30 years after passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the unemployment rate for people with disabilities is still twice the rate for non-disabled people. One of the key reasons may be that many ableist assumptions about disability and basic competence are still so widely considered common sense that we don’t even think of them as discrimination. Then, just when it seems like employers are starting to think differently about disability, competence, and employment, popular politics intervenes to reinforce everyone’s worst instincts.
A few weeks ago, news and social media followers were alternately distracted or amused by a new round of health and mental state spitballing against President Trump, based on the idea that he’s secretly physically or mentally disabled, or both. Trump is old and infirm. He’s physically failing. Worst of all, he’s either mentally ill or suffering from some sort of age-related dementia! These mental fitness arguments are also often used to explain Trump’s more outrageous actions and offensive personality traits, even his beliefs. Several of the key “takeaways” from Mary Trump’s forthcoming book … though significantly not all of them by far … apparently include assertions of clinical mental illness and “personality disorders.”
Since well before Trump’s 2016 election, speculating freely about his mental and physical “fitness” for the job has been a popular if unofficial tactic for many of those who oppose and resist him and his administration. However, not all of Trump’s critics are so quick to jump on the “Trump-is-sick” bandwagon.
In The Atlantic, David A. Graham makes a similar, though slightly more equivocal argument, focusing on what he considers “extensive evidence” that he is “temperamentally unfit to lead the country.” His argument here is interesting, because it skates very close to diagnosing Trump with some kind of mental illness. Yet, Graham concludes by rejecting ableist arguments entirely and suggesting we all focus instead on his actions and behavior. This may reflect the fact that in the popular understanding, the line between mere personality traits or “temperament” and mental pathology is very fuzzy.
Caroline Reilly of BitchMedia notes that this tactic has never been confined to just President Trump, writing:
“We’ve seen this playbook used time and again: We saw it when Hillary Clinton fainted in 2016 as she battled pneumonia; we saw it when Bernie Sanders had a heart attack in 2019; and we see it in current conversations about Joe Biden’s stutter. Ableism, it seems, is bipartisan.“
In a Washington Post editorial, leading disability activist and disability policy expert Rebecca Cokley takes this a step further, offering an excellent rebuttal to these attacks on their substance, but also pointing out what so many other disabled people have felt since ableism first became a go-to rhetorical tactic against Trump. These accusations of physical and mental “infirmity” may or may not damage Trump politically, but they absolutely hurt and harm people with disabilities.
“Every single professional with a disability I know has been questioned privately and publicly about whether their “condition” hinders their ability to do their job. This is a universal truth and fear for any individual across physical, mental, intellectual, sensory and chronic illness communities.“
As Reilly further observes, ableist attacks on individual politicians have a much broader corrosive effect on disabled people more generally:
“… Every time a politician stumbles, stutters, or misspeaks, we seemingly return to that toxic notion that to be ill is to be less than, to be less capable and less worthy of a job or respect.”
Whether in politics or management, disability discrimination is lazy. Instead of facing up to actually terrible employees … or a loose-cannon President … we look for an escape hatch that allows us to “get rid of them” without taking responsibility for what they stand for and why people support them in the first place.
This can bring temporary relief, but it leaves deeper problems to fester. And these arguments also usually produce collateral damage. In both politics and the workplace, loose talk of mental instability, chronic illness, and physical impairment is like mustard gas on a WWI battlefield. It’s tempting to use, but it can’t be controlled and can blow back on anyone.
Physical and mental fitness arguments in politics also have a troubling history. In 1972, Vice-Presidential nominee Thomas Eagleton was dropped because he had been treated for depression. No one candidate is essential, but who is to say the United States didn’t lose an outstanding leader when Thomas Eagleton fell to ableist fears of mental disorder?
It’s also worth remembering that totalitarian regimes have used psychological diagnoses to neutralize political opponents as recently as the 1970s and ‘80s. Deviance from approved ideology wasn’t just a political problem in the Soviet Union. Disagreement was treated as a literal pathology. It’s an extreme example, but we come pretty close to it when we start labeling abhorrent beliefs as some kind of personal clinical deviance, rather than signs of deep social and ideological division. The implications for free speech and democracy are chilling.
And again, using the stigma of disability as a political weapon also helps keep people with all kinds of physical and mental conditions stigmatized and economically dependent. The social and financial costs of this are massive, and not contained just to disabled people themselves.
