Canada has just passed a new law to strengthen accessibility for people with a disability in federally regulated workplaces and organizations.
The Act to Ensure a Barrier Free Canada, also known as the Accessible Canada Act (the “Act”), came into force on July 11, 2019 and aims to create a “Canada without barriers” by the year 2040. A similar legislation – the Accessibility for Ontarian with Disabilities Act – exists in Ontario and aims to achieve this goal by the year 2025.
The new Act will require organizations under federal jurisdiction to develop accessibility plans that account for the various barriers people with disabilities face in their built environments, when accessing services in the public, and in their employment.
This Act will apply to the federally regulated private sector, the Government of Canada and Parliament. The Act’s primary mandate is to address accessibility issues in a proactive manner, by removing barriers before they create harm. This is significant given that a reactive response, through the human rights litigation process, has been the only impactful way to address these issues for over four decades.