Lt. Governor makes first stop in Sudbury tour

After etching his name into the guest book, Ontario's Lieutenant Governor David Onley announced he was happy to be back in Sudbury.

While visiting the city this time, Onley will participate in the Ontario Summer Games opening ceremonies, and tour Science North, the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, Cambrian College's Glenn Crombie Centre and the eDome.

As the first disabled lieutenant governor of Ontario, he will also meet with the Greater Sudbury Accessibility Advisory Panel, to discuss accessibility in the city. 

“Accessibility is a a very important issue to me,” Onley said at Cambrian College, after being introduced by Greater Sudbury Mayor John Rodriguez. “It's a fact that 15-and-a-half per cent of Ontarians have some kind of disability. But the greater significance really is the extended family that surrounds people with disabilities. When you take into account the immediate family members of people with physical and non-visible disabilities, it goes up to over 53 per cent of our population. It's important for us all to understand those are the numbers we're dealing with.”

He said Sudbury, along with many other Ontario cities, are doing well in terms of accessibility.

“All the cities in Ontario seem to be doing a very good job,” he said. “Sudbury is one of them. We do take for granted a lot of things that 20 years ago, just didn't exist. A whole generations of people have grown up in this province now, and have always known curb cuts, and they've always know wheel-chair parking spots, and they've always know automatic doors. Those changes have been very, very important, and they're pretty much everywhere.”

There are still some areas, like unemployment among disabled people, that concern Onley though.

“The big difficulty continues to be the high unemployment for people with disabilities,” he said. “This is what I'm trying to concentrate on whenever I meet with panels such as the accessibility panel here in Sudbury and accessibility groups across the province. While we've made all these improvements, and physically, things are more accessible, the reality is that unemployment for people with disabilities is still over 50 per cent. When you compare that with the height of the Great Depression, where the highest unemployment rate was only 24 per cent, I say only, in comparison, it gives you an idea. It's more than twice as bad as in was in the depression. We have to be looking for some creative solutions as to why people with disabilities are simply not being hired.”

Onley said there is no evidence supporting any of the the top-five reasons employers give for not hiring disabled people.

“People with disabilities who have to come up with creative solutions to get around every single day of their lives tend to be creative problem solvers in their places of employment,” Onley said.
Before heading to the Ontario Summer Games, Onley said he was looking forward to them, and was interested to see just how accessible the venues are.
“It's always very inspiring to see these, and what I have seen of the different venues that I've been at is they're increasingly accessible.