The Toronto restaurant that told a hearing impaired man to leave his service dog outside broke more than the Ontario Human Rights Act.
It appears that Spring Rolls contravened a 2008 provision of the Accessibility for Ontarians With Disabilities Act which requires businesses to implement customer accessibility policies, including staff training and customer complaints procedures to ensure people don’t face this kind of discrimination, said disability rights lawyer David Lepofsky.
Businesses with more than 20 employees were required to report their policies to the government by Dec. 31, 2012.
“More than five years after the Ontario government enacted the Customer Service Accessibility Standard under the disabilities act, why are we hearing about alleged incidents like this?” said Lepofsky, chair of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance, a community coalition working to ensure the act is enforced.
“Why should a person with a disability have to resort to possibly taking a case to the Human Rights Tribunal . . . when the disabilities act is supposed to be effectively enforced to reduce the need for such individual litigation?” he added.
As reported in the Sunday Star, Oakville resident Peter Stelmacovich said staff at Spring Rolls restaurant on Queen St. W. told him last Thursday he would have to sit upstairs or outside because of his Hearing Ear dog, Flora. The other option was to tie his dog outside. Stelmacovich, who ate elsewhere, said he was considering a complaint to the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal.
Spring Rolls apologized on Facebook and in a statement emailed to the Star Sunday morning, saying the situation would never happen again and that the company will implement more staff training.
The restaurant will also post signs in its windows welcoming service dogs, said restaurant sales and marketing manager Jose Munoz. The chain, with 12 franchises in the GTA, Hamilton and Waterloo, filed its customer accessibility report on time, he added in an interview Monday.
Stelmacovich, who has accepted the eatery’s apology, said he is pleased with the awareness the issue has created.
“This is clearly not an isolated incident,” said the 47-year-old man who has had Hearing Ear dogs for 25 years. “This happens in other restaurants and businesses and I hope this will result in some change.”
A spokesman for Economic Development and Trade Minister Eric Hoskins, who oversees disability issues, was unable to say how many businesses have filed their customer accessibility reports.
“We still have work to do to improve the number,” said Gabe DeRoche.
Lepofsky said the Spring Rolls incident is an example of why the government, which has promised to enforce the act, must do more.
In a letter to Hoskins in February, he suggested government inspectors under other legislation include enforcement of the disabilities act in their activities. He is still waiting for a response.