By Christine Boyd
A juror who served at the inquest into the 1999 OC Transpo shootings and the widow of one of the four men killed say it’s hard to tell what’s been done to prevent a similar tragedy.
Two years ago, a coroner’s jury released recommendations regarding the April 6, 1999 rampage when a former transit employee, Pierre Lebrun, entered the service’s St. Laurent garage killing four men with a hunting rifle before committing suicide.
The jury urged 77 improvements in a number of areas, such as workplace violence and harassment prevention, firearms legislation, and emergency services procedures.
The recommendations targeted 11 agencies, including the Ottawa police, and various government departments, with the majority – 51 recommendations – aimed at OC Transpo.
A follow-up report issued by the coroner’s office last May, obtained by Centretown News, said 59 of the recommendations had been completed.
But a former juror says the responses of some agencies – particularly federal departments – consisted of “double-speak,” making it difficult to know what’s been done.
“A lot of the responses to that were as vague as they could possibly make them,” said Roy Hammond, a Statistics Canada employee who served on the jury.
OC Transpo claimed in its response it had completed 35 recommendations.
This included launching or strengthening programs to help staff cope with workplace problems, monitoring upset employees more closely, upgrading the emergency call system, and adopting zero-tolerance to violence.
Most of the remaining recommendations were in the process of being implemented, it reported.
OC Transpo’s completion rate was much higher than some of the other respondents, such as Human Resources, according to the coroner’s report.
Barbara Davidson, whose husband Clare Davidson died in the tragedy along with Brian Guay, David Lemay and Harry Schoenmakers, says she doubts some of the responses.
She criticizes the coroner’s follow-up report for taking the word of the agencies involved – particularly OC Transpo – without investigating independently.
“It’s on paper but it doesn’t mean that they’re following it,” Davidson said.
“To take the word of the company that was involved in all of this… and not investigate yourself. It was a total waste of time,” Davidson added.
The coroner’s office has no authority or mechanism to investigate whether inquest recommendations are being implemented and relies on agencies to report back honestly, says Dr. Bonita Porter, Ontario’s deputy chief coroner for inquests.
But she says the fact that the coroner’s follow-up report is a public document puts pressure on the agencies to put the jury recommendations in place – or explain why they haven’t.
There are sometimes valid reasons why an agency can’t complete a recommendation, Porter says.
“Sometimes the jury doesn’t get it right,” she said, adding she isn’t specifically referring to the OC Transpo inquest.
“Sometimes, quite frankly, the recommendation they make isn’t practical or even possible, given the authority of some of these agencies.”
OC Transpo says it’s doing everything it can to meet the jury’s recommendations.
Since last May’s report, the transit service has completed five more recommendations. Other longer-term projects, such as putting all of the service’s approximately 2,300 employees through safety training, are in progress, says Catherine Caron, the OC Transpo manager in charge of following through on the changes.
She says the service has been unable to make other security improvements – such as closed circuit video cameras, better lighting and improved signage – because it needs more money from the City of Ottawa.
“We’re caught. We really do want to implement all of this, but we need budget allocations… we can’t make money,” Caron said.
She estimates the cameras, lights, signage and other improvements to security would cost about $1 million.
Some of the recommendations – such as amending the Workplace Harassment policy – must be done by the city, which is juggling a number of different issues related to amalgamation, she said.
“A lot of projects are way behind and a lot of things that should have been done have not been done. We’re working within the system.”