So, what do we do instead? How do we respond to employees, or politicians, who we believe may be sick, fragile, or clinically unstable? With workplaces riven with competition and politics so polarized, how can we effectively protect ourselves from those who we feel are genuinely unfit? Here are five principles to keep in mind:
1. Stay away from armchair diagnosis
Most people can’t help connecting “weird” or “irrational” behavior with “mental illness” … or stumbles and awkward movements with disability or “frailty.” That’s usually regarded as simply observant, but it’s also ableism … unsupported assumptions about a person’s mental or physical state based on superficial evidence. And most of us have at best a superficial understanding of mental and physical disabilities.
Don’t do it. Stick with what you know, and set aside what you can only speculate. That goes for what other people speculate too, even when they present as psychological professionals or medical doctors. If they haven’t met and conducted a proper examination, then their opinion is just that, and no more reliable than anyone else’s.
2. Focus on individual people’s actions and behaviors
This is prejudice 101, but it never hurts to review. Resist the temptation to rely on what you expect from different “kinds” of people, and assess each person as an individual. What matters is what people do and how they behave with others, not what their health or mental status might or might not be.
The key thing to remember is that while most disabilities have effects on the disabled people who have them, neither physical nor mental disabilities can truly predict or explain what any person will do or can do. Any physically disabled people can be capable of performing any physical task, either in the usual way or with adaptations and accommodations. And any mentally disabled person can be perfectly reliable, rational, and analytical … able to process any tasks, using the usual methods, or some different routines and supports.
In any case, if you are assessing a coworker, employee, or a politician, your only concern is results. Are they doing a good job? Are they working well with others, if working with others is necessary and important? If they are having difficulties, can they be surmounted with reasonable accommodations, or maybe a different perspective on the matter?
This is one of the rare instances where a genuine businesslike approach actually helps. Results are what matters, not half-baked theories, personal hang-ups, or prejudices.
3. Focus on ideas and ideologies
At first glance, this runs counter to distinctly American values of fairness and nonpartisanship. You’re not supposed to judge a person for their politics, or either punish or reward them for their personal views and beliefs.
Yet, even in the workplace, while retail, partisan politics shouldn’t be a factor, some ideas and beliefs are understood to be off-limits, or inherently counter-productive to the job at hand. Open racism, sexism, homophobia, and other beliefs are not welcomed or sustainable in well-functioning organizations.
And in politics, judging and acting on people’s belief systems is entirely appropriate … it’s what politics is.
Also, it’s important not to confuse objectionable beliefs and behaviors with mental illness. Racism is bad, but it’s not a mental illness. Sexism is gross, but it’s not a pathology. Cruelty and narcissism are unpleasant, and ultimately dysfunctional, but they aren’t illnesses. It’s tempting to some people to equate terrible beliefs and attitudes with impairment, but they aren’t the same things. Disabled people aren’t more likely to be evil, and evil can’t be explained away by disability.
4. No matter how dire a personnel matter is, don’t look for an easy way out
When someone is driving either chaos or chronic mediocrity in your organization, you want them out. And there are always procedural and “political” barriers to making that happen. There are steps to follow for fair termination. There are consequences to deal with if the person you are getting rid of has allies.
It’s the same in politics. For good reason, our institutions have barriers in place to prevent getting rid of people we have once elected just because we’ve changed our minds and things aren’t working out. And no one political or philosophical viewpoint is allowed to lord it over all others merely because they have a thin majority at any given time. Barriers and consequences are built into the system for a reason.
Either way, in politics and in workplaces, taking short-cuts around those barriers is seductive, but also potentially illegal and certainly a bad idea. One of the shortcuts people think of is physical or mental “unfitness.” If we can “prove” that the problem isn’t the person or their ideas and policies, but rather an unfortunate illness, then we can get rid of them with something that may feel like a clear conscience, maybe without consequences. We all supposedly agree that an “incapacitated” person can’t do a job, or serve in an elected office. So it looks like a path to agreement where agreement can’t otherwise be found.
Core problems in workplaces and politics don’t go away just because a particular person is gone. Serious problems are almost never all the fault of one person … in politics, and in workplaces too.
5. Don’t throw around stigmatizing language about mental or physical disability
Meanwhile, an important piece of background culture change is to quietly but firmly break the habit of pathologizing language.
Stop calling people or ideas lazy, sick, weak, fragile, crazy, nuts, certifiable, or insane. Language like this may seem unimportant, and it can be very difficult to avoid. But it is important, and disabled people notice. We really do. Stigmatizing language like this hurts. It weighs us down. And acceptance of it sends a message to us and everyone around us that it’s okay to judge people based on their real or perceived physical or mental disabilities. This is toleration of illegal, harmful prejudice, and it needs to stop, especially when it’s used casually.
