Latest / Podcasts By Donna Jodhan / Remarkable World Commentary Episode #81: Interview with Dean Steacy, Lifelong Advocate

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Remarkable World Commentary Episode #81: Interview with Dean Steacy, Lifelong Advocate · Podcasts By Donna Jodhan

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Podcast Commentator: Donna J Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, and MBA, invites you to listen to her
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biweekly podcast, Remarkable World Commentary.
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Here, Donna shares some of her innermost thoughts,
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insights, perspectives, and more with her listeners.
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Donna focuses on topics that directly affect the future of kids,
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especially kids with disabilities.
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Donna is a blind advocate, author, site loss coach,
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dinner mystery producer, writer, entrepreneur,
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law graduate, and podcast commentator.
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She has decades of lived experiences, knowledge,
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skills and expertise in access, technology and information.
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As someone who has been internationally recognized for her work and roles,
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she just wants to make things better than possible.
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Remarkable World Commentary.
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I am Donna Jodhan, a lifelong disability advocate and one who sees a world mainly
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through sound, touch and stubborn optimism.
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I am a law graduate and accessibility consultant,
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author, lifelong barrier buster who also happens to be blind.
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You may know me from a few headline moments.
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In November of 2010, I won the landmark charter case that forced the Canadian
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government to make its website accessible to every Canadian,
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not just to cited ones.
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And in July of 2019, I co-led the Accessible Canada Act with more than two dozen
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disability groups to turn equal access into federal law.
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And most recently, on June the 23rd, 2022, I was greatly humbled by Her Late
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Majesty's Platinum Jubilee Award for tireless commitment to improving.
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Sorry, to removing barriers.
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When I'm not in a courtroom or in a committee room or in a pottery studio,
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you will find me coaching kids with vision loss,
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producing audio mysteries, or helping tech companies to make their
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gadgets talk back in plain language.
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Everything I do circles one goal to turn accessibility from an afterthought into
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everyday practice. I invite you to think of this show as our shared workbench where
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policy meets lived experience and lived experience sparks fresh ideas.
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Now, before we jump into today's conversation,
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let me shine a spotlight on today's guest, a change maker whose work is every bit as
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remarkable as the world that we are trying to build.
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I am pleased and I am honored, and I am privileged to have Dean Steacy,
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who I have known for the past decade or more,
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be on our podcast today.
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Dean, welcome to our podcast.
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Dean Steacy: Wow, that's quite a bit of an introduction, but more than happy to be here.
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Dean, you and I met, I think it was in 2016 when we both attended the face to face
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conference or whatever you want to call it on.
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They were asking for input from our community.
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Your reputation preceded you a long time ago.
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I knew a lot about you, but I always wanted to meet you.
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And on that day, I did so.
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Dean, for listeners who may be meeting you for the very first time,
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how would you introduce yourself today?
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Not just by title, but by the values and experiences,
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experiences that have shaped your you.
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Dean Steacy: Well I, I would say that I, I as well am have been a lifelong
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advocate. I started advocating for myself when I was about four years old.
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Aside from being blind, I also have a physical syndrome,
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which is called ectrodactyly.
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Which means that I don't have all my toes and all my fingers.
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And it's, it's it's quite the syndrome.
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It goes from being very mild to being very, very severe.
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And I'm on the severe side, but I as a kid, I wanted to play hockey and
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nobody would let me play hockey.
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So I advocated for with it for my parents and my dad,
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who after had right here, who was a United Church minister,
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agreed. And but was with the agreement that if I start,
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I have to play the whole season.
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I can't quit in the middle of the season.
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So I agreed to that. And then he stepped in with the conveners of the sport and started
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making noise. And I was then allowed to go try out and when I try it out,
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I'd go into the change room with all the boys and change.
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Well, if you, if you were able to see and, or you can see and you,
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the first thing you would notice is my hands.
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They're not like a normal person's hands where they,
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they have a thumb and fight for fingers.
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I have what's easily described as the lobster claw syndrome.
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My hands look like lobster claws.
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Okay, a and so I was. Nope.
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You can't play. You get out on the ice.
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And you know, I couldn't play.
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And then parents would see my hands and they would complain about the crippled kid.
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Why is he on the ice? Because he's taking taking spot from my kid who?
