Human Rights at UPEI

strong>December 15th,2008 episode

All the scandal and dirt on PEI

• Premier Ghiz selling the farm
• Minister Richard Brown turns his employees into crooks
• Who called the police – watch out Richard
• Can the Council of the Disabled write a paragraph?
• Wes Sheridan filing for bankruptcy
• Readers speak out on CBC and John Jeffery

and more…

Five and 1/2 Minutes - New episode – Dec 3 08

Ghiz takes his ball and goes home

UPEI back in the news

Mystery women on PEI

Media censorship

and more…

The rest of the story.

The law is the law.

Letter to the Editor – December 3, 2008

I am not renewing my disabled parking sticker with the PEI Council of the Disabled because I don’t have to. They didn’t earn the $10.

If more people don’t renew they will start paying attention to us and do what we need them to do. It’s a protest vote against their indifference to disabled parking.

PEI Council of the Disabled, don't earn $10

Did you ever hear the Council say people parking in blue zones should be towed away? Or there should be more blue zones. If it wasn’t for stores like Sobey’s, Superstore, Wal-Mart and Home Depot how many disabled spots would there be? The Council doesn’t care.

The PEI Council is not advocating on behalf of Islanders. We hear those stories from the disabled over and over.

The Council didn’t advocate to change the Canada Pension application process. They refused to advocate when Canada Revenue tried to take away the Disability Tax Credit. I worked on those projects with no help from the Council.

The Council refused to advocate with the Binns’ government when he DSP was cutback $1 million.
The final straw was the July 08 Guardian letter supporting the removal of accessible parking on UPEI. They said the maximum distance is 70 metres from the door to the curb when its 50. Then the executive director said whatever the UPEI committee decided was OK.

The law is what matters but to the Council anything you want to do with a disabled person is OK. They are spineless, afraid to speak out in case they lose government funding.

Only the City of Charlottetown and maybe Summerside have given the Council the right to issue permits. The Charlottetown by-law says we need a “permit as issued by the PEI Council of the Disabled or its equivalent.”

Well I’ve got a permit from the Council and I have a disability.

The PEI Highway Traffic Act says the “vehicle prominently displays a valid emblem approved by the Minister” That’s what I have. To make sure I emailed Graham Miner Registrar of Highway Safety. As long as you have a permit, that’s what you need.

I have a permit and it’s good as long as I’m disabled which will be until I die.

Stephen Pate
PEI Disability Alert
Charlottetown, PEI

PS – there’s a funny mistake – somehow I typed Montague in my address. Must have been a slip of the fingers thinking about the old days when I was in Kings County

UPEI Wade MacLauchlan, a challenge to debate disability access

Universities are supposed to be places of higher learning. At UPEI, the management seems to be bastion of right wing bigotry and minority discrimination. I know there are decent people out at UPEI but they are not in control.

So Wade, I challenge you to a public debate on the accessible parking issue at UPEI. To show you what a fair guy I am, I promise not to call you a liar, fascist or bigot at any time during the debate, plus or minus 24 hours.

The Question

Should UPEI provide accessible parking for people with disabilities or not? Should it be 150 meters from the building doors or less than 50 meters?

It’s always good to have a quantifiable question; otherwise the audience can’t determine the truth. The actual questions can be negotiated by teams of question negotiators.

Background

Prime facia, UPEI Board of Governors under the spell of the mesmerizer Wade MacLauchlan has been ignoring its responsibility to uphold the law, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the heritage of Christian charity from St. Dunstan’s by providing accessible parking as close as possible to the buildings. 

Rack my brain as I may, there is nothing that justifies taking away accessible parking for people with disabilities except bigotry and discrimination against the disabled. Who would admit to that today?

So here we are almost 6 months from the decision and act that removed the last accessible parking on campus.

What is the Board of Governors doing except stonewalling, a human rights disgrace for all to see. Note to Board – people all over North America have read this blog and wonder what your problem is. Me too.

Is the Board making steps to right the wrong?

Not a chance, they are complaining to the Guardian to stop printing our Letters to the Editor and places like Facebook to have the UPEI parking group removed. All in one week, done at night under the stealth of darkness.

Ohhhh scary scary. That should put and end to free speech.

Get out the brown shirts, burn the books, break the store windows it’s Kristallnacht on PEI.

All right Mr. Big Shot, I challenge you to a public debate over accessible parking at UPEI, at the Duffy amphitheatre.

Your dad Harry MacLauchlan wouldn’t need a debate to solve this issue. He’d be bold enough to talk it out, man to man. He was no coward.

I’ll give you the home ice advantage. You can line up all your best Vice Presidents and professors. It’ll be just you and me under regular debating rules, you get all the bench strength and seconds.

Wade it’s time for a showdown. You know you’re besmirching the name of UPEI throughout the world for no reason. I’d say that is dereliction of duty.

Think you can hold your own with me for 45 minutes in the ring. You’ve got 2 degrees and millions of dollars, staff everything.

I’m just a little guy in a wheelchair with Grade XI and a year at Dalhousie. You could probably debate me to a draw in 30 seconds, on the ropes in 60 seconds, down for the count in 2 minutes.

C’mon or are you afraid of the truth?

