Daily Archives: 2 June, 2010

Call to Action: Tell Parliament to Stop Discrimination against people with disabilities who immigrate to Canada

activism, disability activism, identity, justice, make the world a better place, policy, politics, signal boost

An awesome way to guarantee that you will not be allowed to immigrate to most countries – even if you otherwise completely qualify – is to have a disability, or have a disabled immediate family member.

Despite the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms explicitly guaranteeing that laws in Canada cannot be written to discriminate against people with “mental or physical disabilities” (Section 15 of the Charter), Canada’s Immigration Act allows someone who otherwise passes all of Canada’s immigration requirements to be denied immigration because they “might reasonably be expected to cause excessive demand on health or social services”.

What has this meant in practice? Well, in 2009 Chris Mason, an immigrant from the UK who was injured on the job while working legally in Canada, was deported back to the UK because of his disability. In 2010, Ricardo Companioni was initially denied immigration to Canada from the US because of his HIV-positive status, but managed to argue in Federal court that he and his partner would pay for their drug treatments and thus not be part of Canada’s care system – a solution that is not available to many people. In May, the Barlagne family lost their appeal to be allowed to stay in Canada, as their youngest daughter has Cerebral Palsy. The reasoning was that the court did not believe the Barlagnes would be able to pay for their daughter’s care.

None of these stories are unique. Even when the Bill was being debated in Parliament, Members were bringing up concerns about how the “excessive demand clause” would affect people whose families had disabilities. In 2000, when Wendy Lill, a Member of Parliament, asked:

We have a charter of rights which talks about each Canadian being entitled to equality under the law. The Will to Act Task Force, which was established several years ago, talked about equality of citizenship for persons with disabilities.

Clause 34 talks about how a foreign national or other permanent resident would be inadmissible on health grounds if their health condition might reasonably be expected to cause excessive demand on health or social services. This is the only clause in the bill which seems to me would in any way relate to a person with a disability making an application to come to Canada.

I would like to know if a family with a child who has a disability such as Down syndrome or cerebral palsy would be accepted in this country. [emphasis added]

She was assured by the then-in-power Liberals that:

I think it is internationally accepted, in the Geneva convention and other statutes, that the best interests of the child can indeed be defined. In the case of a disabled child, I believe that the intent is to prevent abuse. The abuse might be that the only reason for someone wanting to come to Canada would be to seek free health care of some type.

However, in the case of family reunification, if we are talking about bringing a new family to Canada, if a child has a disability, frankly, I am absolutely confident, having met the men and women who work in citizenship and immigration, that we would take all of that into account and we would not allow it to stand in the way. [emphasis added]

I’m very happy for the no-longer-in-power Liberals that they were certain situations like the Barlagnes would never happen in Totally-Awesome-To-People-With-Disabilities Canada, but since we live in this Canada, I think their optimism was misguided. As has been amply demonstrated by reality.

The Council of Canadians with Disabilities has recently written yet-another-letter urging the Hon. Jason Kenney, Minister of Immigration, to review the “excessive demand clause”. You can read the letter in full at their website.

I have adapted their letter to send to Mr Kenney, as well as my MP, and provide that letter for my fellow Canadians to adapt or use in any way they see fit.

This is a discriminatory policy. People with disabilities and their families are not drains on the Canadian economy. We are people, and we should not be denied equal rights because of our disabilities.

My letter is below:
Continue reading Call to Action: Tell Parliament to Stop Discrimination against people with disabilities who immigrate to Canada →

Recommended Reading for Wednesday, June 2, 2010

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Discrimination is only discrimination if you end up being sacked

The study apparently says that many people with MS put off telling their bosses (and so receiving appropriate accommodations at work, which might help them to manage their MS) because they are afraid they will be discriminated against.

Dr Simmons says that fear is unfounded, because “only 15 per cent of people [left] their jobs because they were sacked”.

I assume this means that that’s 15% of people leaving their jobs, and not 15% of people who told their bosses they had MS. If it’s the latter, that’s actually a significant amount of discrimination – about 1 in 6! But even if it’s the former, that seems to me to be fairly significant. It may be that not many people are getting sacked because of their MS, but it does tend to support the idea that it is a realistic possibility that you will be sacked if you tell your boss you have MS. In other words: the fear of discrimination (eventuating in unemployment) is hardly unfounded!

Screen Reader Access to SharePoint

As many screen reader users have found out the hard way; Microsoft’s SharePoint service is not very screen reader friendly. It can be navigated, but is clearly not understandable for your average user. Microsoft’s apparent lack of interest in adhering to w3c standards further complicates the situation. Despite this, many of us have to use SharePoint in our daily work. So with that said, I am writing this article to share with other screen reader users some tricks, tips and general information I’ve gathered over time while working on the “SharePoint issue”. I have primarily been working with the 2003 and 2007 editions of SharePoint, but most of these items hold true with 2010.

LINKAGE: Black Fashion Museum

Museums and other archival institutions typically display the extraordinary rather than the ordinary, the First Lady’s inauguration ball gown rather than her J.Crew shorts. But because of the implausible convergence of racial, gender, sexual, class, and language barriers that confront non-White and working women, their lives and their accomplishments were not deemed extraordinary in their time. The material evidence of these lives not considered important enough to save or to study. Museums and other archival institutions that privilege white middle and upper class women’s experiences collude in the ongoing marginalization and erasure of the material cultural histories of minoritized American women.

Call for submissions: /Slant/Sex/

This is a call for bold, honest investigations of the sexual female/trans self that polite society has yet to fully embrace.

We particularly encourage submissions from women of color, older women, queer women, women with disabilities, and transgender/two-spirit/intersex/gender nonconforming folks.

