Able-Bodied Drivers Apparently Using Disabled Parking Permits

Thousands of able-bodied drivers in Ontario may be illegally using disabled parking permits and taking those designated spaces from people who actually need them.

A published report claims the numbers just don’t add up when it comes to how disabled parking passes are handed out in the province. There are reportedly 4,400 people over the age of 100 who have the permits, but there are only 1,700 centenarians in Ontario.

Of the more than 4,000 centenarians registered as permit holders, 78 percent are listed as turning 107 this year. According to transportation records, more than 1,200 are said to be licensed drivers but there were only just over two dozen people over the age of 100 licensed to drive at the end of 2005.

You can be fined up to $5,000 for misusing a disabled parking space or permit.

The apparent abuse of the system has upset legitimate permit holders like Trevor Perreira, who suffers from angina and is diabetic. He says the government must take immediate action to fix the problem.

‘They’ve got a real job on their hands, you know, to straighten this out,” he said. “It’s disturbing.”

“I don’t know how they do it but they do it.”

Able-bodied drivers may be able to do it because the Ministry of Transportation doesn’t cross-reference its permits with death records. The disabled parking permits are typically valid for five years before they have to be renewed.

Ontario Transportation Minister Donna Cansfield has vowed to revamp the system to ensure opportunistic and able-bodied motorists can no longer take advantage.

“We are going to clean up our database so that when the Registrar General sends over the data vis-à-vis the driver’s licences indicating someone’s deceased, they can do exactly the same thing for the disabled permits,” Cansfield explained.

Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory called on the Liberals to take action immediately.

“The McGuinty Liberals must move with much greater urgency,” he said in a statement Thursday. “They could begin immediately with some of the groups identified in media reports involving several thousand people. These groups could be contacted and audited for eligibility by the McGuinty government within the next 30 days if the will was there.”

courtesy of the Ontario Ministry of Transportation

To qualify for an Accessible Parking Permit, the individual must be medically certified by their health practitioner as having one or more of the following conditions:

• Cannot walk without assistance of another person or a brace, cane, crutch, a lower limb prosthetic device or similar assistive device or who requires the assistance of a wheelchair.
• Suffers from lung disease to such an extent that forced expiratory volume in one second is less than 1 litre.
• Portable oxygen is a medical necessity.
• Cardiovascular disease impairment classified as Class III or Class IV to standards accepted by the American Heart Association or Class III or IV according to the Canadian Cardiovascular Standard.
• Severely limited in the ability to walk due to an arthritic, neurological, musculoskeletal or orthopedic condition.
• Visual acuity is 20/200 or poorer in the better eye with or without corrective lenses or whose greatest diameter of the field of vision in both eyes is 20 degrees or less.
• Condition(s) or functional impairment that severely limits his or her mobility.

For more information, visit the Ontario Ministry of Transportation’s website.

For a look at the City of Toronto’s disabled parking procedures, click here.

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