l’azile

Ok, so as promised, here is the first instalment of my report on Rehabilitation International’s 21st World Congress that was held in Québec City from the 25th to the 28th of August 2008. I will publish individual posts for each day because one post for the whole event would be monstrous.

I wish I could have posted all this earlier but there had not been much time before my vacation and then afterwards, I wanted to rest a bit and have fun because that is what vacations are supposed to be: restful and/or fun.

Anyway, enough about me. But of course, what follows will be coloured by my perceptions and experiences as well as my opinions. And whatever I write about what was said by various speakers or what was presented in the workshops I attended is what I found interesting (or, in some cases, not), what I got out of it or whatever, in some cases, I was able to understand. So bear that in mind; this is not a play-by-play account. And I guess I should also point out that any opinions expressed herein are totally my own and do not engage my employer in any way.

Oh, and by the way, mostly mediocre photos have been posted to flickr.

Day 1 (August 25th 2008)

The day started out with the fact that I missed my lift. Apparently, the organisers had scheduled adapted transport for me but I was about 4 minutes late despite getting up at 5AM because of course, I was not in my natural environment and so I missed the transport and ended up having to take a taxi to the convention centre. The driver was very nice of course and we discussed the festivities surrounding the city’s 400th anniversary and how Paul McCartney could not really sing but who cares since he has so much class and how Céline Dion could, at best, scream and who cares since she has no class whatsoever. Needless to say that, despite their good intentions and I appreciated the thought, I gave up on the congress’ adapted transport service pretty much from the get go because the hours just did not work for me and did not give me the flexibility I needed to attend this type of event.

The opening ceremonies were held in a huge room on the second floor (which was two floors below entry level of the centre and for which we therefore had to take an elevator (or escalator) down two floors, which seemed to impress and confound several delegates I came across at some point. The presiding of the proceedings was assured by Patrick Fougeyrollas (bio here and here), who was absolutely tireless and for whom, by the way, I have immense respect and affection. I have to say though that the English translation of whatever he had to say in French did not do him justice and this is quite unfortunate because this guy is a poet.

The welcoming speech was given by Michael Fox, president of Rehabilitation International (RI) 2004 – 2008 (and who was, incidentally, referred to as “Michael J. Fox” by a subsequent speaker). Requisite stuff: thanks to a bunch of people and organisations, reminder or RI’s work in general, blablabla and specifically on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (from now on referred to as CRPD). Also, mentioned the RI Foundation, which should be considered a “progressive vehicle to funding initiatives”. Finally, as well as introducing the new RI president, Anne Hawker and the new Secretary General, Venus Ilagan (who replaces Tomas Lagerwall), he briefly discussed the fact that RI decided to develop a 3rd Charter to promote awareness, work on the implementation of CRPD as well as the realisation of effective capacity building programs.

After this speech, we were, euh, treated to a song by Linda Boutet and a choral of young singers who offered us a rendition of “Imagine” by John Lennon. I do not have the details of who exactly these people are except to say that the choral was made up of 12 to 15 year-olds who sang ok and that Ms. Boutet was perhaps very nervous because she did not sing ok. No offence but in my humble opinion, “Imagine” just does not work when the person signing it is trying to sound like an opera singer.

The keynote was then given by Gerard Quinn, introduced with a long list of credentials and notably, Professor of Law at the Center of Disability Law and Policy at the National University of Ireland. According to him though, his only claim to fame that really counts in his country is that he is a former champion accordion player.

Mr. Quinn gave, I think, a relatively useful presentation (strangely enough however, he quoted Benjamin Franklin twice). He spoke about how the CRPD frames disability as an issue of justice, that “persons with disabilities are subjects as opposed to objects (to be managed or mismanaged)”. However, he stated that we should not rely on international policy as it is not a substitute for domestic policy. And he added that litigation can be a double-edged sword (hmmm…).

He explained that the disability community needs to develop new skills to deal with the CRPD, most notable skills of entrepreneurship. That we should not only challenge the outcomes of process but the process itself. And while the CRPD can help transform domestic policies to include persons with disabilities from the onset, it is not a silver bullet and we need to concentrate on internalising it within States and monitoring will be a major issue. Monitoring should trigger a new practice of political dialogue.

He warned against a great danger lurking, that of “reservation”, because the CRPD challenges the concept of universality that is usually the subject of international treaties. Mr. Quinn also warned against the rush of becoming overly proprietary of the CRPD. As an international treaty, it belongs to everyone and everyone has a stake in its success because if it fails, it can represent a great loss for everyone with regards to this type of tool.

