Insufficient or lack of accessible transportation options pose significant challenges for persons with disabilities living in small rural communities who need to travel within communities for day-to-day needs and between communities to access educational, employment, medical, and recreational services in urban areas. It is more than gaining the right to accessible transportation but one of how transportation services are to be provided. This article examines governance options for rural accessible transportation in Canada’s Atlantic provinces: New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador. Alternative governance options for accessible transit are identified including the direct provision of services, contracting out, co-operatives, not-for-profits, community boards and taxis. Insights gleaned from interviews with service providers tease out the advantages and disadvantages of the various options and reveal a struggle to balance accountability provisions with transaction costs.

This study examines potential challenges facing Lyme disease patients in Canada’s Maritime provinces—New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island—and considers how issues could be addressed. Reviews of both the academic and grey literature are complemented by surveys targeting both medical professionals and decision makers in government. Combined, the literature reviews and surveys demonstrate that there is considerable debate surrounding the effectiveness of testing, treatment options, and the existence of chronic Lyme disease. As the focus on the Maritimes demonstrates, these debates often pit the medical community against patients and patient advocates and, thus far, governments have been unable to produce policy that entirely pleases either side. Moving forward, this study recommends the creation of a discussion forum via a federal Commission of inquiry to review best practise guidelines for Lyme disease. The key is to foster an unbiased probe of central issues surrounding treatment and diagnosis without alienating stakeholders. This course of action will not necessarily solve the issue of Lyme disease, but would foster a greater understanding through dialogue that includes and validates the experiences of stakeholders, which is something that is currently missing.

Despite much effort put toward Canadian social policy renewal in the past decade, innovations in programming have been stifled due in large part to a lack of funding and accountability issues. This is clearly evident in the disability policy field related to labour market programming for persons with disabilities where the packaging of programs has continually changed; however, the actual contents have largely remained the same. The focus on federal-provincial dimensions has come to marginalize the role of disability organizations in the process, yet it is these organizations that governments may enter into partnership with in new governance arrangements to foster new programming. This article reviews data from charitable tax returns for the time period 2005–2010 to assess the human, financial, and technological capacity of Canadian disability organizations in five Canadian provinces, in order to implement innovative programming. Résumé Malgré beaucoup d'efforts au renouvellement de la politique sociale canadienne dans la dernière décennie, les innovations dans la programmation ont été étouffées en grande partie à l'absence de questions de financement et de responsabilité. Cela est très évidente dans le domaine de la politique handicap lié à la programmation du marché du travail pour les personnes handicapées où l'emballage des programmes a constamment changé mais le contenu réel est restés largement pareilles. L'accent sur les dimensions provinciales fédérales est venu à marginaliser le rôle des organisations de personnes handicapées dans le processus, mais ce sont ces organismes que les gouvernements peuvent entrer en partenariat avec de nouveaux modes de gouvernance pour favoriser la nouvelle programmation. Cet article examine les données de bienfaisance des déclarations de revenus pour la période 2005–2010 pour évaluer les capacités humaines, financières et technologiques des organisations de personnes handicapées canadiennes dans cinq provinces canadiennes à mettre en œuvre des programmes novateurs.

This study examines the day-to-day experiences of persons with disabilities in three small New Brunswick Acadian communities where little is known about the challenges and opportunities they face in daily life. While we can piece together a narrative from studies of rurality, its applicability is far from certain. This research examined (1) how and to what degree their needs are being met; (2) their personal and social support systems; and, (3) their message for decision makers. Analysis of 23 interviews revealed general consistency with the rurality literature and uncovered the need to more closely consider issues of gender and re-integration in disability policy.

Leadership in the nonprofit sector including the disability sector has changed with the growth of the neoliberal state with governments downloading their social policy implementation role to civil society actors. The competitive climate disability nonprofits now find themselves in calls into question the leadership and skills required of their leaders. Based on 58 semi-structured interviews, this article develops a profile of Atlantic Canadian disability organization leaders— executive directors and government disability program managers. It argues that existing leadership models insufficiently capture their operating logic and finds disability leaders increasingly transformed into a new entrepreneurial role, which challenges service provision for persons with disabilities.