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You know, we're at seven, eight years old, and the parents are already
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saying the kid's going to play in the NHL.
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So what I started doing was when I had to go to tryouts,
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I come in, I'd have everything on, and I just step out on the ice so no one saw
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anything. And then when I made the team, then I'd go into the dressing room and there
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was now nothing they could do because I was on the team.
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Right. So that was kind of my advocating.
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That's where it started.
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And it wasn't just in hockey, it was in baseball.
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It was in football. It was pretty much any sport that I wanted to do.
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I had to push and shove to get on on the team.
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But once I made it on the team and showed that I could do it it kind of broke down some
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barriers and I made friends and but I have to say that from there I hit school.
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I was teased unmercifully throughout school until I hit university.
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Once I hit university, it kind of went away.
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But school was a, a story unto itself.
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But I, I mean, I was a good student.
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It wasn't a straight A student.
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But, you know, I had pretty good marks and I made it through school and then went on to
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college and university.
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And then I got I spent six years in the militia and that going through that.
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And it was good because it allowed me to pay for my college and university.
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And then my first job was with like my first full time job was
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with the Department of Education in the province of Saskatchewan.
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So I did, I did that. And that was back in the very early 80s where
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employment equity wasn't really known as employment equity was affirmative action.
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And I thought, okay, well, I'm going to go in and do this on my own.
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But it became quite clear that the only way I was going to get permanent employee and it
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had to sort of stop the managers from thinking,
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oh, he doesn't have all his, his fingers in his hands.
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So he's got to be stupid.
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He's got to be retarded.
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Excuse me for using that word, but that was the use that was being used in
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the 80s. So I used affirmative action and that then when it morphed into employment
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equity and all of that stuff, that's what I used when I got into the
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federal government. So but to do all of that,
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I had to advocate. And so I'm a self-taught advocator.
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I've always gone after barriers wherever I see them and I'm not.
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Shy at making waves or making noise, and I've done that on several occasions.
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To get stuff varies reduced or discrimination taken away.
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So my values have always been justice, fair play and everybody is human.
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Everybody has a right to try.
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It doesn't matter what the color of your skin is.
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It doesn't matter what your ethnicity is.
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Everybody has a right to try and to to be successful.
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And other people need to start putting their stereotypes away and give the person a
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chance. That's kind of the big thing I've always asked for.
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And sometimes I was successful, sometimes I wasn't.
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: So, Dean, when you look back on your early life and early working years,
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what experiences first formed your sense of justice,
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responsibility, and public service?
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Dean Steacy: Well I think I just innately my mom once said to,
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to my, my wife when she was describing me and my,
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my brothers that I always wanted things to be just and fair.
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And so it kind of was innate in me that that's what I,
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I wanted and I kind of pushed for that wherever,
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wherever I worked. And we worked at the beginning,
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in the 80s the early 80s was not easy.
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It, it people didn't understand non visual disability
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and having eye problems.
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And my, my eye problems start really started to,
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to show themselves in the mid 80s in that, that my eye,
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my vision was going down.
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So I needed it in work, I needed accommodation and I needed because
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we're now in the computer age in 84, 85, I needed technology to help me use the
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computer in just a larger screen.
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And it was a, a hell of a fight to get that stuff.
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And even when my doctors who the eye doctor I had here in Ottawa,
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the Ottawa Institute, Doctor Documentservices.
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A well known, well respected eye doctor.
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It was still fought. The government still fought it.
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And, you know, then it kind of started and I'm not saying I started it,
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but I was at the forefront of if you didn't agree with the doctor's opinion,
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then you needed to bring somebody from Health Canada in and reassess it because you're not
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a doctor. And I've got a doctor saying I need a larger screen.
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And because my hands are different, I need, I need a special keyboard and oh,
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no, no, you can't have it.
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You can't. So it was amazing how well it worked with Health Canada because my doctor
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was well known, good reputation, and they listened to what he said and Health
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Canada turned around and said, you got to give it to him.
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It's accommodation. And I still had problems getting accommodation throughout.
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Throughout all my career, I had to push and file some formal grievances
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and get things done. And I did it.
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But most of all, when I worked the first job I had after I left Saskatchewan and came to
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Ottawa was working in a place called Charities Division.
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So where I, I registered in charities.
