Belonging Without Exceptions

In this episode of Community Chats, David Lepofsky, Chair of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) Alliance, joins Brad Saunders, CEO of Community Living Toronto, for the first conversation in our new Belonging series. This six-episode series is part of our #WeAllBelong campaign celebrations for Community Living Month.

David shares his reflections on what belonging means through lived experience, advocacy, and decades of work advancing disability rights in Canada. He talks about the importance of inclusion in schools, the evolution of disability rights under the Charter, and why real progress depends not only on legislation, but on action and accountability in everyday systems. From personal stories to landmark advocacy moments, David explores how belonging is built intentionally, and not by chance.

Tune in for an insightful conversation about belonging, advocacy, and what it takes to build communities where everyone is seen, valued, and able to fully participate.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to season four of Community Chats and to our special belonging series, where we're going to take the next six episodes through May, June, and July and really dive into what belonging means to many of the people that are connected with our community. As part of Community Living Month and our We All Belong campaign, we'll be speaking with guests from across the community about experiences, relationships, and the moments that help create a sense of belonging. This is our second year of the We All Belong campaign, and we're really encouraged with the support that people have shown and for the importance that people are placing on belonging. For our first episode, we have a conversation with David Lepofsky. Well known to many of us, he is a great advocate and supporter. David shares his early experiences of belonging and how it inspired him to take action that allows many people to legally belong today. I now bring you David Lepofsky. All right, David Lepofsky, nice to see you again. Thanks for joining us today.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Always delighted to uh to take part.

SPEAKER_00 1:11

Yeah, you're you're keeping well. In one piece. Excellent. Excellent. This has got to be the longest introduction to spring summer that I can remember uh for a long, long time.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

Kind of an early fall, but we'll take it.

SPEAKER_00 1:28

Whatever. It's getting warmer by the day. We should be optimists. Um you have the the uh privilege, uh, and we're grateful for you for joining uh our first podcast on uh the on on uh for on belonging. We're doing a whole series uh talking to different people around what belonging means to you to compliment our we all belong campaign that we've started a year ago. So thanks for uh thanks for being our first guest. I'm happy to be included in belonging. Excellent. Um we why don't we start off with? I mean, you're you've got a lot, always got a lot going on. So maybe I'll just start off by uh before we get into talking about your thoughts on belonging. What uh what's new with you? What's going on? What's uh what's interesting?

SPEAKER_01 2:15

Well, the biggest issue that that I've been involved in recently um is the provincial governments bill 101, which uh is a major provincial takeover of school boards. They're leaving school elected trustees in place, but as a shadow of their former selves. Uh and I've been involved with the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance, which I chair, and a number of other uh disability organizations, excuse me, focusing on uh the harms that this threatens for students with disabilities. And just as one illustration that that really typifies it, you know, the govern the provincial government and ministries will come up with these brash, bold new policies without thinking about their impact on people with disabilities. And we suffer the consequences. So one of the things that happened in trying to market this major provincial takeover is that the Minister of Education, Paul Callandra, said, uh, oh, well, there's a huge problem that not enough students in high school are attending school. So we want to attack this uh absenteeism crisis. And the solution is that they're gonna penalize students who are absent.

SPEAKER_00 3:37

Yeah, they're gonna tie it, tie it to uh the grade and the grade. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:41

Now, aside from the fact that it doesn't target any of the problems that cause absenteeism, if you want to solve a problem, you don't solve, you don't muzzle the symptom. You address the causes. But set that aside, this immediately presented for students with disabilities. So, for example, any number of students with disabilities would like to go to school, but their principals refuse to let them go, either for the full day or at all. And the provincial government hasn't addressed that problem where they're the cause of the absenteeism. But uh the minister was asked, well, what about that? And he said, Oh, well, we'll making it up as he goes along, he said, Well, we'll exempt students with special education needs from this rule. But didn't think about the consequences that would have for students with disabilities. When I was before Parliament, the legislature a week ago, the day we're recording this on the the 27th of April, I said, this is like trying to solve cure stomach flu by saying we'll duck duct tape the patient's mouth shut. Right? It may suppress the symptoms. It doesn't really cure anything, and it's actually quite awful, aside from all of the rest. But in this case, if they adopted that kind of rule, can you imagine this as a new source of bullying of students with disabilities? In the schoolyard, uh, students without disabilities, why do you get higher grades? Because uh you don't you don't have to be at school, and we get penalized if we're not, and that's not fair. And and that kind of bullying, we don't need another cause for bullying in students with disabilities.

