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Packet & Times
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MPP pushing bill to derail HRC closing
Monique Beech
Friday, May 13, 2005 - 08:00
Local News - Simcoe North MPP Garfield Dunlop intends to fight the closure of Orillia’s landmark institution
for the disabled by introducing a private member’s bill at Queen’s Park next week.
But Dunlop admits the bill likely won’t stop Orillia’s Huronia Regional Centre (HRC), Rideau Regional Centre
in Smiths Falls and the Southwest Regional Centre near Chatham from closing in 2009.
“There’s not a lot I can do on a private member’s bill other than it will draw attention to the issue,” Dunlop, a
Conservative, said from his Toronto office at the provincial legislature yesterday. “It will be one more little
piece of ammunition we can use against the government in this decision. I’ll do whatever I can.”
Minister of Community and Social Services Sandra Pupatello told The Packet every MPP is entitled to
introduce a private member’s bill.
“I’m very surprised (Dunlop) would choose to do that because his government moved 1,000 people into the
community in the last five years (in power),” said Pupatello, a Liberal MPP for Windsor-West. Thirteen
institutions have already closed across the province since the 1980s.
“There was nary a word from that same MPP. Not one word of his opposition to that when he was a member
of the government. So I’m a little disillusioned with him …”
The bill is another weapon in the battle to keep open the province’s three remaining residential institutions,
said Doreen MacDonald, whose 45-year-old severely autistic son David has lived in HRC since he was 13.
To date, the Huronia Helpers member — a group of family members and friends determined to keep the 120-
year-old facility open — hasn’t heard much noise out of Queen’s Park.
“I think it’s been more at our end than from the debate in the legislature at all.”
Dunlop said his staff is drafting the bill, which will attempt to reverse the minister’s authority to close the
institutions.
“I think this is a mistake,” he said.
“I know they talk about long-term plans, and all these kinds of things, but I just don’t know where these
clients at the HRC are ever going to find a climate as comfortable and caring as they’re in right now with the
services that they have.”
Parents who have had children living in institutions may not be aware of the level of care available in
communities, said Pupatello.
“These 1,000 people remaining in institutions have the same abilities of those who have always lived in the
community.”
She stressed that care will be taken to ensure each resident’s needs are met.
The HRC’s 340 remaining residents will move into communities across Ontario by 2009. About 150 of the
1,000 residents remaining in all three provincial institutions are scheduled to move out this year.
About 500 family members and institution employees rallied in front of Queen’s Park on Wednesday to
protest the closures.
ID- 109310