People pack courtroom to hear verdict Friday July 30, 2010 -- Natalie Hamilton
The Huronia class-action lawsuit can go to trial, supporters packed in a courtroom of Osgoode Hall in Toronto learned Wednesday.
Justice Maurice Cullity of the Ontario Superior Court provided an oral ruling certifying that all of the requirements had been met for a class-action lawsuit to proceed.
This was the second hearing about a suit on behalf of former residents of Huronia Regional Centre (HRC), a large institution in Orillia that housed people who have an intellectual disability until it closed in 2009.
Tyler Hnatuk, social policy analyst for Community Living Ontario, considers the ruling welcome news.
“It publicly acknowledges the harms people experienced at Huronia Regional Centre and starts to bring some of the facts to light,” Hnatuk says.
“The case is a beginning of a process which is a means for people to seek redress for the loss of autonomy and opportunity as a result of the injustice of institutional life.”
People are “hungry for justice,” Hnatuk says, adding, the courtroom was full of former residents and people who support the lawsuit.
“It’s about recognition of that injustice.”
People who lived in the institution have been raising their voices for a long time. Hnatuk says the ruling is significant because “the courts and society as a whole are beginning to listen.”
The first of these hearings took place in March. On April 19, Cullity issued a ruling that all of the requirements had been met for a class action lawsuit to proceed.
Rather than certify the case immediately, Cullity provided an opportunity for further evidence to be brought forward to expand the time period during which former residents must have lived at HRC in order to be a member of the class.
He found that the evidence submitted for the first hearings only covered a time period from 1961 to 1979. New evidence has been submitted covering the period from 1940 to 2009.
The lawsuit is against the Ontario government. The province operated HRC and closed it, along with two other large Ontario institutions, last year.
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