Experiences of Transgendered Profs a Case Study in Sexism

In an excerpt published in the Australian newspaper The Age, The Hidden Brain author Shankar Vedantam discusses the different post-transition experiences of transgendered Stanford professors Ben Barres and Joan Roughgarden. Unsurprisingly, they paint a depressing picture of the prevalence of sexism even in the supposedly egalitarian world of university research.

Where ever you are is where I want to be: Crip Solidarity

What does crip solidarity look like? Between crips?

We are traveling, trying to track down food. My chair can’t go into this restaurant, your dog isn’t allowed in that restaurant; so we will order in. You can’t fly to the meeting, so we will come to you—all of us. They won’t let you go to the bathroom because they say you’re “too slow”, so we will demand they do—and make them wait for you—together. Sometimes we are comrades, sometimes we are strangers, but we will stay together. We move together.

I know what it is like to be left behind, left out, forgotten about. I know you know as well. We vow to not do that together, to each other.

Canada: Council of Canadians with Disabilities Chairperson’s Update

The month of April is an important anniversary month for the disability community, and indeed all equality-seeking Canadians, because on 17 April 1985 Section 15, the Equality Section of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, came into force. Governments had been given a grace period, where they had the opportunity to bring legislation and policies into conformity with the standard set by Section 15. As we all know, the Governments of the day had a very limited vision of what was required of them and few changes were made. When Section 15 came into force, Canada’s equality-seeking community began to make use of Section 15 as a new tool for eliminating barriers. CCD, and other groups in the disability community, began to undertake test case litigation, based on Section 15 and other articles of the Charter, to create equitable outcomes for Canadians with disabilities.

Headlines:

Discovery could help treat spinal injuries: U of A researchers uncover trigger that causes muscles to move without signal from brain

Canada: Schools lack access to mental-health professionals, report says

Military Docs Treat Pain in New Ways and Shame in All the Old Ways

medical practice, military, news, oyd rants, shaming, , , , , , , , ,

Gentle readers! I know! I am going to worsen my hernia by reading this stuff every day! I can’t help myself! It’s like tearing myself away from a Star Wars Marathon and a free case of Guinness and Harp on New Years Eve Back when I was child free and in college! Did you ever hear about that drinking game?

Because what I really need right now is more news pounding home just how EEEEEVIIIIL drugs are and how in danger some of us are of becoming dependent on them!

Especially, WOES! Those poor servicemembers, because they would never ever have a reason to use them. Not with an almost decade of war going on in two countries and the highest rate of PTSD, suicide, TBI, and other things we have ever seen in our troops before.

Now, let me slow down for a moment, because there are some really good things going on here. This nerve blocking thing sounds pretty awesome, but I am not a medical professional of any type unless you were going by the number of dram bottles I have on hand. While I have a lot of not-so-nice things to say about the already “pins and needles” feelings in my hands and feet, I will take that in other parts of my body over what I deal with now thats-for-damned-sure. But the juxtaposition of a new therapy with the whole “drugs are bad, mmmm’kay” meme is wearing on my last pain free nerve. The shaming of opiate use is tired and older than my favorite period underwear.

As more troops return from the battlefield with chronic pain, the military has seen a spike in the number of prescriptions for opiate painkillers. More troubling, abuse of painkillers is on the rise: About 22 percent of soldiers admitted misusing prescribed drugs, mostly painkillers, in a 12-month period, according to the results of a Pentagon survey released this year.

So, how did their magical survey define “misusing”? Taking more than prescribed? One more? Two more? Because you were in MORE pain than that prescribed amount of pain managed and you were having trouble getting an appointment with your PCM to get the dosage adjusted or any other treatment? Anything beyond precisely what is on the label is “misusing” a prescription. The military has an entire month devoted to prescription drug abuse awareness…but what they don’t do much to address is the underlying need that might cause servicemembers to resort to such a thing; the fact that they might be in pain and they might not have doctors paying attention or being able to pay enough attention to them or their pain.

At the VA hospital in Tampa, all patients taking painkillers are incrementally tapered off them, Clark said.

Because chronic pain never completely goes away, the hospital’s staff emphasizes physical rehabilitation to strengthen muscles and joints near the pain source. When the injury involves the brain — as in PTSD and mild TBIs — the focus is on treating symptoms that could exacerbate pain.

“Pain may make it more difficult to treat those issues,” Clark said, because “all these things interact.”

But what about the remaining pain? The article never goes on to address what is done for that remaining chronic pain. You know, the pain that never goes away. Because we know that just sucking it up doesn’t work in patients who have chronic pain, and if all patients on painkillers are taken off of them over time…well then, what the hell is actually being done?

This new treatment sounds great for the people to whom it is available, and for the people for whom it will work, but let’s not jump ahead of ourselves and pat ourselves on the backs pretending that this is some magical solution that has suddenly rid us of the need for those nasty opiates or narcotics that are JUST. SO. BAD. FOR. EVERYONE. (You fucking addicts! I mean, c’mon, you were all thinking it!) (Right?) Dr. White is one of only six doctors who do what he does, and the article doesn’t say that the others offer his fancy treatment, nor does the article make any mention of how many civilian specialists are working on this treatment.

I worry that the VA and other military treatment facilities will look at this as a sign that they should be able to deny more patients painkillers. Progress will mean exactly nothing if it sacrifices patient care or hinders the quality of life of patients in chronic pain and with life-long illness and injury. While this article correctly talks about how chronic pain is processed differently by the brain not every uniformed doctor and military medical professional subscribes to that theory, and what the military doesn’t need right now is more doctors, medical professionals, or hospitals bragging about how all of their patients are off those evil, bad, no good drugs without offering them real help.