SPEAKER_00 5:18

It gets away from that point of equity, right? Where you're you're that that it's you're you're creating a special education regime within the public system. Is that uh is that another unintended consequence or potential?

SPEAKER_01 5:30

Well, it's it's creating an it's just creating another it's adopting a rule without thinking about the uh impact on students with disabilities.

unknown 5:40

Right.

SPEAKER_01 5:41

And then when they're confronted with the impact, i.e. exclusions, they come up with another rule, which is even more harmful for students with disabilities. Uh, this is what we've been up against. And and so that's been a major thing. Now the government pushed forward the bill and rammed it through, and by the time um uh this recording goes public, I expect the law will have passed on third reading. Um but in the meantime, both the opposition parties proposed some amendments at our request. Amendments that would require the the government to uh take into account the impact on people with disabilities when they when the provincial government starts trying to manage the minutiae uh at school boards around the province. Well, the government voted against that. They shouldn't have to take into account the impact on students with disabilities. The government's taken over uh being able to dictate the minutiae if there's any construction at schools, renovations or new alterations. So we said to me, we propose got an amendment proposed that said they should make sure that those those construction projects are accessible to people with disabilities, parents and kids.

unknown 6:53

Right.

SPEAKER_01 6:53

Well, the government the government voted against that. Right.

SPEAKER_00 6:57

So that's where we live. So you've got a lot keeping you busy. Um, and you you've also got a podcast. We can talk about that a little bit later, but may maybe uh just to start, um you you you are known as uh a strong advocate uh for disability issues. Um uh you're um very passionate about the the work that you uh that you do and have had a significant impact over many decades uh on uh how we live in Canada and how people with disabilities live. So you deserve a lot of recognition for that and a lot of credit. The this sort of month we're focusing on belonging and what that means different to means to different people. So you you're you're uh you um are blind and have been so for many years. Can you talk about what that was like as a child growing up and as a young adult and you're going through school, you've become a lawyer, you're um you you've gone uh through a big journey. What how did belonging fit in? Or how did what was your experience uh in in belonging?

SPEAKER_01 8:05

Well, you know, I had an experience when I was 13 and I went to an overnight camp in the in the States, not a camp for blind kids, it was a Jewish educational summer camp that really defines my understanding of this. You see, is I'm totally blind now. But when I was a kid, I had partial vision of one eye. And I could read, but I had to hold a book up close to my nose. Now, if I was reading in a public place, like a uh park or a shopping mall or a restaurant, uh, somebody would come over at Alder Kid and say, you know, my parent, why don't you get better glasses for your kid? As if this had never occurred to us. Um my condition couldn't be corrected by glasses. Um, so I was used to being kind of the weird kid for for that reason. Well, I went to this summer camp, um, and uh the first night we were all getting into bed, the campers, and I always like reading before I go to bed, even when I was 13. And so I took out a novel to read and I held it up close to my nose, and I was just waiting for the teasing to start from the other kids because I just met them. They knew I had low vision, but I was just I didn't use a white cane. Nobody said a word, and nobody teased me. And my first reaction is you gotta remember, I'm 13, is what's wrong with these kids? Like, why am I not being teased?

unknown 9:36

Right.

SPEAKER_01 9:36

Well, what I was later to find out was that they had spoken to the campers in my my bunk uh while I was out of the cabin and explained that I had low vision and that they should accept me as an equal. And this was the first time ever that I had met a bunch of new kids and didn't get teased. And I realized from this event as a 13-year-old that we can have a belonging community, but it doesn't happen by accident. It only happens when you've got a camp director and staff who are visionary enough to do this. Now, what I'm describing happened in 1970. We'd expect a lot more today in 2026, but that was pretty forward thinking. And my understanding since then has always been that um I can't just expect people who don't know anything about blindness to uh treat me as an equal, much as I'd like to be. That um I've got to sort of regularly be in this process of um of advocating in order to win that opportunity. Now, is that the way the world should be? No. But is it the way the way the world was when I grew up? And the answer is absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

So that that's a really great story. Um, and you so did you find out about the the sort of orientation that the camp director had done with your cabin mates while you were at the camp, or was that down sort of down the road?

