The R-word takes away people’s humanity. We all need to stop using it.

 By Al Etmanski Some of you may have heard it on the playground. Others might have used it in jest. I'm not going to write it. I'm just going to call it the R-word because it's that disgusting. It's a slur against people with intellectual disabilities that you will see

It’s time to unify the disability movement

 By Al Etmanski and Kathleen O’Grady There needs to be a political price for neglecting persons with disabilities The one-time $600 federal payment to cover the extraordinary COVID-19 expenses incurred by Canadians with disabilities finally received Royal Assent – but it’s too little, too late and reaches too few. The

The Dawning of a New Age for Persons with Disabilities in Canada

 The recently proposed Accessible Canada Act and the just released Senate report on essential fixes for Revenue Canada concerning the disability tax credit, Breaking Down Barriers are stellar achievements for advocates with disabilities and the receptive politicians and public servants who listened. If both are implemented, they will remove the

???????Death’s tug of war with mystery and science

 By Al Etmanski An obsession with ‘present mindedness’ wipes out concerns about past or future. ~ Harold Innis I count myself as lucky to have been born when death was still pretty much a mystery, more the prerogative of poets and other artists, philosophers and religious teachers than of scientists and

“What happens to our sons and daughters with disabilities when we die?”

 By Al Etmanski Canada’s Registered Disability Savings Plan (RDSP) is the first poverty-fighting tool for people with disabilities in the world. This remarkable example of federal/provincial/territorial cooperation, which was created in 2008, has already changed the lives of more than 150,000 Canadians with disabilities. Unfortunately, the RDSP is only reaching 29 per cent of those eligible. And