Testing, testing

My sidewalk adventure last month sent me scrambling to the Accessibility Directorate website so I could make a complaint.

I didn't find any reference to complaints on the main page, so I looked at the new regulations for the Built Environment.  Nope.

There is a long section about Complaints and Enforcement beginning at section 45 of the Act:

45 (1) The Minister shall appoint a Director of Compliance and Enforcement.

Whoops!  I just discovered that there is such a person: Seamus McGreal, Seamus.McGreal@novascotia.ca. 

If you look him up on the Interwebs you discover he used to be a Senior Heritage Planner.  There is no announcement of any job change, so I guess it's up to us to welcome him and offer to work with him on any of the many access problems.  McGreal has the distinction of being the only one of 19 Directorate employees with a name.

Continuing on after that discovery, I happened on the 19 page

2024 & 2025 Minister’s Annual Report on Accessibility  The minister touts the Built Environment Standard as a major achievement.  He says "The standard applies to infrastructure installed and built after April 1, 2026." Even though:

2 The purpose of this Act is to

(a) achieve accessibility by preventing and removing barriers that disable people 

This exception for anything created before April 1 reminds me of the province's decision to invoke "Restorative Justice" to respond to its loss in the human rights case about restaurant washrooms.  Restorative Justice is simply another way to have a separate kind of justice from what everyone else gets.  April 1 is not mentioned in the Act in the context of creating standards.

The Minister may have overstepped his authority.

"after April 1" is a clear affront to "removing barriers".  Yet another arbitrary example of a double standard for people with disabilities.

Things get more complicated.  There is another website for Accessibility in Nova Scotia.  It seems to be a product of the Directorate;  It has definitions and an invitation to workshops and seminars.  It can be reached by a link on the Directorate webpage.  

Then, in the annual report, the Minister goes into detail about "The Remedy" for Systemic Discrimination.  The Directorate is not involved with the remedy as far as I know, so this annual report encompasses other efforts.  

Ending with "Key Priorities", the Minister says a way of making complaints is in the offing.  Let's test it out!