SPEAKER_01 11:14

Oh, I I found I think I found it, I don't remember when I found out, but I think it was at that time. I've since been back to the camp many times, but I've been back to teach the you know future uh next generations of campers. And I tell this story, how it really started me on a road um that I'm still on here, you know, so many years later.

SPEAKER_00 11:37

Were were you appreciative of of them um doing that on your behalf? Or how did you how did you go into that?

SPEAKER_01 11:44

No, no, I I would listen, I was 13, I was delighted. Um, I found that camp to be a home where I could feel uh like I belonged. Look, that one of the activities was sports. I I stink at sports, but there were other activities I excelled at, and everybody got the chance to be, you know, what they could be in the areas they could be in. And I still have very good friends all around the world that I met at that camp at that time.

SPEAKER_00 12:12

So that that there's something there that uh around belonging uh and that experience that you had as a young kid, uh well, yeah, 13, as I guess that's a young uh uh young boy. Well um how's that shaped you and your expectations uh and I guess your advocacy since then?

SPEAKER_01 12:33

Well, it it it very much shaped my understanding that we can accomplish a belonging community. We can accomplish a community, and it's actually not that hard if the people in charge make it part of the plan and make it part of the DNA. Right. Um, our problem and why I've been involved along with so many other people, when you talked about accomplishments, these are all the products of lots of people teaming up together, and I'm I'm honored to be one of them. But whether it's at the Special Education Advisory Committee of the Toronto District School Board, which I'm now chairing, or or um through these other efforts, it's it's actually trying to push the people who could create those environments to create those environments, um, because they won't happen by accident.

SPEAKER_00 13:26

Great. The so that happened in 1970 and you're 13. Fast forward 10, 12 years, you're a young man, a young lawyer involved with um uh the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, uh, and you took a strong role in that. Can you talk about what you did there and what how did your how did that how did belonging inform your uh your approach to that to that uh to that effort?

SPEAKER_01 13:52

Well, in 1980, our then prime minister, Pierre Trudeau, uh proposed a new charter, a new constitution with a new charter of rights, first time ever. And it included a new guarantee of equality. All of this is great, but the equality provision did not include people with disabilities. And I had just finished law school. I was writing my bar exams. I thought this was appalling. Um, but we didn't have, I didn't have much experience, I had very little experience doing community organizing, and I got involved in advocating, I needed a platform, so I used the CNIB, the National Institute for the Blind, uh, to appear in Ottawa before a parliamentary committee to to argue for the disability amendment. Two other organizations did it, the precursor to the Council of Canadians with disabilities, and the uh precursor to uh community uh, well, inclusion Canada. It was then called the Canadian Association for the Men, one of the people who presented. I was later to meet, befriend, and admire uh Orville Endicott, uh and I still miss him to this day as a tremendous advocate for people with intellectual disabilities and a role model to me and a gem of a human being. Um, I've written a memoir about that battle, which any of our listeners can read for free. I don't want people to have to pay. If you just search on the title on the internet, search on swimming up Niagara Falls. I called it that because it felt like we were trying to swim up Niagara Falls. And you can download it as a Word document, a PDF, an EPUB, or an audiobook, all for free. If you really want a hard copy, it's a good Amazon and search on read uh swimming up Niagara Falls, and they charge, I think, 17 bucks to print a copy. Okay. Okay. And I don't get royalties because I don't want to. I want you to be able to read it, but it tells you you can read what each of the presenters had to say. But what what I learned from that was that doing the what seemed objectively impossible, uh, fighting to get an amendment to the constitution itself, um, not alone, there was a number of us who were involved in the fight, but we weren't connected. We were all operating separately. We didn't have an internet, we didn't have Zoom, we didn't have Twitter, social media, any of that stuff. Right. Uh but like we won. And even though it seems as impossible as to try to swim up Niagara Falls, we did swim up Niagara Falls, and we've got an amendment to the Charter of Rights, which is still in force today.

