Drenched with sweat, I walked towards my car in the Beaver Lake parking lot.
I had just come from a glorious 10k walk/jog around Victoria, British Columbia's Elk and Beaver Lakes; pushing my 185 pound organism on my daily workout, jog or hockey game.
A van ventured down the parking lot towards me with the female driver waving frantically at another car inching forward in the opposite direction. She pointed to her blue handicapped parking sticker and motioned to the last parking spot. The other driver deferred and the female grabbed the spot. As I reached for my beach towel, the driver emerged: not handicapped or disabled at all but for her girth, a whopping fat women who walked with a waddle and who had a fold of fat hanging down over her trunks.
The direct and indirect costs of being overweight or obese is $117 billion per year, according the a 2000 report by the Office of the U.S. Surgeon General. The Canadian Medical Association refers to it as the "growing obesity epidemic".
On of the many health problems associated with obesity is that arteries and veins don't run through fat. To put it bluntly, fat people don't heal well, thus prolonging hospital or clinic stays.
And yet, more and more, as health officers bemoan the health care cost to society of obesity, the law is being sat upon and coaxed by willing judges to reward fatness.
Most merchants and all government or public buildings designate parking spot for the handicapped, those with non-self-induced mobility issues: bodily injury, birth defect or illness. Examples include MS, amputations, those on oxygen, paraplegic, severe arthritis, etc. Indeed, the universal symbol for disabled is a wheelchair.
In Ontario, the criteria for getting a handicapped parking permit appear to be ridiculously low. While visiting Ontario in June, a woman I was with drove right into the blue parking stalls at the local grocery store. I tried to hide my face as we walked to the store without a handicap in sight, as she proudly pointed to the handicap permit she recently conned out of the Ontario government.
"Condition(s) or functional impairment that severely limits his or her mobility" are all that one need complain of to one's physiotherapist who stamps the application and a few weeks later, presto: a five-year rock star parking permit, recognized around the world.
That includes the obese, apparently.
Arguably, some disabilities are preventable or self-induced. The drunk who ends up in a wheelchair comes to mind as does the ex-boxer.
But obesity is unique. Very few suffer from a diagnosable genetic condition because of which their body retains too much fat. The true, clinical obese person must be as rare as the anorexic.
Others are mentally challenged in which case the ability of the care-giver is essential.
Most obese eat too much by choice and place no value on exercise, careless as to their health and relying on the health system to take them in when - not if - they break down. They rely on motorized transportation except within their homes.
Obesity, unlike the veteran's missing eye or leg, is curable and reversable any time. Daily exercise is not always pleasant or convenient and saying "no" to midnight snacks takes will power but to not do so is also a choice.
Eureka! I've Discovered A New Disease!
The obese are supported by doctors who seem prepared to state that "the etiology of obesity seems to be multifactorial" or that "it is difficult to know the fundamental causes of the obesity."
Dude! It's food! Food, dude!
Obesity is the result of an imbalance in favour of food intake or energy consumption over energy expenditure, a chronic ingestion of more food energy than is used by the body.
1 + 1 = 2.
We all have stresses in life and if one chooses to deal with one's stresses by ham sandwich, ice cream and seconds; there's no bodily injury, birth defect or illness.
Canadians, obese and otherwise, are alive to human rights. But some obese want to reach for those privileges. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Dance in Law
The dance in law began 1994 when the St. Paul Lutheran Home of Melville, Saskatchewan refused to hire 330 pound, 5'4" Sandra Lynn Davison as a nurse's aid because she was obese. The Saskatchewan Human Rights Code forbid discrimination in employment for reason of disability, defined as caused by bodily injury, birth defect, or illness.
The case ended up before the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal who held, correctly, that obesity is not an illness. More to the point, they stated that:
"The evidence did not tend to illustrate that obesity in of itself is an illness. Ms. Davison's obesity was not as such the disability at issue, but the cause of that disability."
In 2001, Linda McKay-Panos (pictured), described at one time as weighing 355 pounds and "very obese". She took a long trek through federal tribunals to assert privileges for herself as an obese air traveler, under the auspices of human rights legislation.
McKay-Panos is a lawyer and Executive Director of the Alberta Civil Liberties Research Centre, a formidable advocate.
According to the court record, she declined to take personal responsibility for her obesity suggesting that it was the result of a condition known as Stein-Leventhal syndrome, for which she then produced no medical evidence!
But when she took her seat on Calgary-Ottawa Air Canada flight on August 21, 1997:
"... she could barely force herself into her seat. The passenger beside her could not access his tray table because her hips spread onto his arm rest. The flight attendants bumped into her with their serving carts."
If blame need be ascribed to these humiliating experiences, it has nothing to do with Air Canada whose only contribution to McKap-Panos' obesity was an in-flight meal.
The responsibility for the obesity fell upon McKay-Panos and her propensity to ingest more food than she expended.
But McLay-Panos wanted society to stop and accommodate her chosen condition, as if she had the type of disability the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was initially designed to assist.
Experts were flown in during the seven-day Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA) hearing, and expounded the latest theories on obesity.
Hoping to persuade the tribunal, the complainant herself confirmed the undeniable social stigma associated with her obesity.
At issue was whether Air Canada should give fat people two seats for the price of one, presumably with the tax-payer and other passengers to pick up the difference.
Win or lose, the cost of the legal hearings to the Canadian tax-payer, and to Air Canada, the defendant, was significant in any event.
But the three-member CTA panel wisely found that "obesity, per se, is not a disability".
This ought to have ended the matter.
However, McKay-Panos appealed to the Federal Court of Appeal which reversed the CTA finding that obesity is a qualifying disability!
In November 2008, the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear Air Canada's appeal of the FCA decision, resulting in a stunning final victory for Ms McKay-Panos and other obese Canadians, who now get two seats for the price of one.
The law has winked at the obese.
A free seat on Air Canada flights and rock star parking may be just the beginning of the state-sanctioned perks for those who eat more than they need, drowning out the cry of the medical officer.
Fat inmates may want bigger jail cell and second helpings. Fat patients may demand bigger hospital beds. Obese drivers, handicapped parking permits.
As I contemplate whether, today, I will again dedicate two hours of my time towards fitness, I admire McKay-Panos' tenacity, albeit self-serving. She is a litigant and she is entitled to put her best foot forward.
But the lack of sagacity on the part of the gate-keepers of the law is inexcusable, encouraging fat people not only to look elsewhere than below their nose for the root of their condition, but allowing the exploitation of the human rights statutes by the obese, expecting the public to accommodate the self-imposed limitations at one end, and pay for the cost of obesity to health care at the other.
Worse, limited public funding will necessarily be diverted from true disabilities to accommodate the obese.
I think I'll pass on my daily jog.
REFERENCES:
- Brusher, D., Nimble Drivers Exploit Disabled Parking, Toronto Star, January 27, 2007, at www.thestar.com/News/article/175536
- Canadian Obesity Network
- Collum, B., United: If You Can't Fit In One Seat You Need To Buy Two (because you are fat), April 19, 2009
- Davison v St. Paul Lutheran Home (1994) 2 WWR 270; also at 108 DLR 4th 671.
- Government of Ontario, Getting or Replacing an Accessible Parking Permit, accessed at www.mto.gov.on.ca/english/dandv/vehicle/app.shtml on July 29, 2009
- McKay-Panos v Air Canada 2001 CarswellNat 4502
- McKay-Panos v Air Canada 2006 FCA 8