Council of Disabled plagiarizes UN statement on Day of Persons with Disabilities

By Stephen Pate

Today is International Day of Persons with Disabilities.

This is the day the politicians and other wind bags proclaim their support for persons with disabilities. The rest of the year they can ignore us.

Marcia Carroll, CEO PEI Council of the Disabled - plagiarist?

Marcia Carroll and the PEI Council of Persons with Disabilities trotted out a fancy opinion piece for the Guardian today which the paper dutifully printed.

The article is plagiarized from the United Nations press release. This is, I’m afraid, the norm for the low ethics of the Council who pretend to advocate on behalf of the disabled. Why low ethics? If you espouse a cause and get paid handsomely to advocate for the disabled, not doing so is unethical.

Ms Carroll should write her own original content but then the Council doesn’t know much about disabilities and says less.

Dare to Compare

UN Statement

Dignity and justice for all of us is the theme of this year’s International Day for Persons with Disabilities, as well as for the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Ms Carroll signed opinion

Dignity and justice for all of us is the theme of this year’s International Day for Persons with Disabilities.

What about the disabled on PEI

Carroll goes on to add some of her words to the UN press release and wax eloquent about disability rights all over the world. Meanwhile the Council cannot help students and staff at UPEI with their accessible parking. It is always easier to advocate in the abstract about people far away.

The Council cannot find the time to correct the error filled letter written in support of UPEI’s decision to remove accessible parking, Accessibility Committee made call.

UPEI and President Wade MacLauchlan have pointed to that letter over and over as an endorsement of removing accessible parking from the UPEI campus. The Council’s mistakes are not benign: they hurt the disabled who they are supposed to help.

Carroll says in the letter “Unfortunately not all designated parking spaces are within that 75-metre radius.” The city by-law clearly states the maximum distance is 50 meters. Carroll has been stalling for 5 months on publishing a correction, despite promises she would. I believe it is the Board of the Council who are unethical. Carroll tells me her hands are tied.

The Council’s commitment to disability advocacy is as phony as their signed, plagiarized press release.

How about stepping up to the plate with some real advocacy?

Plagiarism
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was one of the lead developers of the email message. You can blame them for spam.

They say “the UNC Honor Court defines plagiarism as “the deliberate or reckless representation of another’s words, thoughts, or ideas as one’s own without attribution in connection with submission of academic work, whether graded or otherwise.”

Generally in the media, a reporter caught plagiarizing some else’s work is fired.

Intellectual dishonesty

Intellectual dishonesty is at the core of the Council of the Disabled. They want to maintain their $800,000 annual government supplied budget but they don’t want to help us any more than they have to.

I don’t think their worth $10 and I’m not renewing my permit this year.

We have long called for the Council to fulfill its role in PEI’s disability community but they have failed to do so. Islanders with disabilities don’t need rhetoric: we need the Council to do the work it claims as its job.

Thank you Marcia for illustrating how dishonest the Council of Persons with Disabilities has become.

If you’re going to teach a subject, is it a prerequsite that you have an affinity for the topic. I once met an 18th century English prof who hated the novels but needed the work. Guess that explained his/her bad case of personal self-loathing.

This week a religious studies professor at UPEI – you can look it up – demanded angrily to be taken off the mail list. We sure did that in a hurry. Perhaps they could call the wrath of God on us.

Not to worry though, this prof doesn’t believe in religious values.

When I asked very politely why a religious professor wouldn’t want to read about human rights and the needs of the weak and dispossed, here’s what I got for a reply:

     “You may inquire and I could reply …”

You will note my request was a polite “inquire” and the response was an enigmatic exercise in semantics. Maybe the prof teaches that topic too.

So I’m left with the quandry and it’s no small one: what does a religious studies professor teach if not Christian, Muslim, or Buddhist love and charity?

Perhaps I’ll take the course in logic in the 21st century next. This life is too confusing. I need more education.

Oh it’s rainy and wet outside. Anyone in a wheelchair or walking slow because they have a disability is going to get awful wet at UPEI.

Imagine some students have to go almost 200 yards in a manual wheelchair from the parking lots in the rain to their classes. I wonder why the law says he parking should be as close as possible to the door but not more than 50 meters? Could it be to help those poor souls out?

When you’re wheeling in a chair and its raining, you get awfully wet. The water and slop on the pavement travels up the wheel and soaks your arms and legs. The dirt gets into your face.

It feels like you’re walking on your hands in the puddles or slush. It’s miserable.

Students with disabilities will be wet when they get to class. Last year one of those students got pneumonia and had to drop out.  Oh too bad for her: the strong will survive.

Wade MacLaughlan's solution for the disabled?

Why just recently President MacLauchlan was heard to comment on the wisdom of the Eskimos. They used to push the old and disabled out on ice flows to drift away and die. So much easier that way. No need to put in disabled parking, door openers and elevators. All that bother gone.

President MacLaughlan is searching around for someone with a masters in the anthropology of sub-Arctic and Arctic aboriginals to teach a new course next semester, “Ethics and euthanasia.” Most of the Board of Governors has already signed up and the rest will take it or else. Wade has Maxwell’s hammer, figuratively of course.

Maxwell’s Silver Hammer ( may contain graphic cartoon images, definitely contains The Beatles)