Change at the Local Level: How Effective is Your Municipal Advisory committee?

In this first podcast of 2025 the Triple Vision team speaks with Tim Nolan. Tim recently retired from a 31-year career at McMaster University in Hamilton, finishing up as Director of Student Accessibility Services. But Tim also dedicated over 22 years of his own time sitting on various iterations of the City of Hamilton’s advisory committee for persons with disabilities, including eight years as it’s Chair. In this episode Tim has a frank discussion with Karoline and Peter about how effective, or rather how ineffective, those committees have been. Municipal advisory committees are mandated under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act and are becoming more common across the country as provinces enact there own legislation for persons with disabilities.“There’s no process in place to bring these committees together so that they can communicate and perhaps leverage off of one another to have a more robust approach to dealing with accessibility across the province – no continuity. The Government of Ontario seems unable to bring those communities together and fundamentally they seem unwilling to bring those communities together.”