Indexing Ontario Canada Vital Statistics
For my own research I need to create indices of the Ontario Birth Registrations for 1915, 1916, and 1917. The original documents are public and theoretically available on microfilm from the Ontario Archives but I have been trying to gain access to those microfilm reels for over a year now and all I receive back is a notification that the Ontario Archives is shut down for the duration of the pandemic. The microfilm reels for these years do not appear in the FHL catalog. I am willing to index these records for the FHL, and to contribute the over a million record transcriptions that I have made over the last thirty years but I need support to gain access to the images of these public records.
Best Answer
-
With all due respect, I would suggest that you may need to change tactics. Politicians will quickly tire of hearing the same person repeat the same obscure issue over and over.
A petition probably has a much better chance of success. You could start one on change.org and spread the word to genealogical societies.
Or you could approach the issue from a different angle, and get try to get organizations and societies concerned by inefficiency and waste in the public sector involved.
0
Answers
-
If the Ontario Archives own the records and the records are not online or copied anywhere else, then there is little you can do. Since access to public records is ultimately a political issue, you could contact the minister responsible for the archive or ask a MPP to write to the archive. A year of not being able to access public records sounds unreasonable to me.
FS Staff should see this, and maybe your post will prompt them to try and negotiate a contract with the Ontario Archives that lets them film the records. Don't expect to be contacted by FS about it or kept updated as these issues are sensitive and FS never discusses contracts (or potential future contracts) with users.
2 -
Since microfilm was created of these records I was hoping that it had been made by the FHL as was the case until a few years ago. I have been writing at least twice a year to the Minister and my MPP for over twenty years trying to get them to realize, as the FHL long ago realized, that microfilm is an obsolete, inefficient, and expensive mechanism that is out of step with current technology. The ministry is wasting my tax dollars by refusing to even discuss amending this process even after NOBODY bid on the annual contract to manufacture the microfilm. If you do not have copies they must have wasted MORE taxpayer dollars by purchasing their own microfilming equipment and paying their own staff to make the microfilm because they refuse to admit that if nobody wishes to make the microfilm at any price there might be a good reason. This is like the US Congress which orders NASA to buy launches of the Congress-mandated Space Launch System at $2 BILLION dollars per launch when private industry could deliver the same service for $100 MILLION. I am frustrated also that NOBODY in the entire social history industry seems willing to challenge the Ontario government on this wasteful policy. I have written to every University in the Province asking them to write to the Ministry but they will not even acknowledge my request. I have written to every news outlet, quoting articles that they have published where the NEWS outlet was unable to obtain critical information because the Ontario government refused to put it on line, but they do not respond. My MPP has ceased to even acknowledge the letters where I BEG her to intervene with the Minister. I am angry and frustrated because nobody will even explain WHY they are being so rude and inconsiderate.
0