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So you, I learned to go through their documentation and from what I saw being
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written by organizations that wanted to be charities,
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I kind of developed a, a sense that there is a group of,
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of Canadians out there en En masse who who want to do the right thing and who want to do
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good things. And I just learned that that kind of was an area that I,
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I wanted to be involved in.
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But as a federal civil servant, I had to be careful,
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especially working with Revenue Canada, that I wasn't the sort of biting the hand
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that feeds me, or joining a group that was lobbying against what the government was
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doing. Revenue Canada at the time didn't like that sort of things.
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But in 1990, so I worked for charities division from 1985 until
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1997, when I joined the Human Rights Commission.
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And I've had all sorts of cases from pretty much I've done cases under every section of
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the the act and under every ground.
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It's in the act. Up and done.
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Investigation reports.
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And from that I learned again, you know, that there's there's things going
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on. And as an investigator you have to look at,
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at facts and, you know, I always said there's,
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there's three sides to every story.
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There's the complainant side, the respondent side,
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and then there's the truth.
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And sometimes it is, it's just what falls in the middle.
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And you go in things being unbiased.
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And once you gone through all the documentations,
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you make your determination.
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And I used to joke, if I made both sides unhappy,
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I'd done a really great investigation.
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But you know, you, you make your recommendation And I knew from doing the job
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that one party was going to be mad at me if I said to the complainant,
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sorry, your complaint is unfounded.
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They were going to be angry.
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If I said to the respondents, I'm sending it to tribunal.
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They were going to be angry.
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So I learned a lot in that job.
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I learned the law. I learned how the law worked.
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And when I'm talking to the law, strictly referring to administrative law.
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And from there, I moved on.
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Once I retired, I moved on and started advocating on my own a bit.
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And then, you know, pushing for things with the banks and the telecommunication industry
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and different, different types of Organizations that I was specifically being
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involved in. But there were barriers and I tried to remove them.
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And I had other colleagues and friends who were also disabled and I would help them.
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And that was basically my advocacy was self-advocacy,
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but then it, it, it moved on to you know, once successful candidate act sort of put
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itself out there and said it was going to come into force.
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I worked amongst many different groups and I think I even worked with you a bit on.
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yes.
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Dean Steacy: Putting putting pieces together for the accessible Canada Act.
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And I think that piece of legislation, while not perfect,
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it it's doing it's or sort of doing his job.
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There's lots that could be improved in it, but I think that's where I now do my my
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advocacy and is reducing barriers and trying to get them taken away.
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Now, you permanently lost your sight in 2003.
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Can you take us back to that turning point and share what that period was really like
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for you?
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Dean Steacy: Well, I got to give maybe a bit of background.
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I'd had a cornea transplant, and I popped a stitch.
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So when I was waiting to
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: How did you do that?
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Dean Steacy: I just popped it just the, the stitch just popped on the cornea.
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The transplant?
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yeah.
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Dean Steacy: And when it went in to have it Have looked at.
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Excuse me. When I went in to have it looked at.
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I had a staph bacterial staph infection had gotten into my left eye.
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So. Yeah. And it turned out pretty bad.
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They had to inject antibiotics into my eye.
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And when they did that, I went from seeing to not seeing in both eyes
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like it was in an instant.
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Oh.
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Dean Steacy: So in 2003, on the weekend of, of remembrance?
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No, Thanksgiving on the weekend of Thanksgiving,
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I went from seeing to not seeing.
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I spent 40 days in the hospital hooked up to a drug called amoxicillin that was being
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pumped directly into my heart to make sure that I.
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The staph infection was being killed.
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So once. I won't go into all the gritty details here,
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but once I was able to to get off the medication and I started rehab.
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I realized that, okay, I'm blind.
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What am I going to do?
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I'm. I just going to sit there and be a blind person.
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No, I'm going to do what it takes to get back to work and become a,
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a person who's participating in, in work in the system.
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I just, I couldn't, I couldn't sit there even though I was being told,
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oh, we could medically retire you.
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Oh, no.
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Dean Steacy: You could be, you know, you could be.
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And I. After talking to my wife, I was going.
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No way, said I. I went back to work.
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yeah.
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Dean Steacy: So I didn't again, you can call it negotiate or advocate or whatever you want to call it.
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I had to do that to get back to work at investigations.
