DJNO - PRESS RELEASE: «Progress For Who: Disabled Communities Left Behind in Ontario’s Tariff Fight and Placed Under Attack.»
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PRESS RELEASE: «Progress For Who: Disabled Communities Left Behind in Ontario’s Tariff Fight and Placed Under Attack.»


Exterior of the Ontario Legislature overlaid with rectangular shapes. In the first, blue rectangle the DJNO logo and text in yellow reading "Press Release". Below that a yellow rectangle with blue text matching the title of the press release. At the bottom of the image, a blue rectangle with white text reading "Read Our Response to the Speech from the Throne."

16 April 2025 For Immediate Release


Toronto, Ontario—Disabled Ontarians express our collective disappointment and concern with the 2025 Speech from the Throne delivered by the Honourable Edith Dumont, Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, on behalf of the Government. 


“Disabled Ontarians have been left behind in the face of generational crises and economic instability. Social Assistance Increases, Accessible, Affordable Housing, and fulfilling legal commitments under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act have all been left off the table by this government once again.” , said Brad Evoy, Executive Director of Disability Justice Network of Ontario, “Instead, this government prepares to posture against Donald Trump while enacting many of the same ideas and policies at here at home.”


While Ontario prepares for the challenge ahead, the Province leaves behind disabled people from every region and city to barely survive, let alone thrive in community together. Without clear and immediate investment in our social systems to end austerity across this Province, there remains an ever-present economic and social threat that only low-income and disabled communities will be left to bear alone.


As Ontario prepares to ‘unleash’ its economy, violence will be unleashed on the most vulnerable within our communities as the Government prepares to rush ahead with disabling, colonial resource extraction projects, resume attacks on our unhoused disabled neighbours and drug users, and continue the rampant criminalization of disabled people throughout the Ontario justice system. 


“The Province talks tough about unconstitutional bail reform and stacking the deck against those in prison” , said Pam Reaño, DJNO Prison Project Lead. “We see the results of these ideas every day—in every harm done to unhoused people and drug users; in the mass human rights violations and death occurring in prisons across Ontario, like in the Maplehurst Correctional Complex.” 


We know what this speech means: a Province full of legislated death, disablement, institutionalization, and poverty for disabled people. Disabled Ontarians know that it doesn’t have to be this way. Ontario can become a place where we stand up for each other, build lives in community together, and—in times of uncertainty like these—reinvestment in social programs and systems for all. To learn more about the Ontario we wish to build, please see our community’s ongoing campaign: endausterity.ca


Disability Justice Network of Ontario was founded in Hamilton in 2018 by disabled Ontarians to build a world where we are free to be—where we can be in community together, have political and social agency, and hold the powerful to account.


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© 2023 by Disability Justice Network of Ontario.

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