SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

Ontario Assembly

43rd Parl. 1st Sess.
May 9, 2024 09:00AM

I wanted to say thank you for a very thoughtful presentation from the member from Ottawa Centre. I listened intently, obviously, because many of the organizations he mentioned, in particular Rideauwood as well as CHC in Somerset, are very important to the constituents that I represent as well, and I’ve had interactions with them over the past 18 years. I know our government has done a lot of work—and I appreciate the member opposite bringing the fact in that we have made some investments, including at Dave Smith treatment centre, including at the Queensway Carleton health unit and of course the nurse practitioner-led clinic.

But I do have a question for him, and that is, in his constituency he holds the Royal Ottawa hospital as well as the Roberts Smart Centre for very vulnerable youth. I believe both of those need expansions. In terms of the Royal, it needs an emergency centre, and certainly Roberts Smart, dealing with the most vulnerable youth in the province of Ontario—it’s almost heartbreaking to see the place that they’re actually encased in—and I call it “encased.” I’d like his views on those two properties. Well, it’s actually one property but two very different types of mental health institutions.

One of the things that really bothered most Canadians, not just the people from Pictou County, Nova Scotia, about Westray was the lack of accountability. The member opposite mentioned that. They evaded that type of accountability for quite some time. It was people like Vern Theriault, who is a friend of mine and who has written a book on Westray, that advocated for the Westray act in Parliament, where I was a staffer at the time.

What I would ask the member opposite is, does he have any further suggestion of accountability mechanisms that he doesn’t see within this legislation, and if so, what are they? I’d be interested, not just as a member of this assembly but as somebody who comes from the community where the Westray mine disaster occurred.

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