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And luckily, you know, I'm working for the Canadian Human Rights
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Commission. They understand accommodation and we negotiated went back to work.
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And it was rough. You know, I'd been off from work for two and a half
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years, so I had to, you know, get back to work.
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You don't go back immediately and you build up.
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And within six months I was back to work full time,
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but we were still going through a lot of accommodation and figuring out how I could be
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an investigator and continue to be an investigator.
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And we took about six months to work that out.
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And once I had my accommodations basically, which was having full time sighted attendant
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everything at the commission is received on paper and the commission didn't have
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the systems so that it could be scanned and turned into a document that I could read
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because everybody was using PDFs.
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And as you well know, the PDF is usually the bane of our lives
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because they don't work.
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yes.
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Dean Steacy: So I ended up getting an assistant who worked for me for over ten years and we developed a
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really good working relationship And she'd read the documents,
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and then I would take everything in, and then I'd start dictating to her and she
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would type. And that's how we put our reports together.
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And you know, it's kind of how it went.
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And then I decided in, in 2015 that I, I.
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I needed to retire because I just was not, had gotten to the point where I was not
25:59
enjoying my job anymore.
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And I had always said that once I'm not having fun,
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yes, I'm going to change.
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So I, I, I retired.
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Now. After that life changing loss of sight, what helped you to rebuild your confidence,
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your independence and sense of purpose and who or what supported you.
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Along the way.
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Dean Steacy: I have to give a lot of credit to my getting back off of or out of
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disability to, to my wife.
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We were told at the time I lived in, in Quebec and I now live back in Ontario,
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but I had an organization called la santé de the rehabilitation
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in Quebec, which is basically the center for rehabilitation.
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Right. And I had a couple of very good I'll say trainers,
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but mobility trainers and a couple people that helped me.
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Figure out how I was going to do things.
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And when they realized I was going to go back to work and I was not going to retire,
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they had to start figuring out how to help me do that.
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So they did there was input and there was input from my,
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my eye doctor about what I could do or what I couldn't or shouldn't do.
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And but basically the Joanne, my, my spouse,
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she was the one who stood behind me and prop me up when I,
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you know, felt I couldn't do it or I was down and,
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and saying, you know, I want to give up because we all go through
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that. You just don't get off of or out of rehabilitation or get out of,
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oh, it's time to go back to work and enter back into work.
28:20
And it's all all perfect.
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I mean, I think most people that have been, you know,
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perfect. Not perfect, but normal and then have an accident and
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they're permanently disabled.
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Know how hard this is?
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I mean, it's, it's I know what I lost because I could see.
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And I've talked to blind people that have been blind all their lives.
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And you go on to talk.
28:51
About things that they don't kind of understand.
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Right?
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Dean Steacy: Where you're coming from as a sighted person has lost their eyesight.
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And it's it is two different things.
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And in some cases it's three different things because you have people with low vision and
29:11
all. I mean, there's hundreds of different levels of blindness and each one has its own
29:18
experience. So when I was getting told, oh, you can't do this.
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I was going, yes, I can just give me the give me the means to do it and I'll do it.
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And then I had a couple of cases of what we can't afford it.
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And I said, well, you work for the federal government.
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You can't not afford it.
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So let's figure out how to do it by.
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I was was lucky in that I met a couple of other people that,
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that were in the accommodation industry who, you know,
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readily came to my help at work and showed work how they could they could do things.
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I'll give you one, one example of, of the, the way the government works
30:11
sometimes. And how logic is, is, is word that the government doesn't
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understand. I'm totally blind, but I've got to print off my documents
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because the document has to go into the file.
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And before I got my assistant, I was doing all of that.
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Well, I'd go to the printer.
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There's nobody around at the printer.
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I couldn't ask people which one my document was because there's a stack of paper there,
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and I'd asked for a printer.
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So I started taking all the papers to find and then putting them on my scanner to scan
30:54
to find out what my, which was my report.
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And then and I'd find it, but I'd have all the other papers there,
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but I'd leave them on the corner of my desk, and then people would come into my office and
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say, did you take. I said, yeah, I took and have a conversation about
31:13
it. And it was basically the rest of the staff.
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Would you get him a printer?
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Because he's disrupting our work because.
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And it. So it's like it was logic that I should have a printer.
