Advocate says airlines are treating people with disabilities like 'cargo'

I wonder, Alicia, if you can help the average Canadian who doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about this. What is the state of travel right now, specifically air travel for people who have physical disabilities? Thank you again. Thank you for having me. I think the state currently is a very precarious one and there are challenges and barriers and threats to our safety I every step of the process when we’re talking about a travel experience. And so I’m so thankful for the government and for all of the people involved in the summit that are getting together and really highlighting big issues. But I’m really hoping for change. We’ll get to what you’re hoping for specifically in just a moment. But I want to remind our audience, Alicia, that you actually worked with our colleagues at CBC Marketplace and you went on a flight, they joined you through a hidden camera to just document what your specific experience was like. Tell us about that hidden cameras rolling from Toronto to Charlottetown. I think the the whole experience was very reflective of what I would go through during any experience on a flight. And I think that there’s a lot of experience, a lot of things that happened that weren’t shown in the marketplace. But I think the most impactful for me was the challenges with transferring from my wheelchair onto the airplane chair. I’m having people boarded before me so that during these transfers people were watching and people were gawking and and just a lot of lack of flexibility from the airline staff. We were just looking at video from that Marketplace episode, and I was really disturbed to see how many people were handling you physically. And I just wonder what that’s like for you to experience. I mean, just imagine a bunch of strangers. I want people at home to imagine a bunch of strangers pulling you and grabbing you and shoving you around. You gave us a sense of how that makes you feel. Talk a little bit more about what that does to your sense of self. I mean, I think that the current system says that people with disabilities and their devices are cargo and that we are luggage and that we should be travelled like luggage. And I think that that just speaks volume. I feel like luggage. I feel like not a person. I feel that I’m being forced to sit in a chair that’s not meant for me, that could cause me harm, and that in the moment there’s very little action that I can do but to try and mitigate the risks that are coming towards me. Describe the risks. What could happen to you? So in terms of my my body being injured, if you stopped during the Marketplace episode, the lift fell on my head. In terms of being sitting for extended periods of time with little room to move or reposition, it could increase the chance of sores or pressures like you mentioned, having people touch me, people who were not trained even though regulations state that they should be trained. And then on top of that the potential risk to our wheelchairs which then when we get to the destination if we don’t have our wheelchairs could lead to more risk. I would also like to add, please go ahead, my my apologies that in order to travel, because washrooms are not accessible on planes and we can’t travel on like transfer on planes as easily, that I had to dehydrate myself for days before and take medication to stop from going to the bathroom. Alicia, listening to these details, it’s so it’s so upsetting. I can’t imagine anyone listening thinking, yeah, that sounds OK. Is it worth it to travel? Do you and other friends and colleagues who are in wheelchairs, do you end up limiting travel or saying no altogether because it’s just not worth it. It’s always a battle. And I I said this before with the CBC that I love to travel. And for me it’s the difference between life and living. I want to live my life. I want to enjoy Canada and the world and go out there and meet people. But there is this element of risk that always kind of tries to keep you inside. But then I realized that that’s what ableism is, and I don’t want to live like that. I I absolutely hear you. So let’s get back to what you were saying earlier, which is your concrete hopes to come out of this committee and the hearings today. What do you hope will change as a result? Well, I hope that there’s a sort of renowned commitment to improve accessibility for people with disabilities, with people with disabilities leading these conversations. I feel like when it comes to air travel and and other areas about accessibility, we’ve been used as consultants. But we need to be leaders in these discussions as we have valuable experiential knowledge. I think that we need to. I’m hoping for a commitment that people disabilities are not luggage and we’re not cargo, and our devices, which are an extension of ourselves, are not cargo. We are human beings. I think that there needs to be data collection, as mentioned, parser enforcement. And ultimately, my goal would be to be able to bring my wheelchair onto the plane and have it secured onto the plane. So yeah, these are lots of hopes. Well, let’s hope that they come true. Alicia Di Virgilio, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for sharing your experiences. And we’ll keep this conversation going as it continues in Ottawa. Thank you. My My pleasure. Thank you.