MPP Mike Colle’s 20-point plan to fight bedbugs ought to be rolled out all across the province, not just in Toronto.
But Colle is merely a private member. His only mandate is the suffering of the people in his riding and, by extension, the suffering of people all across the province.
For anything to happen, the plan needs support and co-operation from the government, a dozen different ministries, all Ontario municipalities and boards of health, and the federal government.
If I had a whip, I would crack it.
Instead, I went back to the beginning. Three years ago, Mary O’Neil called and left a message.
She lives at 855 Roselawn. I came to learn that she had done a survey of tenant problems in her building, so that she might give the list to the new super when he took over. She found the usual rats and roaches. And two complaints of bedbugs.
The new super did nothing with the list. Six months later there were bedbugs on 11 of the 18 floors.
When I went to see her three years ago, Mary told me how her apartment had subsequently become infested. She got bites and her arm swelled up. She went to the hospital and had a seizure there.
Shortly after she returned home, she smelled gas on her floor and called security. They followed their noses down the hall, knocked on a door and found a man washing his body with gasoline.
The poor fellow was seeking relief from the unbearable itch. And what he was doing was not just wrong, but wildly ill-informed and dangerous, and he was both gullible and vulnerable.
Firemen came.
And that first bedbug column, three years ago, unleashed a tidal wave of stories: women sleeping in their bathtubs; men with dementia who had accepted their infestations as a part of their daily reality; couples who had moved unwittingly into infested apartments; public housing maintenance staff dragging buggy, unbagged mattresses down hallways; ill-informed people dragging those same mattresses back inside; and poor people with no resources, unable to move and unable to replace the clothes and furniture they had to ditch.
From Queens Quay to Richmond Hill, and from Oshawa to Hamilton, there is no one who doesn’t know someone who has bedbugs.
And so I draw a direct line from Mary to Mike, and I went to see her again and I showed her the recommendations. As she leafed through them she said, “I still have the first bedbug I found in my apartment. I’d dozed off, and when I woke I noticed it on my arm. I captured it in an empty pill bottle.”
It ought to be bronzed.
“I was sprayed six times in two years. I replaced my futon, my bed. I scrubbed my dressers and sealed them. I caulked my apartment myself. I took off the switch plates and the plug holes and put in diatomaceous earth.” She did a better job than any pest controller.
She is free of bugs.
Her building is not.
How are things going for her personally? Are there lingering effects? She paused. I pressed. She said, “I don’t have people over. My daughter came to visit once. She brought bedbugs home with her. When I go out, I spray my shoes, and I spray them again when I come back.”
That’s why we need Colle’s 20 points. For hapless tenants and helpless landlords. For the elderly. For the vulnerable. For the poor.
For Mary.
She likes the plan, by the way. And I think it would make good policy. Hmm. Is there a provincial government in the vicinity in need of good policy?
Joe Fiorito appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Email: jfiorito@thestar.ca
