Deaf man wins discrimination case
Province set to address income assistance issues
A B.C. Human Rights Tribunal settlement will likely make it easier for deaf people and others with disabilities who need provincial income assistance to get timely help.
On Friday, Christopher Shay and the B.C. Public Interest Advocacy Centre said they had agreed to settle a complaint the deaf man filed last year. It alleged the province was discriminating against people with disabilities in how it delivers emergency income assistance.
But Shay’s win won’t fundamentally change prospects for ablebodied people who face similar delays in getting help, said Sarah Khan, a lawyer with the Advocacy Centre.
“This is a great win for Christopher and for other people with disabilities,” she said. “It doesn’t fix the problem for the general population.”
Shay, 43, filed a human rights complaint in May 2015 alleging the province had largely ignored his request for emergency assistance. In September 2014, in dire financial straits, without a job and facing eviction, Shay applied online for immediate help from the B.C. Ministry of Social Development.
Under the ministry’s guidelines, it is supposed to respond with a needs assessment within 24 hours.
However, Shay never received a reply and even after appealing to others for help it took five weeks before he received the government assistance he was looking for.
Khan said Shay’s case was an extreme example in a system where the ministry routinely ignores its own rules.
“We pointed out in this case that the ministry’s policies are that people are supposed to get eligibility assessments within 24 hours,” she said. “Generally the waiting times are one to three weeks, whereas in Mr. Shay’s case the wait time was much longer than that. The wait time was exacerbated by his disability.”
Khan thanked the ministry for resolving Shay’s case, and for making changes that will help the disabled.
It was a rare win for the Advocacy Centre, which for more than a decade has complained about the lack of timely access for people needing income assistance. In 2005, after the new Liberal government began changing how it delivers social assistance, the centre filed a complaint with the Office of the Ombudsperson. It led to a 2009 report noting the ministry was failing to meet its mandate, with a promise from the government to do better.
However, problems remain. Last year, the centre filed another complaint with the ombudsperson, arguing a continuing systemic failure by the ministry to help people in a timely way. The ombudsperson declined to investigate the complaint, saying it was too broad, but encouraged individuals to file their own complaints. Khan said her office has been assisting individuals in the complaint process.
The lack of timely access has been exacerbated in recent years as the ministry closed walk-in offices and moved to a phone and online system. Since 2005 the ministry has closed 14 offices, the advocacy group said. Last year, the province reduced hours at 11 northern and Interior offices, and in the Downtown Eastside allows only drop-in appointments for two hours a day.
Khan said the centre has taken cases from the public to the Human Rights Tribunal in the past, but those cases have been dropped by the applicants as soon as the ministry offers a settlement.
“We have actually filed a number of other cases around the lack of timely access to income assistance, but they generally have settled, so we haven’t been able to carry it on,” she said.
Shay said he continued his human rights complaint even after receiving assistance because he didn’t want other deaf or disabled people to share his experience. While the able-bodied public also has problems getting timely access to government support, that wasn’t his motivation for complaining, he said.
“I know they have those same issues, but for myself, I am not really aware of what their process looks like. That wasn’t my experience,” he said through an interpreter, Alana McKenna. “I know what it looks like as a deaf person and what that experience looks like for myself. So my role was to advocate for the general deaf public.”
Shay was on assistance for two years, but is now working full time.
Under the terms of the settlement, the province agreed to better use of email for communications and to arrange for the use of interpreters on an expedited basis, Khan said.
The ministry has also created a new specialized intake unit trained to help people with communication barriers.
Social Development Minister Michelle Stilwell was not available for comment. The ministry emailed a statement saying that while it could not speak about the details of the settlement, it is making a number of changes.
“These changes include streamlining our application process to better serve applicants who have a disability-related communication barrier,” the ministry stated. “Specialized intake workers will arrange available communication supports or services for applicants with a disability-related communication barrier (for example, booking a sign language interpreter for someone who is deaf ) that require an appointment to complete their application.”
The ministry also said it will provide food vouchers, shelter referrals and bus tickets to anyone applying for help who has an urgent need, and that it attempts to contact people who have filed for an immediate needs assessment within one day.
“Each case is unique, but in the vast majority of cases the ministry provides expedited assistance to people with immediate needs,” it said in the statement.