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Yes, but the government didn't see that as a need for me to have a printer,
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because I could go to the printer like everybody else.
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So that's the silly type of advocating you have to do when you go.
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You know, it makes sense that I have a printer.
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yeah.
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Dean Steacy: And I got the printer and everybody's happy because I wasn't taking anybody else's
31:54
reports. So it it works not just in the government,
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but I've had that happen with with my cell phone provider when stuff was coming and
32:07
trying to get my bills in on disk so I could read it.
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And other people were, you know, I was fighting to get people.
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So they get the bank. They could get their their bills in Braille.
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And You know, that, that type of thing.
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So even though I was at work at the Canadian Human Rights Commission,
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you know, when I get off work, my time is my time,
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right? So I was pushing for things and, and I was making,
32:39
making waves. Like I said earlier, I, I had no problem making waves when it was
32:45
necessary. Even, even to the, the, the embarrassment of my family members
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would go do something.
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yeah.
32:56
Dean Steacy: And where's this? I don't know.
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I said, well, you need to have it.
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No I don't. Yeah. Well, yes you do.
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So this is the conversations you have because they just they don't they don't understand.
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Know.
33:12
Dean Steacy: What disability means and what it means to for some people to have a Braille
33:22
menu or something else so that the as a client,
33:29
you can, you can be served.
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So it, it, it worked even when I was getting served a meal,
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you know, you probably experienced this, you're at a restaurant and you order
33:44
something and they just drop the plate in front of you,
33:47
right? And then you're filling up your water.
33:50
You had your water glass where you knew it was,
33:54
and now all of a sudden you're searching for your water glass.
33:57
Oh, you hit it and you spill it, and they get upset at you for spilling it.
34:01
And it's like I'm not it's not uncommon for me to drop the f bomb.
34:12
And there's like, you know, sometimes I would come out when I'm
34:17
explaining to the server, like you effing put it in the wrong effing
34:21
place. When I told you earlier, I'm blind to put it in one spot.
34:27
And so this is advocacy and people don't think that it's advocacy,
34:34
but it is because you're teaching someone who wasn't thinking about,
34:41
oh, I got to do things differently for the blind and that that tiny little piece of
34:48
advocacy spreads because the next time you go back to the restaurant,
34:56
all the servers know he's blind and you got to do certain things a certain way with him.
35:03
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yeah.
35:04
Dean Steacy: Or he's going to yell at you and nobody likes being yelled at.
35:08
I mean, I may yell.
35:10
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: It.
35:11
Dean Steacy: At a person for for, you know, putting a barrier in my place and had a
35:17
couple of times where I went to places and I told them this,
35:21
you can't have this there because it potentially could hurt me.
35:26
And I've gone into places where they don't care and I've tripped over.
35:33
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Or.
35:34
Dean Steacy: Over things and it's luckily I haven't been hurt.
35:38
I just get up and shake it off.
35:40
And then of course, the store is embarrassed as all get out and you've got somebody there
35:47
taking around the store and getting what you need.
35:49
But it for me, it's all little bits of acts that are advocacy and that that's,
35:59
that's what is going to slowly make things better.
36:06
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I'm afraid our daily lives is comprised of advocacy for the most part.
36:13
And yeah. It's the only way that we can build awareness,
36:17
make people more aware.
36:19
We don't have a choice, right?
36:21
Right. Yeah. But before your accessibility advocacy became so visible,
36:31
you were associated with human rights work in Canada,
36:36
what did that chapter of your life teach you about rights,
36:42
institutions, evidence, and fairness?
36:48
Well.
36:49
Dean Steacy: I would have to say that the way the Human Rights Act is written,
36:55
it's, it's all about that.
36:58
It's about anti-discrimination.
37:02
Quite frankly, I think that she changed the name of the act to the Canadian
37:07
anti-discrimination act instead of the Human Rights Act,
37:11
because that act is really dealing with anti-discrimination under under the different
37:18
13 or 14 grounds it has now.
37:21
So I learned that usually by the time a complaint comes in,
37:31
the complainant is at their last straw.
37:34
They tried everything and they're there.
37:37
They're coming to us because they feel like they have no other choice.
37:44
And I learned that the majority of respondents,
37:49
no matter what the complaint is about their their vocabulary is deny,
37:56
deny, deny.