Next up was, I have to say, a gorgeous woman called Sebenzile P. Matsebula, executive director of African Access in South Africa. Unfortunately, I was annoyed, at times appalled even, by her conference. Ms. Matsebula, after spending way too much time introducing her speech and explaining how unprepared she was because she was having too much fun in Québec and trying to print out her presentation at 1AM the night before, then proceeded, for at least 30 minutes, to tell us the fable of a young African girl with polio who went from being a lizard slithering on the dusty floor of her village to working in the president’s office for persons with disabilities to moving on to the corporate sector. She ended her presentation with the big revelation that she is that young girl and with the message that it basically all comes down to opportunities.

I do not mean to diminish her personal experiences; I am quite convinced that growing up with a disability in South Africa must have been very difficult, to say the least, and that her accomplishments are important. But that is just it. I mean, aside from the personal melodrama we were treated to for more than half an hour, we never did get to hear about any accomplishments. Whilst she only hinted at the great social changes she was personally responsible for in her country while working for the president, she never really did tell us about what she did exactly, we never got to know about the policies or programs she worked on, the outcomes of those endeavours, the lives that were touched by this work. And we only got a very superficial account of the social and cultural context in which all of this transpired. Next time, do us a favour: give us something useful to think about and as for the rest, get a blog.

The next presenter was Marie White, president of the Council of Canadians with Disabilities (CCD). Aside from presenting the CCD’s national action plan (because indeed, this country desperately needs a real plan with regards to persons with disabilities), Ms. White essentially said that “social policy is homeless in Canada” and, with a bunch of statistical data in support, gave a strong message about how bad it is personally, professionally, economically, etc., for Canadians with disabilities. She also basically blasted Premier Harper and really did not mince words. Too bad he was not there to hear it. Even worse is that he probably never will really hear about it and most likely does not give a flying fuck.

In contrast, the next presenter, Mr. Joseph Kwok, practically lauded Canada as an example of social inclusion of persons with disabilities and Québec City in particular for including disability in its 400th birthday celebrations by hosting the RI conference. Mr. Kwok is RSW, Ph.D., BBS, JP and professor at City University of Hong Kong. And much like his credentials, his speech was littered with all sorts of acronyms and abbreviations so, adding his accent, I had a hard time understanding him. This is probably the only time you will witness me affirming this but thank gawd for powerpoint.

Anyway, he started out by giving a brief history lesson on Asia and how people with disabilities fit into that history. It was notably stunning to learn that there are an estimated 238 million people with disabilities in Asia. It was interesting to note that he stated that as to the issue of accessibility of ICTs, “the situation is dismal”. He also talked briefly about the CRPD’s article 31 concerning data collection, stressing the importance of this issue (and I fully agree) and that we must get on this immediately because if we miss this chance, we will likely have to wait years before we can get in on this again.

He then spoke of what opportunities we need to focus on with regards to mainstreaming:

• Mainstreaming disability in other general campaigns: for example, the Olympics are very useful for improving the accessibility of environments (cited, quite obviously, China as an example);
• Mainstreaming disability in disaster response and reconstruction endeavours;
• Mainstreaming disability in corporate social responsibility frameworks.

Mr. Kwok ended his presentation on what might seem like a curious note (though it is pretty easy to understand), basically stating that “we will all become disabled if we remain long enough in the disability movement”.

As an end to the morning plenary session, the World Health Organisation launched the “Wheelchair Guidelines”. As it was explained, an estimated 1% of the planet’s 650 million or so persons with disabilities need a wheelchair but many, especially in developing or transitional countries, do not have access to this technical aid and when they do, they are poorly catered to. So this guide aims to help certain regions provide adequate manual wheelchairs to people who need them. I call this the “ode to the wheelchair” segment of the program because it was a bit oddly handled. And while I think that this event should have been scheduled elsewhere in the program and could have been trimmed down with respect to duration, as a long time wheelchair user myself, I was certainly not annoyed by this as others I spoke to afterwards were (not wheelchair users, by the way) and can certainly see the value of such guidelines. Indeed, from a mobility perspective, there is nothing worse than a crappy, ill-fitting wheelchair.

The plenary session was followed by poster sessions for about an hour. So, an opportunity to see what some organisations are working on or promoting as well as an excuse to just schmooze with some people I had not seen in a while, notably some people from the Québec government’s Disability Issues Office. After that, lunch was served in the room that had hosted the plenary session. I ended up sitting with some guys from Ukraine. Very nice fellows but, due to the language barrier, it was a bit difficult to communicate. I did however attempt to explain what “poutine” was though I doubt they really grasped this concept. Also at our table were some delegates from North Africa. Lunch started out as a bit of a problem for them because the conference was serving ham sandwiches… Seeing as they were reluctant to say anything, I somewhat took it upon myself to find a waitress and explain the situation and she offered to bring them something vegetarian, which turned out to be smoked salmon and cream cheese sandwiches… Believe me when I say that I vowed to be a “vegetarian” right then and there, at least for the rest of the convention where lunch time was concerned.

