This year, the Commission continued to build momentum on its work to monitor the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).
The Commission was formally designated as the body responsible for monitoring the CRPD in 2019. This means it is the Commission's responsibility to monitor and report on whether Canada is doing all it can to meet its human rights obligations for people with disabilities as outlined in the Convention.
In 2021, our focus was to chart a course for how to take the feedback we received in 2020 from people across Canada, and put it into action.
On a new section of the Commission's website, you can now find a series of interactive tools, including a video, and an easy read executive summary to explain this new part of the Commission's work. We have also published our Action Plan in PDF, and HTML with ASL and closed-captioned videos. This Action Plan will guide us into the next phase of our monitoring process and provide a framework for our monitoring efforts.
It is grounded in four key areas: advocacy, empowerment, collaboration, and communicating results.
The Action Plan also establishes the top three priorities that we will focus on when monitoring the rights of people with disabilities in Canada. These three priorities were carefully selected and are based on the feedback we received from people across Canada.
The three priorities are:
- poverty,
- housing, and
- work and employment.
Along with these priority issues and key areas, our Action Plan also provides broad direction on how we are going to do this monitoring work, who should be involved, what information will be collected, how that information should be shared, and what supports might be needed for others to take part in the monitoring work.
It is essential that our monitoring work be meaningful for people with disabilities, and contribute to real change. Throughout this process, we are continuing to work in close collaboration with people with disabilities, their families and caregivers, and with advocacy organizations.