37:58
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yeah.
37:58
Dean Steacy: So what I, what I learned is In the case of the human rights
38:08
area, because I, I was an intake officer and investigator,
38:15
a conciliator, a mediator a manager in the 18 years that I was there.
38:22
So I had a lot of different jobs.
38:25
My last two big jobs were as investigator.
38:31
And then it moved into mediation.
38:33
So I learned that that, you know, you've got,
38:36
there's a lot of, I'm going to use the word convincing,
38:41
but it's synonymous with advocacy and it's synonymous with a whole bunch of different
38:47
things that you have to do with the respondent to understand,
38:54
make them understand you as you as a respondent have certain responsibilities that
39:01
you have to maintain. And when they go no you don't.
39:08
Then it becomes quite easy.
39:10
You just send it off to tribunal and the tribunal deal with it.
39:16
But there was a lot of times where once the, the,
39:21
the respondent understood more clearly what had happened and they were speaking to me as
39:28
the investigator, not the complainant, because the,
39:32
the adversarial piece that was going on between those two parties,
39:38
sometimes it was so broken that it just needed somebody else to step in and,
39:45
you know, calm things down and take the facts from both sides and come up with that maybe
39:53
isn't the actual truth, but you come up with a better story or a more
40:00
fuller story of what was going on at at the workplace.
40:05
And you, you kind of developed or at least I kind of developed a style of how you
40:15
treat both parties. But I learned a lot about the law.
40:18
I learned a lot about in administrative law, what the rights are and what your rights are
40:26
and what my rights are.
40:28
And I, I, you know, for the 18 years that I was there,
40:33
I have to say, I really, really enjoyed things.
40:37
And had I had a good, good 18 years, but like anybody,
40:41
some days were good, some days were, were bad.
40:44
But what made me retire in 2015 was that there was a whole bunch of legislative
40:52
changes coming on and a whole bunch of changes that the Commission and I had the act
41:00
memorized. I had the different pieces of what I had to do as an as an investigator down.
41:08
I didn't need to think about anything.
41:12
I could just do my job and, you know, do it sufficiently well that my
41:17
managers were happy with what I was doing.
41:21
But I didn't I didn't want to go through the course of remembering an act with a whole
41:28
bunch of changes in it and then procedures and a lot of procedures were being changed.
41:37
I didn't want to memorize them.
41:39
I was, I'd had enough.
41:41
So that's kind of what I talked to my spouse about it.
41:45
And I'd already been working in as a federal civil servant,
41:51
a provincial civil servant in the military for 40 years.
41:55
So I just pulled the plug and I haven't looked back.
42:03
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: You know, advocacy is not easy.
42:07
But you, along with so many others like the late Chris Stark,
42:11
the late John Ray, you guys have done so much.
42:15
And you know, there's so much more to be done,
42:17
but our clock is ticking down.
42:19
I wanted to ask you this question.
42:22
Your name has also surfaced in difficult public debates over the years.
42:30
Yeah. When you reflect on that chapter, sir,
42:34
what do you most want listeners to understand about the human side of living through
42:44
public controversy? Well.
42:49
Dean Steacy: A, it's not easy, but if you're doing the right thing,
42:55
you get through it and you can walk away with your your head held high.
43:01
I for people that don't know from 2006 through
43:12
to about 2011, 12, I was the lead investigator on hate on the internet.
43:21
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Oh boy.
43:22
Dean Steacy: So I'm proud I can proudly say that I managed shut 3 or 4
43:33
hate groups down and shut their websites down and have them prosecuted.
43:41
It it wasn't easy. I got it's rare that an investigator gets called into tribunal to
43:49
testify, but because I was the lead investigator and I set up the process to
43:56
investigate hate complaints.
43:58
I get called in to testify and not not by the complainer or the commission,
44:06
but I get called in by the respondents because they wanted to show that the way I
44:14
was investigating didn't, didn't make sense and that I wasn't treating
44:21
the respondents right.
44:24
So I would caused controversy is and it was a very technical question,
44:33
but this is what got a lot of publicity.
44:38
It's the lawyer for the respondents to the organization.
44:45
That was at tribunal. She asked me, do you believe in freedom of speech?
44:53
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Oh.
44:54
Dean Steacy: And I said, no, it's not that they don't believe in that.
