Invisible Institutions

In 2021, Canada expanded access to medical assistance in dying to all people with disabilities who suffer as a result of their condition. These expansions to MAiD come at a time when people labeled with intellectual and developmental disabilities are criminalized and institutionalized. Featuring footage from the Freedom Tour documentary, and the Disability Filibuster. Featuring testimonies by Catherine Frazee, Sarah Jama, and Jonathan Marchand. Interview with Inclusion Canada’s Natalia Hicks. Transcript and full show notes available at invisibleinstitutions.com Fundraisers: GoFundMe for Gwen, and Family of Donna Duncan

Throughout Canadian history provincial governments have worked to control the sexuality and reproduction of people with intellectual/developmental disabilities. For fifty years, Alberta’s Sexual Sterilization Act (1928), made it legal to sterilize people labelled with intellectual disabilities without their consent. More than 2,834 people in the Alberta were subject to involuntary sexual sterilization surgery, but experts say this is just the tip of the iceberg. And today, access to sexual and reproductive rights for people with intellectual/developmental disabilities continues to be compromised by both ableism and institutionalization. Featuring Dr. Claudia Malacrida, Dr. Alan Santinele Martino & institutional survivors. Transcript:https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MNKZqY-JIcZNutmSy8J91_kLSnoEa1NnPJgD6ikGIYQ/edit?usp=sharing CW: sterilization, sexualized violence & explicit language

The Manitoba Development Centre (MDC) is one of few remaining large-scale government funded and operated institutions for people labelled with an intellectual/developmental disability in Western Canada. MDC survivor David Weremy joins us to share his life-long fight "to shut them down, everyone one of them". We're joined by David Weremy & People First of Canada's Shelley Fletcher. A heads up that today’s episode deals with confinement, sexual and physical abuse and suicide. Here is the Episode 3 Transcript

For over a century, people labeled with intellectual/developmental disabilities were confined into large-scale, state-operated institutions across so-called-Canada. In these places, labeled people were isolated from their communities, subject to abuse, and removed of their autonomy, personhood, all in the name of care. People with disabilities & their allies have been working tirelessly for the last decades to bring these conversations to the light and to close these institutions down for good. Transcript available here & our website invisibleinstitutions.com

Introducing Invisible Institutions, a new documentary podcast exploring the exploitation, isolation, resistance and survival of people labeled with intellectual/developmental disabilities.