January 13, 2021
Watch TVO’s flagship current affairs program “The Agenda with Steve Paikin” tonight at 8 or 11 pm Eastern time for a half-hour panel on what the Ford Government should be doing to ensure that patients with disabilities do not face disability discrimination if life-saving critical medical care must be triaged or rationed. This rationing or triage could be needed soon if the soaring COVID-19 infection rates overload Ontario hospitals.
The four panelists are AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky, ARCH Disability Law Centre legal counsel Mariam Shanuda, Dr. James Downar (a member of the Government-appointed external advisory Bioethics Table and an author of the March 28, 2020 critical care triage protocol with which the disability community had strong objections) and Ontario research chair in bioethics Prof. Udo Schuklenk.
This panel will appear on TV. It will also stream tonight at 8 pm on the Twitter feed and Facebook page of The Agenda with Steve Paikin. It will be permanently available on YouTube within a few hours after it airs. We will publicize the Youtube link once we get it.
We once again vigourously applaud The Agenda with Steve Paikin for addressing COVID-19 issues affecting people with disabilities. The Agenda stands in stark and resounding contrast to so many other media outlets that have not covered this life-and-death issue.
Back on April 14, 2020, only one month into the pandemic, The Agenda with Steve Paikin included a panel discussion on how critical care triage should be conducted if COVID-19 overwhelms Ontario hospitals. The three panelists on that program included Dr. Downar, Prof. Schuklenk, and another bioethicist. There was no one speaking from the perspective of the disability community. Those panelists did not themselves voice any disability issues in relation to the entire critical care triage topic. When Steve Paikin raised the fact that concerns had been publicly raised from the disability perspective, Prof. Schuklenk denied that there was a problem of disability discrimination. He had not read the March 28, 2020 critical care triage protocol that the Government had already sent to all Ontario hospitals.
After that program aired, AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky wrote The Agenda, urging it to cover the disability perspective on the triage issue as well as other disability issues in the COVID-19 pandemic. To its great credit, The Agenda included AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky and Wendy Porch (executive director of the Centre for Independent Living in Toronto CILT) on its May 8, 2020 broadcast. That discussion included the critical care triage issue as well as other disability concerns during the pandemic.
We are delighted that The Agenda is now revisiting the critical care triage issue, given major developments since last spring. To our knowledge, this is the first time that a major media outlet has brought together panelists from the medical, bioethics and disability community perspectives. We need the Ford Government to take part in such discussions, rather than continuing to hide in secret behind its external advisory Bioethics Table that makes no decisions in this area.
Please encourage your friends and family to watch this interview. Promote it on social media like Twitter and Facebook. Urge members of the Ontario Legislature to watch this interview. Call on the media to cover this issue too.
There have been 713 days, over 23 months, since the Ford Government received the final report of the Independent Review of the implementation of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act by former Ontario Lieutenant Governor David Onley. The Government has announced no comprehensive plan of new action to implement that ground-breaking report. That makes even worse the serious problems facing patients with disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic, addressed in this new episode of The Agenda with Steve Paikin.
For more background on this issue, check out:
1. The AODA Alliance’s December 21, 2020 news release on the critical care triage issue.
2. The Government’s external advisory Bioethics Table’s September 11, 2020 draft critical care triage protocol, finally revealed days ago.
3. The December 3, 2020 open letter to the Ford Government from 64 community organizations, calling for the Government to make public the secret report on critical care triage from the Government-appointed Bioethics Table.
4. The AODA Alliance’s unanswered September 25, 2020 letter, its November 2, 2020 letter, its November 9, 2020 letter, its December 7, 2020 letter, its December 15, 2020 letter and its December 17, 2020 letter to Health Minister Christine Elliott.
5. The August 30, 2020 AODA Alliance submission to the Ford Government’s Bioethics Table, and a captioned online video of the AODA Alliance’s August 31, 2020 oral presentation to the Bioethics Table on disability discrimination concerns in critical care triage.
6. The September 1, 2020 submission and July 20, 2020 submission by the ARCH Disability Law Centre to the Bioethics Table.
7.The November 5, 2020 captioned online speech by AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky on the disability rights concerns with Ontario’s critical care triage protocol.
8. The AODA Alliance website’s health care page, detailing its efforts to tear down barriers in the health care system facing patients with disabilities, and our COVID-19 page, detailing our efforts to address the needs of people with disabilities during the COVID-19 crisis.