Inquest may look at Tory welfare cuts
Woman died while confined for welfare fraud

Toronto Star - Aug. 16, 2002

By Harold Levy, Staff Reporter

Ontario's chief coroner says the inquest probing the death of a woman who died while under house arrest for welfare fraud will likely examine whether there was a link between Tory government policies and her death.

Kimberly Rogers, 40, was eight months pregnant and had been confined to her Sudbury apartment when she was found dead during a heat wave Aug. 9, 2001.

Rogers' benefits had been cut off following her conviction for welfare fraud but some had been restored.
Her death has become a public issue as opposition parties and social activists lay the blame on deep cuts the Ontario government made to social assistance and a crackdown on welfare recipients.

"The inquest will look into whatever caused the death," chief coroner James Young said yesterday.
"It will be up to the presiding coroner, but it certainly could include that (political) issue."

Lawyer Sean Dewart, who represented Rogers at her criminal trial, said yesterday that the political issue is "absolutely central" to the inquest because "it relates to the circumstances in which she was living when she died."

"You had someone in an extremely vulnerable position who had no means of eating or obtaining shelter," Dewart said.

"But as a result of her crime, what we as a society did was to isolate her in her own apartment and tell her that she had to starve to death because we weren't going to pay for food."

Chief coroner Young would neither confirm nor deny a recently published news report saying toxicology tests indicate that Rogers had overdosed on a prescription drug she took for depression.

Young said the jury will receive "additional information" that will allow it to assess the scientific evidence introduced in context.

He added that the inquest would also deal with "broader issues" than the medical cause of death.
Dewart insists that whether the news story is accurate or not is "irrelevant."

"If she did take her own life — and I don't know that she did — that's even more disgraceful," he said.
"This ban on receiving benefits is worthy of the most totalitarian state."

The inquest is set to begin in Sudbury on Oct. 7