The afternoon was then devoted to parallel workshops. I attended a workshop on the Disability Creation Process (DCP) and its applications. I arrived a bit late so missed part of the first speaker’s presentation who, incidentally, was Patrick Fougeyrollas but luckily, I am already somewhat familiar with the DCP. His presentation touched upon the potential of this conceptual model with regards to the follow up on implementation of the CRPD. And indeed, what is notably interesting about this model is that it is entirely measurable, which is quite important with regards to monitoring activities of the CRPD. After his presentation, there ensued a brief discussion between him and an Australian gentleman about the seeming competition between the DCP and the World Health Organisation’s International Classification of Functioning (ICF) and how we all should try to find common ground.

Next up was Pierre Castelien, who is with the research group GRAVIR in Belgium but that the program situated in Canada. Anyway, this guy talked about the unemployment of persons with disabilities from a DCP perspective. He presented the three employment models we find in Europe (and, of course, elsewhere) for persons with disabilities:

• The Interventionist Model, which basically amounts to employment quotas;
• The Liberal Model, which basically promotes the qualification of persons with disabilities and relies on financial incentives;
• And the Non-discrimination Model, which basically states that persons with disabilities are “just like everybody else”.

He then presented a pilot project in Freiberg that approaches things a bit differently and explained that his organisation therefore will light the way. To be honest, I half-listened to this guy’s presentation because, while it was certainly well structured and well prepared, he started out by talking about persons with disabilities and… valid people. Yes, he actually used the word “valid” (which, we all know, opposes it to “invalid”) and that annoyed me. I know this is a European thing, that a lot of French Euros have still, to this day, not gotten rid of this retrograde usage of the word but whatever; it still annoyed me to no end.

The next presenter was Luc Noreau from Fougeyrollas’s research group, the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Rehabilitation and Social Integration (CIRRIS). He started out by situating both international models with regards to participation of persons with disabilities. So basically, the ICF equals participation while the DCP equals social participation, therefore taking into account a wider spectrum of human and civic roles. He then presented the MHAVIE, which is a tool conceived to assess various aspects of social participation of persons with disabilities (in French). After presenting a few examples of how the MHAVIE could be applied to different types of impairments, he concluded with what can only be described as a big orgasm of measuring.

Michel Coulmont, from Moncton University, was the next to present on the application of the DCP with regards to the assessment of rehabilitation services for persons with visual impairments. He presented a bunch of statistics and numbers and acronyms which I guess were of great interest to all the rehab workers in the room. Final conclusions:

• More hours of rehab services = direct impact on the improvement of performance for social participation;
• Factors related to age of subjects and the “spreading” of hours of rehab services over time are detrimental.

Duh. Yeah, I know, we apparently still need studies to prove this but again, duh.

The last presenter for this workshop was Normand Boucher of the CIRRIS who spoke of a study done regarding the environmental context of advocacy groups for persons with disabilities in Québec. This study was particularly interested in the capacity of action of groups in the field of social policies and I was particularly interested in this study’s results. Unfortunately, results are forthcoming. Comforting is the fact that, despite using the various themes of the provincial disability policy (in French), the study did include several indicators related to technology. Less comforting is the fact that, if I understood correctly, the study does not take into account financial constraints of groups which, quite honestly, would have a huge impact on the “capacity of action of groups in the field of social policies”. Maybe the final report will shed more light on why this basic factor was left out.

There was a second track of workshops that was supposed to start at 16h30 (so obviously started later) but I skipped those because, quite simply, my left ankle and I were both exhausted from walking around in a huge conference centre since 8AM and so we both elected instead to go have dinner with the freshly hired general director of the COPHAN, Richard Lavigne, and his entourage at a place called Rascals where we proceeded to have a nice meal, nice conversations and where, naturally, I worked on trying to get this organisation on board on a major project I am working on.

Got to my hotel around 22h30 (not bad) and then foolishly tried to write up this report before bed on an old laptop while Michelle Obama spoke on the TV about her (and her husband’s) “improbable journey” before I decided to give up shortly before 1AM and crashed into bed.

So, that is day 1. I will follow up with day 2 soon, hopefully before the end of the week.