Dying to be Heard: Families, Safety Advocates Often Frustrated at Lack of Action on Inquest Findings

By Douglas Quan, Postmedia News

First in a six-part series.

Scores of recommendations from coroners’ inquests and fatality inquiries across Canada go ignored or unheeded every year despite their potential to prevent future deaths, a Postmedia News investigation has found.

While provincial governments throw money and time into these public probes of sudden or violent deaths – about 100 inquests or inquiries were held last year alone – they devote few resources to tracking recommendations or sharing inquest findings with the public.

As a result, family members who had hoped that at least some good could come from a loved one’s death are often left in the dark, disillusioned and with no sense of closure about inquest results. Safety advocates are equally frustrated by the patchwork followup to these fatality probes across Canada.

Public agencies that are the target of recommendations, which are non-binding, say they take inquests seriously but can’t be expected to implement each idea that springs from them. Some recommendations aren’t practical, they say, or are too costly, and the best they can do is follow the “spirit” of the recommendation.

Complete article in The Province

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