By Michael Regenstreif
As noted on page 1, Hillel Lodge has finally won approval from the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care to add 21 additional long-term care beds to the 100 currently in operation.
It’s about time.
The issue of the 21 beds was an important item on the community’s agenda well before I arrived in Ottawa to work at the Bulletin during the summer of 2007. The acute need for many hundreds of additional long-term care beds in the Ontario system, and particularly in the Ottawa area, was well known.
A few weeks after my arrival, I was covering the Jewish Federation of Ottawa’s Communications and Community Relations Committee roundtable meetings with local candidates running in the October 10 provincial election. Representatives of all of the parties – Liberals, Progressive Conservatives and New Democrats – were universally supportive of the Jewish community’s quest to add the 21 beds at Hillel Lodge. With the available space, and the community’s desire to use it, it seemed like a no-brainer to just approve the beds and get on with it.
The Liberal Party candidates, including cabinet ministers Jim Watson and Madeleine Meilleur, and Yasir Naqvi, running in Ottawa Centre, the riding that includes Hillel Lodge, were particularly supportive of the 21 new beds for the Lodge. Watson pledged to have the government act on the beds within the first six months of a new Liberal mandate.
Six months later, the authorization had not been received.
About 18 months after the election, Watson and Naqvi brought then-health minister David Caplan to Hillel Lodge and showed him the space earmarked for the 21-bed expansion.
Another year-and-a-half passed and Watson, now running to become mayor of Ottawa, was back for another roundtable meeting with the Communications and Community Relations Committee.
“I’m embarrassed by this file,” Watson said when the long-standing question of the 21 additional beds for Hillel Lodge was raised at the September 16 meeting.
Pledging to keep advocating on behalf of the Lodge should he win the election, Watson admitted to being deeply frustrated by his inability to gain approval for the beds, despite many assurances from two successive ministers of health and the premier’s office.
The approval for the Lodge’s 21 beds came on October 5, just one week after Watson’s comments appeared in the September 27 issue of the Bulletin.
Maybe it was pure coincidence, but the timing of the ratification, coming during the mayoralty race, days after a leading candidate talked about being frustrated at not being able to get it while he was a cabinet minister, was most curious.
The Lodge will now need our support as it embarks on a capital campaign to finance the expansion.
Police chief on home-grown terrorism
Earlier this month, I was one of several editors of Ottawa-area community newspapers invited to a roundtable luncheon with Chief Vern White and other top officials of the Ottawa Police Service where we were each encouraged to raise issues of interest.
Concern over terrorism in Ottawa was a topic I raised with the chief. Since the arrest of the alleged Ottawa-based terrorist cell with al-Qaeda links in August, not to mention the Royal Bank firebombing in the Glebe in May, apprehension over homegrown terrorism has heightened.
White told me such concerns have been “our reality” since the time of the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Pointing to the August arrests, he said the Ottawa Police, in concert with other police forces and security agencies work hard – often with officials from other countries – to stop terrorist activity, hopefully before plots become actuality.
White lamented that too many Canadians are complacent about terrorism and said vigilance was everyone’s responsibility.
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