, that would be appreciated.

My name is Thea Kurdi—pronouns she/her—and I'm a late middle-aged woman with short white hair. I'm also a first-generation settler of European and South Asian descent, and like over eight million, or 27%, of Canadians I am disabled, with several invisible disabilities, including hearing loss, which means you can't tell just by looking at me. I identify using identity-first language as my disabilities are integral to who I am.

Thank you to MP Bonita Zarrillo for inviting me back to speak to this committee, this time to share my 24 years of career experience as a built environment accessibility specialist and as a board member of the Universal Design Network of Canada.

Throughout my career I have seen and heard it all. I have completed accessibility drawing reviews on projects of all sizes and types, including the West Block; conducted countless building audits, including Parliament Hill; and contributed to accessibility design guidelines for large corporations in all levels of government, including the UA standards for the parliamentary precinct.

I've also developed courses like the Introduction to Successful Accessible Design for the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, and authored articles on accessibility in urban planning, and because I'm obviously lazy, I also worked part-time as a post-secondary instructor for 17 years in the architectural program at Sheridan College, and since then for seven years as a guest lecturer at many universities and colleges, all the while presenting at conferences across Canada and around the world about accessibility in universal design.

First, please note that I agree and endorse the recommendations you received from the AODA Alliance.

Accessibility is a lot more than just buildings and outdoor spaces, but our buildings, cities and outdoor spaces are the physical infrastructure that either supports or sabotages all of the other accessibility policies and goals.

Unfortunately, we're already off track. With only 15 years and three months left until the 2040 deadline, we need decisive, motivated action to avoid failing as badly as Ontario will have done by the end of this year.

For 40 years, since we changed the Canadian charter and human rights code, it's not that there's design or accessible design; legally, it's a choice between good design for everyone or discrimination. The failure to adequately address accessibility is a failure to uphold the principles of equity and justice.

Our failure and reluctance to quickly adopt specific, modern, evidence-based disability inclusion requirements for more than manual wheelchair users into our building legislation not only perpetuates inequity but also stifles economic growth.

Accessibility is what in part the Conference Board of Canada has projected will unlock $16.8 billion in GDP by increasing our economy's productivity capacity. Accessibility in design opens markets like tourism and attracts and keeps a diverse, skilled workforce, and of course customers.

However, we are each worth more than our economy can measure. Inaccessibility is hurting people, families and communities every day that we allow barriers to persist and new barriers to be created. Inclusivity not only enriches our communities; it strengthens our social fabric.

The current piecemeal, out-of-date and deficient requirements for accessibility in building codes and procurement speak volumes. They trap too many people into lives of poverty, with unsuitable or no housing. To this day, there remains no alignment between our building code and the enshrined rights of the Canadian charter and the human rights code. Rewriting our building code will finally make accessibility a fundamental and integral ingredient from the start.

To this day, the building code still exempts most housing from accessibility and doesn't include visitability or age-in-place requirements. No amount of building certifications that certify nothing or building code harmonization will address these problems. We must stop token gestures and superficial changes. Real progress means a budget for our post-secondary and continuing education programs to retrain faculty and have supervised program redesigns.

There are also too many outdated and conflicting policies and programs that bureaucracy and gatekeepers are hanging onto. Government staff and obligated organizations seem to lack the knowledge, power or courage to make decisions that fully address accessibility. As long as enforcement is not used, people will continue to not take this act seriously. General misunderstandings happen because without alignment, these codes, policies and standards provide only minimum accessibility—a floor that cannot be fallen through, not the ceiling this act requires.

Also, many use the CSA's B651, the national building code and ASC standards only as goals, with no motivation to do better. Many use budgets and value engineering to do the bare minimum, treating accessibility in the built environment as a budgetary concern rather than the human rights issue it is.

In conclusion, we believe those with lived experiences are important to hear from, but we also need to leverage the expertise of experienced accessibility specialists in all of the areas the act covers. They will help you achieve your goals. Commit, please, to decisive action now to ensure we help people as soon as possible.

Thank you.

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