PUBLIC INQUIRY INTO SENIORS MURDERS UNLIKELY

Last Tuesday's Waterloo Region Record carried the following story titled "Victims' families speak of pain, anger". The very last sentence stated "Shortly after Wettlaufer's sentencing hearing, the province announced it would hold a public inquiry into the murders to ensure a similar tragedy does not happen again.". Really? Why am I so skeptical? We are talking seniors with either physical or mental health problems or even both. We are talking very elderly people who are in a fragile state and whose deaths are not terribly surprising at the time. Let us not forget that neither multiple nursing homes nor our authorities caught up to Elizabeth Wettlaufer. She confessed to the crimes while she herself was in a mental hospital. That's how she got caught.

So the province really want to open the can of worms that is our nursing homes? Ask yourself how Ms. Wettlaufer was let go by nursing homes for medication "errors" and then rehired by other nursing homes. Are they so desperate for staff? Apparently the answer is yes. Is anybody looking at death statistics from all nursing homes? Doubtful. Are autopsy's routinely done for sudden deaths? Apparently not. Ms. Wettlaufer injected patients with insulin and they died suddenly. That insulin should have shown up in their bloodstream and it should have shown up as being missing from inventory. Why wasn't anybody checking inventories more carefully much less sudden unexplained deaths? I'm not holding my breathe that Ontario's most vulnerable will actually receive some benefit from these multiple tragic murders.