44:59
It's what I believe in is under the Canadian Constitution.
45:03
It's the freedom of thought and expression.
45:06
It's not the freedom of speech.
45:08
We don't have that terminology in our eye or in our context in the overall Constitution.
45:17
I know it's in the charter, but the Constitution is,
45:23
is the Constitution and it has jurisdiction over the charter.
45:28
So when I answered the question, of course, everybody jumps on it that you've
45:34
got a civil servant who.
45:39
Doesn't believe in freedom of speech.
45:43
That's what they picked up on. They didn't pick up on the rest of.
45:46
The answer is that I believe in thought.
45:49
The Constitution. So that was in the New York Times,
45:54
the London Times, the Australian Times is it throughout.
46:00
It made it into time magazine.
46:02
It made it.
46:02
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Into. Oh my.
46:04
Dean Steacy: It made it into a whole bunch of stuff.
46:06
I was at the the I forget what is it?
46:11
Bill Riley in the United States wanted to interview me.
46:17
I always said there was a whole bunch of press people that wanted to interview me,
46:21
but. What? Well, that caused a controversy.
46:25
And for me, it it didn't bother me that it caused a controversy because I knew what I
46:32
was doing under the law was lawful and it was right and what I was doing and it was going
46:41
to close down hate mongers.
46:44
I don't know anybody other than a hate monger who would think that they should be allowed
46:50
to be active like most Canadians who believe in our values don't believe in hate.
47:01
And I had a Senator Findley who wanted me fired,
47:09
so he went into the Senate and said a whole bunch of stuff about me,
47:14
which he picked up from the press and it was wrong.
47:22
So I was called to testify before the House committee,
47:29
and I kind of refused and my boss at the time said,
47:36
no, he's not going to come in to be raked over the coals,
47:41
but I then had a one on one meeting with I forget what his first name is,
47:48
but his last name was Hillier, who was the chair of the Human Rights
47:53
Commission or the Human Rights Committee.
47:59
And I explained to him what was going on, and I told him what you were hearing from the
48:06
press is absolutely untrue.
48:10
And the two Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn had lied to the house.
48:20
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Oh, boy.
48:20
Dean Steacy: And I could prove it. And so I gave over the documentation and they read it over and I
48:31
he apologized and I said, I'm sorry.
48:35
That's not good enough.
48:37
I, I was slandered at a house committee.
48:43
I'd like apologies from the whole committee and I also from the chief commissioner at the
48:50
time also asked that Ezra Levant and Mark Stein not be allowed on the parliamentary
48:58
precinct, and then they can't testify before the committee,
49:05
which they were scheduled to do because the was known that they were going to come back
49:11
and slander me again. So in the House, I felt it more important to clear my
49:21
name in the government, in the House, in the House of Commons and
49:26
everything. Then the press, I mean, the press is the press and they get
49:31
stuff wrong all the time.
49:34
Yes, but the house the House has a responsibility to make sure that Canadians
49:42
especially when it comes to stuff like this, are not slandered.
49:46
So it was all fixed and I continued on until 2012 when the
49:56
Liberal government amended the act and took it out.
50:01
And so I had moved on to other parts of of investigation.
50:08
So and then the next step I had was I developed the the,
50:15
the policy around racism for the commission and what,
50:23
because we were having a lot of complaints from people being stopped by you know,
50:31
the RCMP or even other police forces.
50:34
It may not have been a federal jurisdiction, but we were still getting concern and
50:39
complaints about, you know, I'm being treated in a racist manner.
50:44
I got pulled over because I'm black And there were there's a case that went to tribunal,
50:51
so I can talk about it fairly freely as there was a case where a young man here in Ottawa
50:58
was driving on the parkway, which is federal jurisdiction in Ottawa.
51:03
He got pulled over in his mom's convertible Mercedes,
51:10
and the cop pulled him over strictly because he was black.
51:14
And he wanted to know why and how he could afford to drive a Mercedes Benz.
51:20
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Oh, no.
51:21
Dean Steacy: And so it was like, it's my mom's car.
51:24
I'm going to pick her up.
51:27
And he's still the cop.
51:29
Didn't want to believe him.
51:32
So he's pulled out of the car and they went put him in the back of the RCMP car.
51:37
Basically they arrested him.
