Hearings for seniors critiqued for bad planning

The city’s going to be holding hearings about making things better for the elderly, but two Concordia professors pointed out that “of the meeting locations near metro stations, three out of four stations do not have elevators. The station that does have an elevator is an 11-minute walk from where the consultation will be held.” Also, the meetings are being held in February, in a season when many older people prefer not to go out, for obvious reasons.

The observations, made in an open letter to the mayor, also noted that the sessions were to be held only in French, excluding the older anglos and allos who don’t understand the language, or not well enough for debate. Besides this, a lot of the necessary information is available only online, and only in French. Even leaving out the language angle, it might have occurred to somebody at city hall that older people, especially the less affluent, are not likely to be able to find useful information on the reliably byzantine city website.

Update: Toula Drimonis writes about the issue.