An advocacy group is calling Toronto's newest courthouse a "billion-dollar accessibility bungle" after releasing a video showing what it says are various barriers throughout the building.
Since the $956-million courthouse, located at 10 Armoury St., took over criminal proceedings from six Ontario Court of Justice branches in Toronto, North York and Scarborough last February, the facility has been plagued with staffing shortages and courtroom backlogs.
In a recent video, the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance (AODA) commends the downtown Toronto courthouse for features like space for turning wheelchairs and good acoustics in the facility's courtrooms, however, it says far more crucial features are either "missing or botched."
David Lepofsky, the alliance's chair, who is blind, tours the courthouse in the video, posted on Aug. 8, and highlights a litany of barriers for people with hearing and mobility disabilities, autism, blindness and low vision, among others, as he walks through.
Among the AODA's concerns are a lack of accessible parking near the courthouse, excessive glare, quiet elevator sounds, inaccurate braille signage, too few accessible public washrooms and a Wheel-Trans waiting area out of the line of sight to the service's parking spot.
"Every person with a disability going to this courthouse, whether as a lawyer, a judge, a witness, a crime victim, an accused person, a family support matter – they all matter, and they're all going to a criminal courthouse, which is a very stressful place to be," Lepofsky told CTV News Toronto in an interview Wednesday. "And that's without accessibility problems. Add to it these barriers and it makes an already stressful experience even worse, and unfairly so definitely."
The alliance chair says the video provides an "especially stunning example of government mistreatment of people with disabilities in the past," as the AODA expressed several concerns in numerous letters to the province in the years leading up to the courthouse's completion.
"If we raise an accessibility issue, you may get someone saying, 'Oh, we never thought of that,' or, 'Oh, shucks, next time we'll ask,'" Lepofsky said. "In this case, they were warned over and over in advance about these barriers, and they chose to disregard them or to incompetently try to address them."
In one letter to the attorney general from Jan. 28, 2019, the AODA said by the time an advisory group was formed to review the project plans and offer accessibility input, the province had already settled on accessibility requirements – some that drew serious concerns. However, at that point, the AODA said government representatives told them the accessibility concerns that were raised "cannot be addressed because it is too far along in the planning for this new courthouse."
"This is emblematic of the fact that accessibility must be centrally incorporated into a project's planning from the very start. It should not be left, in whole or in part, too much later in the process, as was the case here," Lepofsky wrote in the 2019 letter.
A spokesperson for Infrastructure Ontario told CTV News Toronto in a statement it assembled an accessibility advisory group (AAG) comprised of several accessibility organizations and individuals, including the AODA, and said it was involved from the design phase to construction on the courthouse.
"The province has engaged with AAG to close out their involvement in the project by reviewing the completed construction of OCJT. In order to facilitate this process, the project's accessibility consultants conducted the final building review and we are gathering their feedback," Ian McConachie, media relations manager for Infrastructure Ontario, said in an emailed statement.
Over a year since the courthouse opened its doors, Lepofsky says the advisory group is still meeting with the province to identify additional "blunders" throughout the building – including a lack of refuge areas in the event of a fire. Lepofsky explained these are designated, fire-protected designated for people with mobility issues to wait safely in until help arrives.
McConachie added the courthouse "meets or exceeds" the regulatory requirements for accessibility features in buildings in the province, pointing to the Gold Accessibility Certification that the Rick Hansen Foundation awarded the new facility – a certificate Lepofsky called "a waste of public money."
"It doesn't certify anything. It doesn't ensure that those who audit a building have sufficient training and expertise to conduct such an audit, take enough time, or consider all accessibility needs. The fact that a building is dubbed accessible by that process does not mean it is accessible," Lepofsky said in the AODA video posted.
Infrastructure Ontario said it encourages feedback from stakeholders to share their input on how it can improve the downtown facility, adding that it, along with the Ministry of the Attorney General, re-engaged with the accessibility advisory group to complete a final review.
"We will continue to review feedback from stakeholders and the public on concerns and suggestions they have on how to resolve or mitigate accessibility issues," McConachie wrote.
Lepofsky says the government needs to fix as much as it can with this courthouse without putting the bill on the public.
"They should be getting the company that won the successful bid and got paid hundreds of millions of dollars to build it. If they messed up, they should be paying for it," Lepofsky said.
On top of that, Lepofsky demands a public accounting of the decision-making process, from the design planning to the construction of the downtown Toronto courthouse.
"There needs to be a massive reform to how the government spends infrastructure dollars," Lepofsky said, noting public buildings like courthouses aren't frequently built.
"Public money should never be used to create accessibility barriers against people with disabilities, and so we need a dramatic revamping of how they design, how they approve and how they account to the public for the way they spend these billions of dollars on these projects."
