THE CHALLENGES AND BARRIERS FACING PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES IN THE COMMONWEALTH
REFLECTIONS ON ESTABLISHING THE COMMONWEALTH PARLIAMENTARIANS WITH DISABILITIES NETWORK: A VIEW FROM NOVA SCOTIA I was thrilled to be elected to the Nova Scotia House of Assembly in October 2013 as the MLA for Eastern Shore. A few days later, I was elected by my MLA peers to serve as the Speaker for the Assembly. I was re-elected as MLA and Speaker again in 2017, serving until August 2021. My journey into elected public service was motivated in no small part by my observation that persons with disabilities were vastly under-represented in elected office in Nova Scotia. I had always thought that until ‘real live’ people with disabilities occupy more elected seats at all levels of government, progress on the file would continue to be measured in metres instead of kilometres. The goal of any freely elected democratic government should be to have the diversity of its elected Members be representative of the population of which it is elected to serve. Over the past few decades, as a result of the hard work of the various minority, demographic groups involved, slowly but surely, efforts and initiatives have brought the issue of lack of representation of gender, sexual orientation and race, to the forefront of political conversations. Those efforts have resulted in raised awareness of the importance of inclusion and the ensuring benefits of better decision-making and policy outcomes, and for that, members of those demographics are grateful. However, persons with disabilities need more elected champions to occupy elected positions. The strength of any sitting, elected government comes largely from the lived experience that each of its Members bring to the decision-making table. Diversity matters. In 2013, an unscientific survey of the Canadian political landscape revealed only a small handful of elected people across all three levels of government anywhere in Canada who self-identified as a person with a disability. The same was true for the United States and every other country that I had the ability to reach out to. The unmistakable conclusion is that this demographic is dramatically under-represented in elected governments across the globe.
As the first Speaker in the Commonwealth with a significant mobility disability, I set about to raise awareness about this situation and advocate for jurisdictions and sitting governments to do everything they could to increase the number of people with disabilities in our democratic processes, including elected positions. Beginning with my own government in my own province, my own experiences as an elected Member with a disability necessitated renovations to make our Legislature, the oldest in Canada at 205 years old, more accessible to all persons. Since 2013, renovations have included: • Making the raised Speaker’s dais wheelchair accessible via a new permanent ramp. • New barrier-free gender-neutral washrooms. • Complete renovations and upgrades to exterior grounds with universal design/barrier-free access at the centre of design. • Closed captioning and CART services incorporated into all Assembly proceedings. • Renovations to legislative television control room to make it barrier free. In addition to those physical improvements, by virtue of my presence as a person who uses a wheelchair occupying the halls of government, subtle, but important changes occurred in the outlook, attitude and awareness of all 51 elected Members of the Nova Scotia House of Assembly. The other 50 elected Members saw and experienced first-hand the potential of enabling people with disabilities by removing physical and attitudinal barriers which prevent persons with disabilities from fully participating in all aspects of our democracy. This not-so-subtle shift in attitude resulted in the government creating the political climate and the political will for Nova Scotia to become only the 3rd province in Canada to pass accessibility legislation in 2017 enshrining in law the right for all persons to be full participants in all aspects of society.
Hon. Kevin Murphy served as a Member of the House of Assembly of Nova Scotia as
the representative for Eastern Shore and was also the Speaker of the House of Assembly from 2013 to 2021. During his time in politics, he also worked with the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association to host its first conference for Parliamentarians with Disabilities in Canada and was crucial to establishing the Commonwealth Parliamentarians with Disabilities (CPwD) network, becoming the first CPwD Chairperson. Prior to entering politics, Kevin was a successful entrepreneur and community advocate for disability issues. He resides in Porters Lake, Nova Scotia with his wife Stephanie and their two children, Rachael and Jackson.
360 | The Parliamentarian | 2021: Issue Four | 100 years of publishing