SPEAKER_00 16:33

So do do you is there a moment that stands out when you sort of so you you you you you learn about this, you study, you you make you you go do your presentations, you align with other people that are advocating for the same thing. There must have been a moment we found out, wow, we've won. Uh what what was that like?

SPEAKER_01 16:49

We talk about it in the memoir. It's actually very funny. It turns out that a the justice minister at the time was a guy named Jean Cretier, who went on to be prime minister, and he had a guy working in his office, a policy advisor named Eddie Goldenberg. I had met him the year before when I was doing my law apprenticeship. It's called articling, and he was in the firm. When I appeared in Ottawa, he came over to say hi to me. And it only occurred to me at the end of January of 20 uh of 1981, I should lobby this guy, which in the memoir I explained like I feel like a complete jerk for not calling him sooner. But I called him uh uh on a particular morning, and I was already with my 58 arguments why they should agree with us. And he goes, David, it's gonna pass today. Oh, wow, we'd won. And and then he said, and don't tell anyone. So I have to walk around all day knowing we'd won this stupendous victory collectively, and I can't tell anyone.

SPEAKER_00 17:49

By the way, I'm convinced I told my mom. Well, your mom was your one of your biggest supporters, so or maybe your biggest supporter at that time. So she she she'd earned it, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:59

But and by the way, we're gonna talk about my podcast, but we have two episodes in the podcast about that battle where I interviewed one of the other combatants who worked on it back then, who I didn't know back then, but I've met since.

SPEAKER_00 18:12

So I've listened to some of your podcasts, but I haven't heard that one, so I will uh I will uh uh tune in. That's that's fascinating because those were uphill battles, but it sounds like you know, when you're getting the nod from somebody in the Minister of Justice's office that you've you've been successful, um, that must have been uh uh you know very emboldening for what you uh have continued to do since then around advocacy and challenging the status quo and fighting uh uphill battles or upstream battles, as it were.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

Absolutely. And you know, it our biggest impediment to success is not governments that won't listen or school board senior bureaucrats who are just bureaucrats, right? Um, and so on. Um, those are real problems, but our biggest obstacle to success is the fact that so many people with disabilities and their allies feel there's nothing they can do. And I'm not saying that feeling is unfounded or that they're irrational. I get it. You have to suspend that disbelief, you have to suspend the feeling that you can't swim up at Niagara Falls, right? Um, and then you go do this advocacy, and that's what the podcast is all about, because probably everybody I've interviewed stared at that waterfall and said, tell me that I'm going.

SPEAKER_00 19:42

Yeah, yeah. So um since then, and that's what geez, is that 40 years ago? 40 plus years ago? That's that's going back. 46. 46. Where are we at now? Where are we at now in terms of people, and I I'll separate them into two categories. The the rights that people with a disability have, and then just what's your general sense of where we're at in terms of belonging and acceptance of people with disabilities um uh in Canada?

SPEAKER_01 20:14

You know, it's it's cliche to say, well, we've come a long way, but there's still much to be done. God, if if we had a buck for every time we've heard that, you know, we'd be retiring the national debt and you wouldn't have to do any more fundraising campaigns. Um and uh I wish we could, but um in terms of rights on the uh um in the law books, we are significantly ahead uh between what's guaranteed in the Charter of Rights and in provincial and federal human rights codes. We have a provincial uh in Ontario accessibility legislation, the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, we have the Accessible Canada Act. Both of those have been achieved far less than they could. And but as a result of our campaigning and the advocacy, we have a new generation of people with disabilities and their allies, their parents, their family members, their spouses, who see us as rights holders. In the 70s, we were charity recipients. If you said disability, they reached in their wallet to give you a handout. Right. Okay, that that was the association. Um, and if you talk to a news reporter, it was, oh, what's the terrible story about what it's like to live with your disability? Or let's give do a heartwarming story how despite your disability, you know, blah, blah, blah, right? As if your life should be miserable. So if you overcame that misery, oh, that's so heartwarming.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

