Public Inquiry Into Deadly Elliot Lake, Ontario Shopping Mall Collapse Is A Travesty Of Justice

A Commentary by Doug Draper

If you live in Ontario, you may very well remember the horrific news a year ago this coming June of the roof of a shopping mall collapsing, killing two people and seriously injuring many others.

This March 4, Ontario’s government does what it typically does in a case like this, where higher private and public interests may be criminally culpable for a disaster of this nature, and began a public inquiry.

And we should all know what a public inquiry means in Ontario by now. Months and months and months of questions and answers and depositions drone by, and it is a feeding frenzy – one honking pig out for lawyers and consultants. And at the end of it all, there are some “findings” and “recommendations” tabled for a government that usually yawns at that point. No criminal charges are ever laid.

Indeed, we went through the same bogus business last decade with a public inquiry into the Walkerton, Ontario drinking water pollution mess that killed seven people and made more than 2,000 others ill. No one was charged out of that exercise (two lower functioning individuals in the disaster were brought to court under separate proceedings) and all we got out of the inquiry were dozens of recommendations that were applied to drinking water systems across the province, causing the cost for taxpayers of receiving water from those systems to jump up whether the recommendations applied to them or not.

In the Elliot Lake shopping mall case, why do we need to go through another lengthy charade of a public inquiry that will cost Ontario taxpayers tens of millions of dollars? According to accounts by people who worked and shopped at the mall, it was long known that the roof of this mall was leaking and there were reports of rust in the beams holding a roof that also supported a parking lot for cars up.

Someone obviously owned this mall. And some in building inspecting positions were responsible for inspecting a place like this and surely would have suspected or known there were serious structural problems if the reports of mall employees and customers are correct.

Some Elliot Lake residents were quoted on CBC this March 4 saying they hope that a public inquiry will finally get to the truth. … But in a case where people were killed and seriously injured, simply getting at the truth is not good enough. 

Where are the Ontario Provincial Police and other law enforcement agencies? Why aren’t they carrying out a criminal investigation and laying charges against any and all individuals and groups responsible for this travesty?

If you or I as ordinary citizen and property owners had deaths occur from alleged neglect on our properties, the authorities would have been there to serve us with charges a long time ago. But when possible corporate entities and government agents may have some responsibility for a disaster like this, then just hold a public inquiry and deliver a set of recommendations that may or may not be embraced by government at the end of the day.

Public inquiries are nothing more than another way of trying to fool us into believing that justice is being done. It isn’t.

(Niagara At Large encourages all visitors to this site to share their views on this or any other posts on our site. Divergent views are most welcome in the spirit of NAL’s goal to operate as a virtual town hall for discussing and debating issues of interest and concern to our communities and countries across the greater Niagara region and beyond.)