
Joint Statement on COVID-19 Vaccine Access For Disabled People
from Dignity Denied and BCEdAccess
Why we’re concerned about Bill C-7
Canada has a well documented history of institutionalization, sterilization, segregation, exclusion, discrimination and outright banning (via immigration) of disabled people. Disabled people are a recognized protected class under the Human Rights Code and Charter. We are over-represented below the poverty line, as victims of police and other violence, in prison, among the homeless and we are excluded by design from many of this country’s buildings, communication, transportation and city streets. Bill C-7 isn’t happening in a vacuum- it’s happening in this context.

Bill C-7 is a threat to all disabled people but poses particular threat to Black, Indigenous and other racialized and/or poor disabled people.

Bill C-7 permits the streamlining of death options with no efforts to improve life options, making it easier for those in crisis to have medical staff emphasize options for death to them, with a reduction in the requirement for independent witnesses, increasing the risk of abuse.

We are concerned Bill C-7 will further lessen the necessity of governments to fully fund and create appropriate systems of support, because the assessment period is shorter than the time required to apply, receive, and benefit from many forms of care, therapeutics, and support.
SHAPESHIFTERS by sb. smith
(first published by Arc Poetry Magazine in November 2020)
“Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
–Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., 1927
we don’t need more help dying,
our mandated deaths
are burnt fallopian tubes,
genetic selection,
icepick-cracked skulls,
bleach injections.
our mutant sewer rat lives
spawn spawn spawn rebirth.
we craft justice out of crumbs,
reach for ancestors in the dark.
our skittering still under fluorescents
in doctor’s offices, snap traps.
we wriggle free, shapeshift bodies
like a reminder: we will always be here.