SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

Tom Rakocevic

  • MPP
  • Member of Provincial Parliament
  • Humber River—Black Creek
  • New Democratic Party of Ontario
  • Ontario
  • Unit 38 2300 Finch Ave. W North York, ON M9M 2Y3 TRakocevic-CO@ndp.on.ca
  • tel: 416-743-7272
  • fax: 416-743-3292
  • TRakocevic-QP@ndp.on.ca

  • Government Page
  • May/10/23 10:40:00 a.m.

Minister, more than 500,000 people living in Toronto and Mississauga don’t have a family doctor, including over 136,000 of the lowest-income earners. Half of the people without a doctor in Toronto and Mississauga live in racialized neighbourhoods.

Doctors are only human. They can only take about 1,000 to 1,200 patients, although many doctors have much larger rosters. At this rate, the GTA will need about 400 more doctors to meet the demand in the region. What plans does this government have to immediately recruit hundreds of more doctors in the GTA?

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  • Oct/25/22 3:20:00 p.m.

I am honoured to rise today and pay tribute to the late Dr. Donald James Henderson, better known as Jim Henderson, who served as the Liberal MPP for the riding of Humber, later renamed Etobicoke–Humber, for three terms ranging from 1985 to 1995. He served as the parliamentary assistant to the Ministers of Community and Social Services, Colleges and Universities and for the province’s anti-drug strategy, and then as the official opposition critic for culture and communications.

As a medical doctor and psychiatrist, he worked in the medical field before and after his terms in office, holding various positions, ranging from being a director to an associate professor, to organizing and leading trade and medical delegations in developing countries. In fact, when you see his name formally written, it is buried in a sea of degrees and designations.

Born in Sudbury in 1940, he spent the majority of his life in Etobicoke. However, he never lost his love and affinity for northern Ontario. It is impossible to summarize the life of anyone, much less someone as accomplished as Dr. Henderson, within a few minutes. So all I can do is merely scratch the surface here today. And while I never had the honour to know him, it is an honour to have learned about his life and to speak about him here.

Dr. Henderson was an academic and medical doctor with a conviction and an adventurous spirit which never dimmed but, I would argue, only grew stronger in the later part of his life. He had an active and brilliant mind. A medically trained doctor and psychiatrist, Dr. Henderson had a natural talent and understanding of human behaviour, which he drew upon throughout his political career.

He often relied on his knowledge of human behaviour and used this frequently in debate. “If psychology teaches us nothing else in politics, it teaches us that no group in society is likely to contribute to its fullest if it feels its collective needs, feelings, views and expertise to be unattended or ignored.” He spoke about the importance of the parent-child bond on a biological and psychological level and went on to quote an interesting study that showed that “nurturance and bonding are as fundamental ingredients to human growth and development as are any physical, nutritional or other amenities that we can offer to our children.”

Another interesting debate centred on whether to televise the House proceedings, and Dr. Henderson spoke strongly in favour of televising our proceedings in the Legislature because he believed that it “is in line with our philosophy of democratic government and will strengthen and promote a sense of participation by the people in the affairs of the state” and that “it is desirable for the health and responsiveness of good government....”

He was innovative. For instance, he diverted used public transit buses that were at the end of their service life and headed to the scrapyard and ensured that they were donated and sent abroad, where they continued to run for years in places like the streets of Havana. As well, he arranged for hundreds of boxes of prescription drugs that Ontario hospitals had no use for to be donated and sent abroad, and much more.

After his career in politics ended, he maintained his interest in international development, including teaching himself Spanish to such a high degree of fluency that he became a guest lecturer at the University of Havana, where he reintroduced the country to psychoanalysis.

Dr. Henderson loved the outdoors. He had a love of the outdoors and wrote about his deep and long-standing attachment to Ontario’s north. He recalled visiting the Sleeping Giant and Silver Islet.

His father was a general manager of a hardware store and would occasionally take him along on business trips in northern Ontario, including Thunder Bay. He once shared details of a fishing trip near Red Rock, where he didn’t catch a single fish, but the “majesty of North Superior was forever imprinted on his mind.”

Dr. Henderson was a man of conviction. He believed that MPPs should have more freedom to vote their conscience as opposed to always falling in line with their party. He was quoted as saying that MPPs’ “first role is to represent the views of their constituents,” even if those views sometimes violate party policies. Best summarized in his own words, he said, “Personal liberty is not just a slogan. I speak of personal liberty because it means a lot to me. As a practising physician and counsellor I devoted myself to helping people liberate themselves from a tyranny from within—the tyranny of neurotic conflict and suffering. I cannot support legislative measures that compromise personal liberty from without. To me freedom is not negotiable.”

Dr. Henderson had the respect of all sides of the House and developed lifelong friendships such as that with NDP MPP and Speaker David Warner, who is here with us today.

Jim was truly a loving family man and dear friend to many.

He is survived by his wife, Karen; his children, James, Chris and Kevin; his grandchildren, Iris and Emma; his sister, Carol; and his nieces and nephews, Bob, Jane, Ann, Bill, Sandy and Tracey.

Again, I welcome and thank his wonderful family and friends who are here with us today.

I had the pleasure to speak with Chris, who spoke of Jim as a young father when he entered politics, having sons aged two to six years old. I can certainly relate to this. In 1985, when his father, Jim, was the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Community and Social Services, Chris remembered being brought to his dad’s office. As a five-year-old, he joyfully ran up and down the halls and unfortunately discovered a bunch of ink stamps and pads. I will not relay the chaos that ensued at that time. Almost 20 years later, in 2004, Chris returned to Queen’s Park as an intern in that very same office, where he walked rather than ran the halls and was much more subdued in his use of ink.

Jim lives on in his immortalized words in the Hansard and the results of his work under the many hats he wore throughout his life. But most of all, he lives on in the lives and memories of his loving and proud family and all who had the pleasure of knowing him.

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