Dupont mom lobbies local MPPs for changes

from The Windsor Star

Barbara Dupont, the mother of slain nurse Lori Dupont, met with MPP Dwight Duncan (L — Windsor-Tecumseh) Wednesday evening to lobby for changes to the province’s Occupational Health and Safety Act.

She has another meeting scheduled next week with MPP Sandra Pupatello (L — Windsor West) and hopes she and her supporters can convince the government to include violence and harassment in the workplace as incidents that can be investigated by the provincial Ministry of Labour.

Lori Dupont, a nurse at Hotel-Dieu Grace Hospital, was stabbed to death in the hospital in 2005 by her ex-boyfriend Dr. Marc Daniel who then took his own life.

An inquest into the deaths produced 26 recommendations, one of which was to include workplace harassment and violence in the Health and Safety Act. NDP MPP Andrea Horvath has sponsored a private member’s bill to do that, and Barbara Dupont said she is pressing other MPPs to support it.

“They’re focussed on industrial accidents,” she said of the province’s regulations on workplace safety. “We just feel it’s time.”