‘Who am I going to ask? A stranger in the passport office?’ Andrew Gurza said to himself when denied help
By Shanifa Nasser, CBC News
A Toronto man with cerebral palsy is accusing Passport Canada of failing to accommodate him after an attendant refused to help him fill in his renewal form.
Andrew Gurza, a disability awareness consultant and wheelchair user, said he asked an agent Wednesday at the passport office on Victoria Street to assist him with the form.
Gurza said he cannot write on his own and doesn’t own a printer because he lacks the physical ability to use one, so he booked a 45-minute Wheel-Trans ride to the downtown office.
“I assumed that an agent there would assist me … When it came to my turn, I rolled up and just said, ‘Hi, I’d like to renew my passport and I’m going to need some assistance with doing that,'” said Gurza.
That’s when he learned Passport Canada staff don’t provide that kind of service.
“He goes, ‘Well you’re going to need to find someone to help you.’ And I looked around and I thought, ‘Who am I going to ask? A stranger in the passport office?'”
Gurza said he was handed a paper form and took it home — another 45-minute ride.
Passport Canada did not respond to CBC Toronto’s inquiries about Gurza’s story.
His case comes just weeks after another Ontario resident’s experience at the passport office counter made headlines.
Policy bars staff from filling out forms for others with no exemptions
Rebecca Blaevoet, who is blind, filed an official complaint after she told The Canadian Press that staff at a Windsor, Ont., passport office failed to accommodate her due to what a supervisor said was a fear of “leading the applicant” to provide inaccurate answers.
In Blaevoet’s case, staff offered up a braille form only to find there were none left in stock, and asked if her husband could assist her. Blaevoet said that option failed to consider people with disabilities who may be seeking services on their own.
Rebecca Blaevoet filed an official complaint about her experience with Passport Canada earlier this month, saying the policy represents a failure to accommodate people with disabilities. (Amy Dodge/CBC)
At the time, Passport Canada said that a rule barring staff from filling in forms on behalf of others is applied across the country. There is no exemption in place for Canadians with disabilities, The Canadian Press said.
“Generally, any addition, modification or deletion of information on an application form must be completed by the applicant and initialled,” a statement from Service Canada, the agency that oversees the administration of passports, said at the time.
“Although the policy in place speaks to amendments to the application form and does not reference providing assistance to visually impaired applicants, it is understood that any annotations on the application form should be completed by the applicant themselves, when possible.”
Service Canada does offer an online form, and said in its statement earlier this month that visually impaired Canadians can designate a friend or family member to complete the form for them.
Need to balance security with person’s rights
Toronto lawyer Ian Hurley, who specializes in employment-related disability matters, said the argument that staff filling out a person’s form for them could pose security concerns is a legitimate one.
“But I think that objective would need to be balanced against the right of the individual who is requesting accommodation for their disability,” said Hurley.