Letter to the Honourable Isabel Bassett,
Minister of Citizenship, Culture and Recreation

ONTARIANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT COMMITTEE
c/o Marg Thomas
1929 Bayview Avenue,
Toronto ON M4G 3E8
Tel: (ODA Committee Voice Mail) 416-480-7012
Tel: (Voice direct) 416-480-7686
Fax: 416-480-7014
email: thomasm@east.cnib.ca
TTY: Care of Deborah Thynn 416 964-0023 ex. 251

October 20, 1998

The Honourable Isabel Bassett
Minister of Citizenship, Culture and Recreation, 6th Floor,
77 Bloor Street West
Toronto, Ontario M7A 2R9

Dear Minister:

We are writing as a follow-up to your letter of October 19. We look forward to a delegation from the ODA Committee meeting with you at 4:15 p.m. on Thursday, October 22, 1998 at your office. Your office has already been notified that we will require real- time captioning at that meeting, and trust that your office will arrange for this accommodation. We appreciate your assistance with this.

We have now received the list of organizations that participated in the Government's consultation process that you sent us on October 15, 1998. However, we have not been provided with any of the important material that we have been requesting since August 4, 1998, namely the written submissions that were made during this consultation, as well as the transcripts or notes from the stake-holder meetings that you held. Your participant list does not indicate which participants made written submissions, and which participated in the stake-holder meetings. Moreover, and even more important, it does not indicate what any of these participants had to say. This is the information that is critical to us and to the public.

Your letter indicates that you propose to tell us at the October 22, 1998 meeting about your overview of the comments and ideas that you received during the consultation process. While we welcome any opportunity to meet with you to move the ODA initiative forward, without having an opportunity to review the detailed information that we have already requested before we meet, we will not be able, in a 30 minute meeting with you, to give a meaningful analysis and feedback on your overview. Accordingly, we shall be pleased to meet with you this Thursday, but shall maintain our request to have a meeting with you to provide you with analysis and feedback after we have received and reviewed the requested written submissions and stake-holder meeting transcripts or notes. We also maintain our request that that meeting be held prior to the Government making any decisions on the ODA's contents.

We look forward to meeting with you on Thursday to hear your perspective on the results of the consultation process.

Sincerely,

M. David Lepofsky C.M.,
Co-Chair Ontarians with Disabilities Act Committee

  Dalton McGuinty
  Gilles Morin
  Dwight Duncan
  Howard Hampton
  Marion Boyd
  Frances Lankin
  Gerrard Kennedy

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