Um the term the term I've used or I've heard and used at times to describe that is sadvertising. I mean

SPEAKER_01 22:00

There's there's no end of this. But there's I'm teaching at part-time at three law schools. They have 20 to 30 percent of their student population registers having disabilities, and I mean the full spectrum, the full spectrum of disabilities. And any number of them aren't just in it because of disability rights, but they sure have a keen interest, either career interest or personal interest in disability rights. When I went to law school, nobody said the word disability and the word rights in the same sentence. Right. Okay, we we didn't study this in law school at all. We didn't even think about it. It wasn't a it wasn't a thing. So to that end, we've come a distance. Um, I will say the following, however. Um, we have generated um way less, way more in defining rights and way less at implementing rights. Um, and so we aren't seeing the progress. I measure Canada and Ontario based not on where we've come, but where we could be, given who we are and what we have. And given who we are and what we have in terms of resources, capacity, we are way behind where we should be, and inexcusably.

SPEAKER_00 23:18

Yeah, with the AODA. So that's the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act. Yep. Um, and there's also a similar legislation, or there's a piece of legislation similar in the United States.

SPEAKER_01 23:30

Yep, the Americans with Disabilities Act.

SPEAKER_00 23:31

Americans ADA. So um how do we compare to what they've done in the States? Have they been more successful or less successful?

SPEAKER_01 23:39

Uh disability advocates would say they're far behind where they should be. But I will tell you that our act actually defines rights better than their but their act has done tons more change because the implementation, the enforcement, the regulatory powers have been used and are more robust.

SPEAKER_00 23:58

Even just small things. Like I I uh uh worked for years uh in the deaf community, and I'm all I always note that when a politician is doing an announcement, whether it's they're running for office or they're announcing a hurricane, there is a sign language interpreter on the stage right next to them interpreting what is being said. You rarely see that in Canada. Uh, and uh, you know, I I just naively attribute that to just more adoption of the of the uh um uh the Americans with Disabilities Act at having more teeth or more acceptance than it does here. Is that is that uh I think that's that's too naive, or is that no, no, no?

SPEAKER_01 24:37

I think that's fair. I mean, listen, I'm gonna give you one that may seem like silly, it's so obvious. But when you as a CITER person check into a hotel, how do you know what room you're in? You there's a number on the door. How do I know what room I'm in? You'd think, well, having braille, that doesn't cost much. You put it up once and it's done. You go to an American hotel, and you'll almost always. I'm trying to remember if I've ever been to one in my adult life when they didn't have braille on the door for a room number. In a Canadian hotel, you will virtually only see it if it's an American chain. And you only have it in that American chain because the U.S. Congress had required the corporation to do it, so it's part of their standard practice. So, in other words, we get more accessibility when it comes to braille on the hotel room doors, which cost pennies. We get more from Queen's Park.

SPEAKER_00 25:34

I I forget where I was with you, but we were going to get in an elevator. And it was one of these new ones, I guess they're trying to manage the flow of people going up elevators. Okay, there you go. Uh, and you you you have to go up and push the floor you're on, and then it'll tell you, or not tell you, show you what elevator to get in. And you had sort of pointed out that that wasn't really helpful for uh for you, and there was no way around it.

SPEAKER_01 26:00

They are horrible for accessibility, but everybody hates them. Nobody knows how to use them. They took technology that actually everybody knows how to use an elevator and came up with something that's more complicated and people don't know how to use. And aside from being horrible for accessibility and confusing for everybody, they're also dangerous. And why are they dangerous? Because if you go on one, you can't press a button on a floor and just say, I want to get off right now. You gotta wait till it goes to the floor. So if a woman gets on an elevator or a teen uh gets on an elevator and there's some guy there who looks kind of creepy, the first instinct for self-protection is get off the elevator. You can't. If the next stop is the 30th floor, you're trapped. That's a safety thing.

SPEAKER_00 26:51

Yeah, that's a good point. I had not, I had not in all my I had not thought of that as I've used those, or once I figured out I'm just so relieved to be on it and going to the right place, I hope. Um so that's that that's that's good reflection on where we're at and where we've got to go. Now you've done you you've started a podcast um where you're focusing on these issues and others and other of and other of your favorite topics. Uh tell us about it.