51:40
And once they got the verification from the mother who was a lawyer,
51:48
happened to take it to the press, but then it came to us as a complaint.
51:55
And at that point we had to decide we didn't really know ourselves how how are we going to
52:02
decide or determine if that was racial profiling?
52:08
You know, did he get pulled over because he had a broken light and he should be pulled
52:12
over, but if he was pulled over because he's black driving a Mercedes,
52:18
that's outright discrimination.
52:20
So it forced a lot of police forces to start figuring out how their
52:30
statistics show whether or not they're pulling over the appropriate number of
52:35
visible minorities or whites or, or what, what's what's going on.
52:41
And a lot of police forces when they started doing the statistics.
52:46
We're coming up with proportionately.
52:48
They're pulling over. Majority of black people than they are white people or a lot of
52:56
other other racial groups.
53:01
So I know in Ottawa, the RCMP and the Ottawa police have changed the way
53:11
they, they do traffic stops, which is a good thing.
53:14
But it's all, this is all little steps and that's what happens.
53:19
And this is what really, what I learned the most is that advocacy is,
53:25
is tiny little steps. But at a certain point,
53:29
some of us have to decide to be the trailblazers.
53:34
And if we're not going to trailblaze, things are not going to change because I've
53:41
talked to people, you know, why don't you complain?
53:44
Why don't you do this?
53:45
Oh, it's too much work.
53:48
Yeah, but you're. You're okay with being discriminated against.
53:53
I don't want to complain.
53:56
And not that for me was.
53:58
No, I'm. I'm going to stand up for myself.
54:02
And if it means other people get it, then that's great too.
54:05
But I'm, I'm going to stand up for my rights.
54:12
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: This has been one of the most insightful interviews that I've had with any advocate in
54:18
a very long time. I've learned so much about your strength and your commitment,
54:24
and I want to thank you for for having, you know,
54:27
walked the walk with the rest of us.
54:30
It's people like you we need.
54:31
And, you know, like in closing, I just want to thank you for for what you've
54:36
done, you know?
54:38
Dean Steacy: Oh, thank you for thank thank you for the thanks.
54:42
I'm still doing it. I'm.
54:43
I'm not I'm not doing it as much as I was.
54:48
But but I, I mean, I've been working with and for years and I've worked with the CBC to
54:55
make sure that the Olympics have got descriptive video.
54:58
And I think from the first year that they put it out to this year with the Olympics and the
55:05
Paralympics, it's it's been much improved, improved.
55:09
I've you know, I've done stuff with banks to get things made.
55:16
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yeah.
55:16
Dean Steacy: Accessible. I've worked with TV stations.
55:19
I'm still doing that. My, my pet peeve on all of this is descriptive
55:25
video and trying to get it so that everybody has it,
55:29
whether it's on TV, the theaters or, or wherever.
55:34
And it's, I'm doing what I want to do and what I like.
55:42
And I think that that's an easy spot to say.
55:46
If you want to advocate, pick something that you like that you know
55:52
needs to be fixed. And, you know, go out and do it because it's
55:56
really not that hard because like I.
56:02
I can say that from when I was a kid playing hockey and having a disabled kid on the team
56:09
was like verboten. Now lots of teams are more than happy to have a disabled kid on the team
56:18
because they can say, look, we are working with the disabled
56:22
community or we've got a.
56:25
Isn't it great that we have a couple of girls playing on the team?
56:29
To the point now that you know, advocacy has done a lot.
56:34
We've now got a professional women's hockey league.
56:38
Screen Reader: New notification from outlook.
56:40
Dean Steacy: And I think that that obviously I haven't worked on any of that,
56:45
but I know people that have and but you know,
56:51
it's a change. There was no thought in 1974 that there'd ever be a professional hockey
56:58
league for women in Canada.
57:00
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Right?
57:01
Dean Steacy: So I mean, advocacy works.
57:05
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Thank you very, very much, Dean.
57:07
I really, really appreciate it.
57:09
You keep on going.
57:12
Dean Steacy: Yeah. And you too, Donna.
57:13
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Thank you. Dean. Thanks.
57:15
Alright, now. Bye bye now.
57:18
Bye bye.
57:22
Podcast Commentator: Donna wants to hear from you and invites you to write to her at donnajodhan@gmail.com.
57:28
Until next time.