'It's discriminatory': SaskTel Centre has too few accessible seats, says advocate

Delynne Bortis says it's almost impossible to find accessible seating at SaskTel Centre in Saskatoon.

Bortis uses a wheelchair and often has difficulty finding room to get into events. Currently, there are 42 accessible seats available in the 15,000-seat arena.

It creates a community of exclusion for people who want to go and enjoy a game with their friends and their family.- Delynne Bortis

"It's generally impossible to get tickets," she told CBC Radio's Saskatoon Morning.

"I had a friend trying to get tickets for me for Tim McGraw. We weren't able to get pre-sale seats. She got through on the phone five minutes into the sale and they were already sold out."

Even when Bortis does get a seat, it's rare that she and her family get to sit together. Each accessible seat is paired with one 'attendant' seat. That means her husband often has to take one of her two sons and sit somewhere else in the arena.

"It creates a community of exclusion for people who want to go and enjoy a game with their friends and their family," she said.

"It's not enough for people who have families, for young people who have friends who want to enjoy some time out in a community setting."

Barry McMahon agrees. Chair of the National Accessibility Inclusion Act Committee, he's working with the federal government to create legislation on accessibility and inclusion for Canadians with disabilities.

"It's inadequate," he said. "It's discriminatory, basically, against a large percentage of the population."

As a comparison, Ottawa's Canadian Tire Centre has 137 accessible seats in the 19,000-seat arena. At the Rogers Arena in Vancouver, there are up to 115 accessible seats out of 18,500 total seats.

McMahon believes five per cent of the SaskTel Centre should be opened up to accessible seating, or 750 seats.

"There are people who use walkers; there are people who use canes and crutches," he said. "To have an arena that is available to all types of disabilities would not only be a good business decision, but it would cater to a population that has felt marginalized for so long."

Meanwhile, Bortis said other arenas in town aren't much better. As a hockey mom, she is often forced to sit by herself, away from the main crowd.

"I tend to be a social person and have a lot more fun sitting with the other parents," she said. "There's been numerous times when my husband has got other people to lift me into the stands."

SaskTel Centre says there isn't enough accessible seating in the arena. In recent years, the arena added another seven seats, bringing the total to the current 42.