ASHLEY SMITH INQUEST ROUND TWO

The Waterloo Region Record has had back to back stories on this second attempt to get the Ashley Smith inquest off the ground. Yesterday's article is titled "Second attempt at Smith inquest" and today's story is titled "Parties seek standing at Ashley Smith inquest". For me the discouraging and disgusting factor is the time delay. The government personnel involved in taking FIVE years to get this important and crucial inquest underway, should be charged, fired and eventually spend time in an institution similar to the ones Ashley Smith served time in.

She died by suffocation in front of multiple authority figues on October 19, 2007 at the Grand Valley Institute for Women, in Kitchener. No one has been held responsible and no one has been charged or fired for standing idly by and watching her die. She was nineteen years old and in desperate need of psychiatric help. Instead our Correctional Services kept adding to her sentence and putting her in solitary confinement. "There will not be a silver bullet for what ails (the Correctional Service of Canada)," said Richard Macklin, the lawyer representing the office of the Provincial Advocate for Children and Youth. Kim Pate of the Elizabeth Fry Society stated "We continue down the path of criminalizing and imprisoning people who really have other issues.".

Why do I believe that this is just one more unaccountable government agency that does exactly what it stupidly and bloody well pleases? Clearly the people involved AT THE TOP care nothing for right and wrong, justice or even decent human behaviour. It's just like so many other bureaucratic institutions worried about their personal status, power and authority. There is no real oversight or accountability until an avoidable disaster or tragedy strikes and even then the powers that be delay, obfuscate and muddy the waters to hide the government's ultimate negligence and lack of caring. Shame on all the responsible and guilty parties from Ottawa down to Kitchener and all the other institutions in between where Ashley Smith did time.