These principles are themselves common sense. Most of us know they are the right ways to approach questions we might have about other people’s mental or physical conditions. We only overrule ourselves because our prejudices also feel like common sense to us. That’s why we can’t assume our own good intentions. We need to be deliberate about rejecting ableism, in our own everyday lives and workplaces, and in the intense heat and high stakes of politics.
OTTAWA – Liberal House leader Karina Gould lambasted Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre as a “fraudster” this morning after he said the federal carbon price is going to cause a “nuclear winter.”
Gould was speaking just before the House of Commons is set to reopen following the summer break.
“What I heard yesterday from Mr. Poilievre was so over the top, so irresponsible, so immature, and something that only a fraudster would do,” she said from Parliament Hill.
On Sunday Poilievre said increasing the carbon price will cause a “nuclear winter,” painting a dystopian picture of people starving and freezing because they can’t afford food or heat due the carbon price.
He said the Liberals’ obsession with carbon pricing is “an existential threat to our economy and our way of life.”
The carbon price currently adds about 17.6 cents to every litre of gasoline, but that cost is offset by carbon rebates mailed to Canadians every three months. The Parliamentary Budget Office provided analysis that showed eight in 10 households receive more from the rebates than they pay in carbon pricing, though the office also warned that long-term economic effects could harm jobs and wage growth.
Gould accused Poilievre of ignoring the rebates, and refusing to tell Canadians how he would make life more affordable while battling climate change. The Liberals have also accused the Conservatives of dismissing the expertise of more than 200 economists who wrote a letter earlier this year describing the carbon price as the least expensive, most efficient way to lower emissions.
Poilievre is pushing for the other opposition parties to vote the government down and trigger what he calls a “carbon tax election.”
The recent decision by the NDP to break its political pact with the government makes an early election more likely, but there does not seem to be an interest from either the Bloc Québécois or the NDP to have it happen immediately.
Poilievre intends to bring a non-confidence motion against the government as early as this week but would likely need both the Bloc and NDP to support it.
Gould said she has no “crystal ball” over when or how often Poilievre might try to bring down the government
“I know that the end of the supply and confidence agreement makes things a bit different, but really all it does is returns us to a normal minority parliament,” she said. “And that means that we will work case-by-case, legislation-by-legislation with whichever party wants to work with us. I have already been in touch with all of the House leaders in the opposition parties and my job now is to make Parliament work for Canadians.”
She also insisted the government has listened to the concerns raised by Canadians, and received the message when the Liberals lost a Toronto byelection in June in seat the party had held since 1997.
“We certainly got the message from Toronto-St. Paul’s and have spent the summer reflecting on what that means and are coming back to Parliament, I think, very clearly focused on ensuring that Canadians are at the centre of everything that we do moving forward,” she said.
The Liberals are bracing, however, for the possibility of another blow Monday night, in a tight race to hold a Montreal seat in a byelection there. Voters in LaSalle—Émard—Verdun are casting ballots today to replace former justice minister David Lametti, who was removed from cabinet in 2023 and resigned as an MP in January.
The Conservatives and NDP are also in a tight race in Elmwood-Transcona, a Winnipeg seat that has mostly been held by the NDP over the last several decades.
There are several key bills making their way through the legislative process, including the online harms act and the NDP-endorsed pharmacare bill, which is currently in the Senate.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the NDP is caving to political pressure from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre when it comes to their stance on the consumer carbon price.
Trudeau says he believes Jagmeet Singh and the NDP care about the environment, but it’s “increasingly obvious” that they have “no idea” what to do about climate change.
On Thursday, Singh said the NDP is working on a plan that wouldn’t put the burden of fighting climate change on the backs of workers, but wouldn’t say if that plan would include a consumer carbon price.
Singh’s noncommittal position comes as the NDP tries to frame itself as a credible alternative to the Conservatives in the next federal election.
Poilievre responded to that by releasing a video, pointing out that the NDP has voted time and again in favour of the Liberals’ carbon price.
British Columbia Premier David Eby also changed his tune on Thursday, promising that a re-elected NDP government would scrap the long-standing carbon tax and shift the burden to “big polluters,” if the federal government dropped its requirements.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
Simon Jolin-Barrette, minister responsible for consumer protection, has tabled a bill to force merchants to calculate tips based on the price before tax.
That means on a restaurant bill of $100, suggested tips would be calculated based on $100, not on $114.98 after provincial and federal sales taxes are added.
The bill would also increase the rebate offered to consumers when the price of an item at the cash register is higher than the shelf price, to $15 from $10.
And it would force grocery stores offering a discounted price for several items to clearly list the unit price as well.
Businesses would also have to indicate whether taxes will be added to the price of food products.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
