N.S. behind on plan to move people with disabilities out of institutions: monitor

HALIFAX — An independent monitor says Nova Scotia’s progress over the past year on moving people with disabilities out of institutions is missing milestones called for in a legally binding human rights decision.

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

In his report released late Wednesday, Prince concludes that during the plan’s first year the province made only “slight progress” — defined as “minimal” and “marginal in result” — on almost half of the 90 legally required steps to improve housing and support of people with disabilities.

The 52-page report — titled “Getting on Track” — highlights delays in hiring staff to plan the closure of institutions and a failure to end admissions to institutions in the first year, which ended April 1.

“Fundamental reforms are underway, but progress is slower and compliance more uneven than is called for,” Prince writes in the opening of the report.

The professor identifies shortfalls in nine of the requirements linked to moving people out of institutions, such as the province delaying the recruitment and training of 65 staff until the plan’s second year.

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

“For progress so modest, on reforms so central to the remedy, this is a sombre assessment,” Prince writes.

“I therefore strongly urge that the province explain and demonstrate how it will achieve these key requirements, and meet their obligations on deinstitutionalization, within the five-year period,” he adds.

Prince also documents delays in creating 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 operate such home-sharing programs, the monitor says the requirement of setting up 50 homes for the new program in Year 1 was not met.

That delay is notable because it will make it increasingly difficult to have 500 such homes in place by the deadline of June 2027, and it raises questions about where the roughly 400 residents from institutions will be moving to by then, Prince wrote.

The plan — referred to by the Disability Rights Coalition and the province as “the remedy” — is the result of a landmark 2021 Appeal Court decision that identified systemic discrimination against people with disabilities seeking housing and supports in the community.

The creation of the human rights remedy capped a legal battle originally launched in 2014 by three people with disabilities who were kept in a Halifax psychiatric hospital for years, despite medical opinions that they could live in the community with appropriate supports.

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

Last year, Premier Tim Houston made a historic apology for the mistreatment of people with disabilities, saying “their basic human rights have not been honoured nor respected.”

Vicky Levack, a spokeswoman for the Disability Rights Coalition — which led the legal case that yielded the human rights remedy — said in an emailed statement that “the premier just has to return to the values and urgency he so clearly expressed in his historic apology and get the remedy on track before any more time is lost.”

Houston told reporters on Thursday, “the government’s commitment is there, so we will do what’s possible. Certainly we wish we were further ahead, but we are serious and we will get it done.”

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

— With files from Keith Doucette in Halifax.

Michael Tutton, The Canadian Press