SPEAKER_01 27:17

So I'm inviting your listeners of your podcast to listen to my podcast and to invite others to do the same. Because the only way you learn about podcasts is word of mouth. Um, it's called Disability Rights and Wrongs, the David Le Podcast. On it, I explained that I'm named after the podcast rather than the podcast being named after me. And the idea that I had was nobody tells our stories from an advocacy perspective. And I wanted to take you, the listener, to the front lines of disability advocacy to hear the stories of people who are fighting the good fight. And I don't mean professionals, though some of them are, and I don't mean people in organizations, though some of them are, and totally appropriately good to hear from them. But I want to I want you to hear from individuals and hear what they were up against, how they got involved, what they did, how well it worked, and in every episode, what can we learn? I want you, the listener, to learn how to do advocacy. And now that advocacy doesn't have to be legislative advocacy or policy reform. It could be how to advocate for your kids' disability needs at school. Uh, spoiler alert, we got a couple episodes on that topic coming.

SPEAKER_00 28:40

I bet.

SPEAKER_01 28:40

Um, and so I've I've interviewed um an advocate for uh air travel accessibility who's been up against Bayon Ziv, who's had horrible experiences, but is catapulted in the front of efforts for reform. Um, I interviewed uh just recently the latest episode is Kate Chung, who's an advocate for accessible housing, especially important for seniors, but for everybody. Uh, we've read about the battles in the media uh for kids with autism uh in Ontario. Uh one of the architects of that battle talked about having two kids with autism, not knowing anything about that or advocacy and ending up build co-building an amazing movement that is all over the news and has had a dramatic impact. But it's not just hearing uh in terms of the the constitutional reform, I interviewed Yvonne Peters, a lawyer I met years after those battles, who was doing the same thing in Saskatchewan that I was doing in Ontario when we were both much younger fighting for that amendment. We compare notes, right? But the the other thing I and so I'm trying to cover all disabilities, all barriers. That's why I've got lots to cover. But the other thing I wanted to do, if I want you to learn how to do this advocacy um and learn from uh successes and failures, I thought it would be also good to hear from people from the other side of the desk, the people to whom you advocate. So uh two things that we've done so far. I wanted to talk to a politician, a for a retired politician who I'd lobbied. Well, I really was fortunate because I got uh Kathleen Wynn, former premier of Ontario, gave such a great interview that I I I actually we split it into two episodes. Oh, great. Um, because it's so rich with content. And we were able to talk, like I met her lobbying her, and now we just have a collegial relationship. But I asked her, What works? How do you get a meeting with a premier? What gets your attention? Um, and we actually talked about meetings we'd had or issues we'd locked horns on and did kind of a uh a uh a Monday morning quarterback analysis of years later, which was fantastic. She was just great. But also, one of the things we talk about is take your issue to the media. Well, I've been in the media a lot, but lots of people have it. So I want to talk to a former journalist about how to get a story in the media. Well, I got a fantastic woman who's a friend of mine named Michelle McQuig. She was a Canadian press for 20 years. She's now she's blind and she's now the head of Balance for Blind Adults. It's a um a uh a service providing organization. I'd taken stories to her to see if she would cover them. I that's how I met her.

unknown 31:38

Right.

SPEAKER_01 31:38

And she talked about what it takes to get a story in the media, what the do's and don'ts, and gave a really practical guide to someone who's never done it before uh about what you should do.

SPEAKER_00 31:52

That's great.

SPEAKER_01 31:53

So that's I want to give you um, we have an episode upcoming which will be of special interest to uh community living uh Toronto community who have kids in school, because I wanted to uh talk about how to advocate. And uh, we've got a couple episodes that'll be upcoming, but we've recorded one already. It's a few weeks away before it'll come out. But it's I I interviewed a now retired elementary school principal. And I said, if I my child has uh disability-related needs, uh how do I raise it with you? Who do I talk to? What works if I'm not happy with what's going on, what do I do? Uh, not chapter and verse of board procedures, right? But dealing with people. And the principal now retired, who I interviewed, knows the story from both sides because she also has a kid with a disability.

