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Mentally disabled to stay in centre 90 days longer

Judge's order gives families of residents time to seek judicial review of Ontario decision to close Smiths Falls facility

Jake Rupert

The Ottawa Citizen

October 1, 2005

Mentally disabled adult residents at the Rideau Regional Centre near Smiths Falls will be allowed to remain in the publicly owned facility for at least another 90 days.

Ontario Superior Court Justice Robert Smith ordered the Ontario government to temporarily halt plans to move several hundred residents into private group homes. The injunction paves the way for the families and the public guardian's office to apply for a judicial review of the province's decision to close the centre.

Families of residents and the public guardian, which represents residents with no, or disinterested, relatives, had applied for an injunction to stop the centre from closing until a class action suit by the families could be heard. The suit, in part, asked for the facility to remain open permanently. Judge Smith declined the request for an injunction, and used his power to switch the action into a judicial review.

Lawyer Brenda Hollingsworth, who represents roughly 150 families, said Judge Smith's order is a relief to her clients.

"This is a very nerve-racking situation for these people," she said yesterday. "The ruling takes some of the pressure off them. These are very vulnerable people, and it gives them a reprieve."

Ontario Community and Social Services Minister Sandra Pupatello also expressed a positive reaction to the judge's ruling.

She said she was confident a court review of the decision to close the facility will show it to have been the right action, and the government had the power to make the decision.

As part of a decades-long policy of deinstitutionalizing the mentally disabled, the government announced last year an Ontario cabinet decision to close the centre, a process that was supposed to start this month and finish in 2009.

Ms. Pupatello said while she understands the families' apprehensions, history shows the mentally disabled do better in the community, and the supports they need in the community are available. She said she's met parents and family of like people who were vehemently opposed to deinstitutionalization, but that once it was done, and the benefits became apparent, they were won over.

"They are now the biggest proponents of moving into the community," she said.

The Rideau Regional Centre houses roughly 430 people in their 30s to 80s who have lived at the centre for 39 years on average. They are "profoundly" to "severely" handicapped with few, if any, verbal skills and operate at intellectual levels of young children. They need high levels of support and monitoring.

In court at the injunction hearing last week, the families' lawyers and guardian lawyers pointed out the centre once housed 2,000 residents, and there are good reasons the remaining residents had been deemed not appropriate for transfer earlier. The families argued that for most of these residents, the centre is the only life they've known -- a functioning community with the appropriate medical, psychological, recreational and personal care the residents need.

Without an injunction, the residents and families would be forced to accept a government policy they contend is illegal without having had access to the courts to challenge the policy, the lawyers argued.

This would amount to a denial of fundamental justice, breach the residents' and their families' rights to due process, and deprive the residents of rights to security of the person, Ms. Hollingsworth said.

Lawyers for the province argued against granting an injunction, saying the families' lawyers brought no real evidence to show any of the residents would suffer if moved under the government's plan to privately-run group homes.

Lawyers said expert evidence and studies show moving people from institutions to private homes has an overwhelmingly positive effect on most former residents of such large care facilities. Furthermore, the lawyers argued, it was in the public's interest to let the government get on with implementing the very policies it was elected to make.

The judge said the families had raised serious issues, the government had not brought evidence to show deinstitutionalization would be good for these particular residents, and the province's plans to close the centre wouldn't be overly damaged by a 90-day delay.

Judge Smith said it was a small infringement on the government in order to allow residents and their families access to the courts to ensure the decision to close the facility was appropriate and in residents' interests.