NS lags behind on plan to remove people with disabilities from institutions: monitor

HALIFAX — An independent monitor says Nova Scotia’s progress over the past year in moving people with disabilities out of institutions has fallen short of the milestones required in a legally binding human rights decision.

Michael Prince, a professor of social policy at the University of Victoria, was appointed last year to report annually on whether the province is meeting the requirements of a five-year reform plan approved last year by a human rights inquiry commission.

Prince concludes in his report, published Wednesday evening, that in the first year of the plan, the province has made only “slight progress” — defined as “minimal” and “marginal in outcome” — on nearly half of the 90 legally required steps to improve housing and support for people with disabilities.

The 52-page report, titled “Getting on Track,” highlights delays in hiring staff to plan for institution closures and failures to end admissions to institutions in the first year, which ended April 1.

“Fundamental reforms are being implemented, but progress is slower and compliance is more uneven than required,” Prince writes in the report’s opening.

The professor points out shortcomings in nine of the requirements related to moving people out of institutions. For example, the province has postponed the recruitment and training of 65 employees until the second year of the plan.

The staff yet to be hired would play a crucial role in helping people with disabilities set up community supports and then provide ongoing support.

“For such modest progress, and for reforms so crucial to the solution, this is a bleak assessment,” Prince writes.

“I therefore strongly urge the province to explain and demonstrate how it will achieve these important requirements and meet its deinstitutionalisation obligations within the five-year period,” he added.

Prince also documents delays in setting up a program in which people in the community share their homes and provide support to people with disabilities. While he notes that the province has gathered information on how other Canadian jurisdictions are running such home-sharing programs, the monitor says the requirement to set up 50 homes for the new program in year one was not met.

The delay is notable because it will make it increasingly difficult to complete 500 such homes by the June 2027 deadline, and raises questions about where the roughly 400 residents of the facilities will move to by then, Prince wrote.

The plan — dubbed “the remedy” by the Disability Rights Coalition and the province — is the result of a landmark 2021 Court of Appeals ruling that found systemic discrimination against people with disabilities seeking housing and community-based supports.

The introduction of the human rights measure was the culmination of a legal battle that began in 2014 by three people with disabilities who had been held for years in a Halifax psychiatric hospital despite medical assessments that they could live in the community with appropriate support.

In addition to his concerns about the delays, Prince also raises concerns about the province’s reporting style, pointing to the lack of supporting documentation for the province’s progress claims.

Last year, Prime Minister Tim Houston made a historic apology for the mistreatment of people with disabilities, saying that “their fundamental human rights have not been respected or upheld.”

Vicky Levack, a spokeswoman for the Disability Rights Coalition — which led the lawsuit that led to the human rights resolution — said in an emailed statement that “the Prime Minister simply needs to return to the values ​​and urgency he expressed so clearly in his historic apology and get the resolution on track before any more time is wasted.”

Houston told reporters on Thursday: “The government’s commitment is there, so we’ll do whatever we can. Of course we wish we were further along, but we’re serious about it and we’ll do it.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published August 1, 2024.

— With files from Keith Doucette in Halifax.

Michael Tutton, The Canadian Press