Promises should be kept

Beth MacLean still doesn’t know when she’ll get a spot in a small options home.

Earlier this year, she and two other complainants won their human rights case against the province. Last week, they were granted damages by a board of inquiry for almost 20 years of discrimination, based on their disabilities, that left them languishing in institutions that everyone involved admitted were unsuitable.

MacLean and her co-complainants, Joseph Delaney and Sheila Livingstone, launched their case in 2014 after years of residence in Emerald Hall, a unit at the Nova Scotia Hospital in Dartmouth.

Emerald Hall is a locked facility originally designed for short-term stays for people with acute psychiatric disorders. Once those disorders were treated, those people were supposed to move into more appropriate facilities. But it didn’t work out that way for MacLean, Delaney and Livingstone.

They were left in Emerald Hall for years despite constant pleas to be placed in a small options home. These facilities, typically located in residential neighbourhoods, usually have room for four residents and are staffed by workers trained to deal with their special needs.

Testimony during hearings into their complaint indicated that all three could have been accommodated in a small options home. Livingstone moved into a facility in Yarmouth after the case was filed and died before it concluded. MacLean and Delaney both still await small options placements.

Walter Thompson, the Halifax lawyer who chaired the human rights commission’s board of inquiry that adjudicated the complaint, found in March that the province had discriminated against the three. He followed by ruling on damages last week.

He awarded damages of $100,000 each for MacLean and Delaney, plus $40,000 each for legal fees. He also awarded $40,000 for Livingstone’s legal expenses and $10,000 each to her sister and niece.

And in further ordering that the province find a place in a small options home for MacLean and Delaney, Thompson had reason to doubt that the province would comply.

“While I must trust, I feel obliged to also verify,” Thompson said in his decision last week. “I fear that if I simply make an order, then the province may not accomplish full compliance with the goal I direct.”

So he went an extra step, ordering that the province keep him informed of efforts to place the two, an unusual step for a quasi-judicial body. But it’s justified, given that their pleas have fallen on deaf ears for so long.

The Department of Community Services began a program in 2018 to equip and staff eight small options homes throughout the province. This is a start, housing up to 32 people, but there are hundreds of people waiting for these spots. One advocacy group says the province should build 25 per year for the next three years.

The Liberals promised upon taking office to honour a 2013 report that laid out a roadmap for transforming its services to the disabled, which included building many more small options homes.

We’re still waiting to hear how they intend to fulfill that promise.