NEWS RELEASE
SENIORS FOR SOCIAL ACTION ONTARIO
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Seniors for Social Action Ontario (SSAO) is calling for an immediate halt to any plans to locate a long term care facility on the grounds of the Huronia Regional Centre.
“Our plan is to stop this development by any means necessary. Institutions are completely inappropriate places for anyone to have to live,” said Linda Till, a co-founder of the group.
“Huronia Regional Centre has a long and odious history of institutionalizing vulnerable people and subjecting them to dehumanizing and harmful treatment. It is time that all institutions like this were eliminated,” said Kay Wigle, another co-founder of SSAO.
“Institutionalizing anyone in a long term care facility is a violation of their human rights because it excludes them from the rest of society,” said Doug Cartan, another co-founder.
“We stand with Huronia Survivors in their call for the institution to be demolished. A memorial should be erected for the people who suffered and died there instead. It represents one of the darkest periods in Ontario’s history,” he added.
SSAO is shocked that the current government would want to pursue institutionalizing yet another group of people – this time older adults, after a previous Premier had to apologize for the treatment of Huronia survivors when they launched a class action lawsuit against the government because of their ill treatment over decades.
SSAO is in complete support of Huronia Survivors’ position with respect to Huronia. The government needs to finally respect the people who it abandoned to these institutions so many years ago and to the people it now expects to abandon.
One way government could do that is to fully fund in-home and non-profit community-based alternative supports and services to keep people with disabilities and older adults out of institutions.
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