Thursday, September 5, 2013

Trying to meet with my MPP

On August 25, I wrote to my MPP Madeleine Meilleur. I asked her about the recent FOI changes to FIPPA. I asked her two questions.

1) What rationale did the government have for excluding abortion services from FIPPA?

2) Since taxpayers fund abortion, in the same way they fund all medical services, why was this one service singled out for exclusion, when no other services were excluded?

Five days later I still had received no response. So I followed up with another email. Then I waited another six days. Still no response.

Yesterday I called her office and asked when I could expect a reply to my email. I was told that they had sent it to the Minister's office and were waiting for the Minister to respond, and that could take two to three weeks longer.

I said okay then, I'd like to meet with Ms. Meilleur. Long pause. Then the assistant said, well don't you want to wait for the Minister's response first? I said, well no, since I wrote my letter to the MPP, and not to the Minister, that I wanted to know what my MPP thought about this change. The assistant said she would get the scheduling person to call me back. Nobody called me back.

Just before noon today I called her office again, and asked to speak to the scheduling clerk. When she finally got on the line, she said I couldn't have an appointment until October. I said, that was an awful long time for a constituent to wait for an appointment to meet with their MPP. She said that Ms. Meilleur only meets with constituents on Fridays (she is at Queen's Park the rest of the week). Fine. So I asked for an appointment in October. She didn't want to give me a firm appointment date. When I insisted on one, she finally relented and gave me one on October 11. But she said the appointment was only tentative.

Remind me again. Who do our MPPs work for?

(I'll let you know how my appointment goes. Assuming it actually happens.)   

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