Anna MacQuarrie: My name is Anna Macquarrie. I work with the Canadian Association for Community Living.
I would like to start by thanking our cohost this evening
the Alberta Association for Community Living and the What Sorts Network
without whom we would not have been able to pull this dialogue off this evening.
So, we really appreciate your partnership and your help in making this happen.
Tonight is a public dialogue and it's one of 
a series that has been going on across the country. The Canadian Association for Community Living
is celebrating their 50th anniversary in November
and as part of our celebrations, we have developed a national public dialogue
series and we've been traveling across the country talking in similar
formats around CACL's ten objectives
and our objectives are quite broad-ranging.
They are things like inclusive education, employment,
closing institutions... One of them is achieving
equality rights and recognition. And for us this issue
is a really important rights and equality issue and ensuring that
there is genetic justice, which is a conference session that
we're working on and a new phrase that I quite like. I really just want to welcome and thank
everyone for coming this evening. Briefly I will introduce, in the middle
of the table is Dick Sobsey and Dick has kindly agreed to moderate
the panel portion of this evening. And really once we get through
some of the panel presentations, we hope to flip it to the audience and have
more of an interactive dialogue on the issues.  So, Dick will be our
moderator for the evening. And I will turn it over
to Bruce and he will introduce the panelists.
Bruce Uditsky: A little applause for Anna there? (applause)
I'm Bruce Uditsky. I'm the CEO of the Alberta Association for
Community Living and it's our pleasure to be cohosting this
with the What Sorts Network and the Canadian Association for Community Living. As an advocacy
organization representing individuals with developmental disabilities and their families,
we're deeply committed to addressing issues like eugenics, bioethics,
medical ethics, and things that relate to them that actually
are threatening, if not actually harmful to
the lives of people with developmental and other disabilites. So we're very
pleased that the CACL wanted to hold a public dialogue across the
country. I'm only going to introduce some of the panelists
because, I don't know, I haven't met yet Simo Vehmas from Finland,
although we're thrilled that he's here this evening to share some thoughts and observations with us
and I'll allow Dick to provide a more thorough introduction.
But, sitting to my right, or your left at the beginning of the table, is Wendy
MacDonald, who is the current president of the Alberta Association for Community Living and a
parent of two sons, one of whom has developmental disabilities.
Sam Salone... I should also mention that Wendy
owns a company called Possibility Works, which provides 
human relations and professional development training.
And Sam Salone, who's a parent as well, will speak to
some of his family challenges around having a daughter
with significant medical issues and needs and 
I'm not sure anybody wants to meet him at the moment, because he's actually a stock
investor. (laughter) Wendy MacDonald: He was
a stock investor. (laughter)
Bruce: So there are other ethical issues to consider, but that's not one of them tonight. And then on the other side of Dick is Colleen
Campbell, who opperates a day home and is a 
mum with disabilites and will speak about her experiences with the child welfare system.
And then Anne Houston, who is an associate professor
at the University of Calgary and the director of the Community Rehabilitation and Disabilites Studies
program in the Faculty of Medicine.
We wanted to have short panel presentations this evening in order to 
stimulate the dialogue, actually, to provide some food for thought and discussion
and we also wanted to stretch the agenda, actually and so whether
it's possible or not will remain to be seen, but it would be entirely my fault and responsibility
if we don't achieve that goal. I think it's relatively
easy for people to understand, for example, the
roots of sterilization, for example, and the changes we've made around that.
It's much more difficult to see how, in fact, little has changed with respect to our values
around people with developmental disabilities actually able to be
parents, and so we wanted to suggest there is
both the evident eugenic ideas historically
and then the continuing, deeply rooted values that emerge in other ways.
So, without further ado, I'll allow Dick to proceed.
Dick Sobsey: Hi everyone.
I'm Dick Sobsey from the University of Alberta. I also want to
take a minute to introduce Simo Vehmas
from the University of Jyvaskyla
in in Finland.
We're very fortunate to have Simo visiting with us this week.
He's known in Finland as Famous Vehmas. (laughter)
(laughter)
Simo is at the University of Jyvaskyla
and he is in the Department of Special Education, but
his area is really around the philosophy of disability and he's done
a lot of interesting work on
sort of conceptual ideas of how we think about disability.
He just brought with him
almost by magic, he receives his
newest book here in Edmonton.
(laughter)
It does have a wonderful cover. "Arguing About Disability"
that, uh,
he edited along with Tom Shakespeare and Kristjana Kristiansen.
So, we've asked him to join us tonight
and after other people speak briefly he's just going to give us
thoughts and reactions and most of
what we want to do is we want to have some discussion tonight.
So, each of the panel members will
speak briefly and then we'll open it up to some of the questions
that Bruce has already alluded to. What are we doing
and why are we doing it, around
issues of genetic counseling
live and death issues, issues that speak
to who we really want to be part of our lives and part of our society.
So, I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Wendy to get us started tonight.
