Coroners opt to stay clear of advocacy

Last February, following a string of child deaths in unlicensed daycares, an Ontario regional coroner suggested to her colleagues the idea of calling out government agencies that had failed to act on recommendations from an inquest into an earlier daycare death.

The idea was shot down by Dr. Dirk Huyer, the province’s chief coroner. In an email exchange, obtained by the National Post through freedom of information legislation, Dr. Huyer said the office used to hold press conferences one year after inquests were over but stopped the practice because it verged on “advocacy.”

“As you know, the (office) does not have the authority to hold organizations accountable for recommendations. This approach would potentially suggest that we do,” he wrote.

But with provincial and federal agencies now routinely coming under fire for failing to act on recommendations for preventing future deaths, should coroners and medical examiners be doing more to hold them accountable?

“Yes, I think the idea is worthy of exploration,” said Cara Zwibel, director of fundamental freedoms at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, which was a party to the high-profile inquest into the death of inmate Ashley Smith.

Louise McNaughton-Filion, the Ontario regional supervising coroner who floated the idea last year of holding press conferences, said senior managers in her office have had a number of discussions about what “may or may not be viewed as advocacy.”

In the end, she said, they agreed that “holding a press conference to ‘call out’ recipients of the recommendations a year after providing them could be perceived as ‘holding people accountable,’ which we have no authority to do.”