This article is based on my notes taken at a Keynote Speech given by Dr. Michael J. Prince on June 18th 2009 at the CVHIS conference (‘quotes’ are from his Power-point Presentation). Dr. Prince is the Lansdowne Professor of Social Policy in the Faculty of Human & Social Development at the University of Victoria. He is a prolific author, frequent media host/expert commentator, and a distinguished public speaker. His most recent book, Absent Citizens, addresses many of the issues that confront people with disabilities in Canada today.

One visible confrontation that many people with disabilities face every day is that their disabilities are themselves ‘invisible’ – ‘the invisibility of injuries and impairments are cultural creations from public assumptions and misunderstandings’. The simple fact that one is perceived as being ‘different’ without an external indicator for that difference can be isolating. Michael Prince quoted an individual with an invisible disability who had written: ‘I feel that sometimes people look at me differently. I sometimes wonder if I’d had a scar people could see me – if that would make a difference in their stares.’

Even when a disability is visible, it is not adequate for a public response, noted Prince; Rick Hansen’s spinal cord injury was not sufficient to change public perceptions; it required his ‘Man in Motion’ to make it visible to the public eye, yet it remains invisible to political vision: ‘about 2 million Canadian adults lack one or more of the disability supports they need and half of all children with disabilities who need specialized aids do not have all the aids they require.’

Even when those aids are available, ‘many costs and expenses are not covered and reimbursed.’ Prince stated that such aids are often not provided by government agencies but through charitable and community organizations, which face severe funding cuts seemingly in ‘lock-step’ with cuts in corporate, business and personal income taxes. The cost of funding these needs would be far less than the total dollar amount the recent one percent cut in the Goods and Services Tax represents in lost ‘revenue’ by the Federal Government.

Canadians with disabilities not only face challenges with daily living but they and ‘their families are twice as likely to live in poverty as other Canadians.’ The invisible barriers to assisting people with disabilities include ‘complicated, rule-heavy, personally intrusive administrative systems [and an] inadequate supply of training and employment supports.’ As a result, Prince revealed that nearly half of all people on welfare assistance in British Columbia have various kinds and forms of disabilities; in Saskatchewan, the figure is an astonishing 70%. Nearly 12% of all Canadians live in poverty, but that figure doubles to approximately 24% for people with disabilities. These numbers only represent those who qualify for assistance, Prince emphasized, as nearly 50% of people who apply for Canada Pension Plan Disability Benefits, for example, are turned down.

The invisibility of poverty and disability can combine to further marginalize individuals as a recent study (Steven Hwang et al., “The effect of traumatic brain injury on the health of homeless people,” Canadian Medical Association Journal 2008:179) on homelessness in Toronto revealed that 70% of persons living on the streets in that city had suffered a head injury prior to becoming ‘homeless’. According to Prince, ‘invisibility often interconnects with social exclusion, neglect, and poverty … and political indifference.’ The initial first drafts of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms were released in 1980, and Section 15 included protection against discrimination on the basis of sex, race, and religion, but not on the basis of disability. It took extensive lobbying for those rights to be recognized in the Canadian Charter. At present that indifference remains deeply ingrained in government, as demonstrated by an International Treaty recognizing human rights for people with disabilities has been developed by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, yet the Canadian government has not signed either the Convention or the Optional Protocol for ratification.

Invisibility guarantees continued neglect, argued Prince, and therefore requires ‘political seeing’ as “the capacity to see anew, to see empathetically, (Benjamin Barber, Strong Democracy, 1984) that is, thoughtfully and with compassion. This capacity arises out of social interaction and out of imaginative efforts by individuals to see in common” (ibid.). Prince emphasized that this requires recognizing differences as equitable, and moving from invisibility to visibility to the unremarkable. Prince concluded with: “In the end, human freedom will be found not in caverns of private solitude but in the noisy assemblies where women and men meet daily as citizens and discover in each others’ talk the consolation of a common humanity” (ibid.).

Humanity is achieved when we see our differences as a cause for celebration and not a reason for exclusion and isolation. When ‘disability’ is no longer remarkable for the invisible ‘addictions issues, social isolation, financial concerns and poverty, homelessness, severe stress on families and caregivers;’ but for the visible eradication of that social and economic poverty; when ‘all Canadians with disabilities … have the income and resources they need to secure a good quality of life and to fully participate in all aspects of their communities’ then we have achieved that human goal.

Being a person with disabilities should not preclude the joyous declaration that I am Canadian; I am both, and that should be unremarkable. When such effort and dedication are still required to make the invisible visible, it indicates that we are a long way from the remarkable achievement of where being a Canadian with disabilities is, indeed, unremarkable.