SPEAKER_00 32:48

Oh, okay. That's that's a that would be an interesting conversation.

SPEAKER_01 32:51

So we we've got that already, and I'm I'm open by the way, if people want to write we with ideas of what else we should cover. I really I welcome feedback and I welcome ideas or our.

SPEAKER_00 33:03

Yeah, no, it's a it it's a good podcast, and uh I'll uh we'll we'll put some link, we'll put a link to it in our in the notes for uh for this as well. So that's I'm glad you're doing that. I I wondered how long it would take you to get into the podcast space, and uh you did not disappoint. Um final question for you. In in all in all of your years of doing advocacy and um uh and your personal experiences in that, is there, and this is probably an impossible question, however, is there a moment or something that stands out in all your years that sort of made it that sort of you go back to and think, this is why I do this work, this is why this, this is why this matters?

SPEAKER_01 33:47

Um there are lots of those moments, but I'll tell you um what what really resonates for me. Um when I see or get an email from someone who is uh advocating for themselves or their child or their parent, um, and they they've been following our updates or watch one of our videos, we have tons, um, or now listening to the podcast. If if someone sees those and turns it into action, uh that for me is what I I get a wall-to-wall smile. And I I actually, it's great. When the podcast started, you know, we said, please email us, give us your feedback, a-o-d-a-feedback at gmail.com. And someone I'd never heard of blasted me. Why did you interview Kathleen when you were so critical of her? This is just hypocritical. And I wrote back and I said, look, we were critical of her, but she's giving us helpful tips. And she was very generous, and I think the tips were useful. Well, that person then listened to the next podcast and uh and then emailed me saying, I'm gonna use these tips. I wish I'd known this before. And I just got this grin that you can't believe. Like, you know, uh, I was delighted that they listened to the podcast. I'm delighted that they listened critically and were ready to poke at me because they should.

SPEAKER_00 35:17

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 35:18

Um, and I'm delighted that when I responded, Kathleen went, I can criticize things she should have done, but she's done a lot of stuff that was good for us, and she was so generous with her time.

SPEAKER_00 35:29

Well, and you don't get to be you don't get to be premier without knowing a thing or two about politics uh and and how to and uh how to understand and explain an issue. So you're right, we have to see people that we're talking with and advocating uh for for things from as people and humans that are you know um uh that we can learn stuff from as well. We're we're missing out if we don't.

SPEAKER_01 35:52

And I I also I get a big smile, and I am really delighted if somebody reads one of our updates and says, you know, I don't agree with you. And here's why because engaging people, people getting people, people who sit at home and watch TV and just feel it's hopeless. I understand that mentality. Um, I've been there, but my goal is to get them from just yelling at their computer screen or their TV screen to jumping into action.

SPEAKER_00 36:21

Get up and advocate.

SPEAKER_01 36:22

Yep. And once they do, we can win constitutional reform, we can win changes at school boards, we can learn win legislative reforms. Um, the sky's the limit. And that's what the podcast that's what the podcast's for, to give you the tools.

SPEAKER_00 36:38

Well, it's the podcast, and it's what you've done throughout your life, so you are no better uh representative of that truth that if you get up and start working with like-minded people, you can uh you can change the world.

SPEAKER_01 36:51

Well, I'm it's an honor to be able to do this stuff and to work with so many wonderful people like you, like your organization, like so many others that I've met, um, who you know allow it to happen because one person alone can't.

SPEAKER_00 37:07

True. Um, David, thank you very much. Thanks for taking the time. Uh again, uh you will uh we'll encourage people to listen to your to your podcast. And again, thanks for taking some time this afternoon to share your thoughts. And uh and uh thank you for everything that you've done uh for the disability community and for uh for so many people over for so many years.

SPEAKER_01 37:30

Thanks for involving me and thanks for your friendship.

SPEAKER_00 37:33

Thank you for listening, watching, and sharing. We release a new episode of Community Chats on the 15th and the 30th of each month, so don't forget to subscribe to stay up to date.