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Empower U: Learn to Access Your Disability Rights Training on Canadian Human Rights, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and its Optional Protocol (OP) training aims to increase awareness of how to address discrimination using more familiar Canadian human rights laws such as Human Rights Codes and the newer international Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). This is training for persons with disabilities by persons with disabilities. The training is part of a project funded by Employment and Social Development Canada and implemented by the Council of Canadians with Disabilities (CCD) in collaboration with Canadian Multicultural Disability Centre Inc. (CMDCI), Citizens With Disabilities – Ontario (CWDO), Manitoba League of Persons with Disabilities (MLPD) and National Educational Association of Disabled Students (NEADS). Read more.
Euthanasia/Assisted Suicide
CCD is committed to the principles of self-determination and the positive promotion of the image of Canadians with disabilities in society in a manner that is consistent with the principles of equality, personal security, freedom of conscience and human dignity.
CCD believes that the devaluation of the lives and experiences of persons with disabilities has been used to justify acts of violence against people with disabilities, including the murder of people with disabilities.
CCD opposes actions that may serve to further devalue the lives of people with disabilities in Canada or promote the negative stereotypes about people with disabilities as suffering individuals in need of state regulated assistance to end our lives.
CCD opposes any government action which denies people with disabilities their constitutional rights to equality, personal security, and human dignity.
CCD is committed to actions which promote a positive image of persons with disabilities.
CCD opposes government action to decriminalize assisted suicide because of the serious potential for abuse and the negative image of people with disabilities that would be produced if people with disabilities are killed with state sanction. (Policy statement passed by the CCD National Council of Representatives on June 8, 1996.)
Recent Work
November 7, 2020
COUNCIL OF CANADIANS WITH DISABILITIES DENOUNCES TRUDEAU GOVERNMENT'S RE-INTRODUCTION OF UNAMMENDED BILL C-7 ON MEDICAL AID IN DYING AS "HEAD-IN-THE SAND MENTALITY" THAT ENDANGERS THE LIVES OF CANADIANS WITH DISABILITIES
The Council of Canadians with Disabilities (CCD), a national disability rights organization, is vehemently denouncing the Trudeau government’s re-introduction of Bill C-7, a bill which extends access to Medical Aid in Dying to people who are experiencing intolerable suffering as a result of illness or disability, but whose death is not reasonably foreseeable. The bill was first introduced in early February, before the COVID-19 pandemic hit Canada. Read more.
November 7, 2020
The Council of Canadians with Disabilities Supports Quebecer, Jonathan Marchand, as he brings his cage in front of the National Assembly in Quebec to obtain his and his friends' release from long-term care facilities
The Council of Canadians with Disabilities (CCD), a national disability rights organization, is expressing its support for 43-year-old Jonathan Marchand as he begins a protest to obtain his and his friends’ release from long-term care facilities in Quebec. Read more.
September 4, 2018
CANADA'S MEDICAL ASSISTANCE IN DYING REGULATIONS FALL SHORT
The Canadian Association for Community Living (CACL) and the Council of Canadians with Disabilities (CCD) strongly call on the federal government to strengthen the monitoring system for medical assistance in dying (MAiD). Read more.
More on Euthanasia/Assisted Suicide
April 15, 2016
Bill C-14 Does Not Go Far Enough to Protect Vulnerable Canadians
March 29, 2016
Vulnerable Persons Standard
January 28, 2016
"Right to Palliative Care, Vulnerability Assessment & Review Board Key Pillars of PAD/VE Regime" Says Council of Canadians with Disabilities (CCD)
January 15, 2016
SCC Decision Disappoints
October 14, 2014
"Canadians Should not be Provided Public Support to Kill Themselves"
October 9, 2014
Ipsos-Reid Poll on 'Assisted Dying': Flawed Data and Disappointing Analysis
Tracy Latimer
The Latimer Case
The Latimer case directly concerned the rights of persons with disabilities. Mr. Latimer's view was that a parent has the right to kill a child with a disability if that parent decides the child's quality of life no longer warrants its continuation. CCD explained to the court and to the public how that view threatens the lives of people with disabilities and is deeply offensive to fundamental constitutional values. Learn more.