Barbara Finlay sees the enormity of the task facing Ombudsman Ontario as its role rapidly expands in the New Year.
Starting Jan. 1, the provincial watchdog now fields complaints about the province’s 21 publicly funded universities and 444 municipalities. This expansion of power is the result of Bill 8, Public Sector and MPP Accountability and Transparency Act, 2014, which also extended the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction to school boards on Sept. 1, 2015.
“Universities are large institutions; they have large bureaucracies; they deal with thousands of students on a regular basis,” said Finlay, Acting Ombudsman of Ontario. “Students can get lost in those bureaucracies, as can faculty concerns, as well as the concerns of staff and other issues. Our job, first and foremost, is to be an independent avenue to turn to when they have a complaint about a university.
“We are about working constructively to improve the system for everyone.”
With its new authority, the Ombudsman will be able to investigate complaints about the administrative conduct of universities that have not been resolved by a university ombudsman or other local mechanism. Generated by any interested party, complaints can range across a number of policies and processes, including faculty concerns and staffing, student academic appeals and accessibility issues, housing and parking, as well as financial aid, among other items. The office can also explore systemic issues across all universities.
“Nothing is too big or too small to explore,” Finlay said. “But it is important people understand we are not there to replace existing processes. Where an appeal process exists, they must try that process first. We are a last resort that steps in when existing processes fail to solve a problem.”
When complaints arrive at Ombudsman Ontario, front-line staffers will triage the complaint, make initial contact with the university and look to resolve it quickly. Most complaints are resolved within two weeks. If unable to resolve quickly, however, the complaint is handed over to Ombudsman investigators. Universities are notified of these more serious investigations, which usually end in public reports from Ombudsman Ontario. The office also houses a special investigations team to explore systemwide issues.
It is a process Ombudsman Ontario staffers and universities, including Western, are still feeling out.
“Our goal is to get information that is directly relevant to a problem. In order to do that, you need to speak to people who are responsible,” Finlay said. “We have been telling universities, ‘Do not establish a point of contact for the Ombudsman office.’ Our goal is to resolve a problem as quickly as possible. We will go and search out the point of contact we need for a particular issues. We won’t vet our inquiries or questions through a single point of contact. That does not work very well for ombudsmen.”
To ease the transition, Ombudsman Ontario staff have been meeting over the last year with university representatives, as well as with the Canadian Federation of Students, Council of Ontario Universities and other interested groups. But just because the calendar has flipped to Jan. 1, that doesn’t mean the education ends.
“It’s a long-term relationship that we are developing,” Finlay stressed. “We are going to be continuing our outreach to student groups, faculty groups. We want to have a conversation with people. We want to answer any questions or concerns that they have. We want to lay the groundwork so we can constructively talk about and resolve issues.”
While without a universitywide ombudsman, Western maintains an independent Office of the Ombudsperson to address student concerns related to the university, including transcript disputes, course concerns, instructor conflicts, parking and library fines, among others. Nearly 600 student concerns were addressed during the 2014-15 school year. The percentage of student population visiting the office has increased gradually over the past five years.
In March 1975, Ontario became the seventh province to establish an ombudsman’s office with the mission to, as Arthur Maloney, the first Ontario Ombudsman put it, “smooth the rough edges between the citizen and bureaucracies.” In the last decade, however, the office has been a headline generator, especially in London.
Prior to her appointment, Finlay was Deputy Ombudsman under André Marin, who served in the role from April 2005 to September 2015. Despite a tenure marked by controversy – labour complaints, questions about his spending of taxpayer money, social media bravado – Marin set an aggressive bar for the office. He issued high-profile reports involving government action during the G-20 Summit in Toronto in 2010, unlicensed home daycare deaths and illegal meetings of the London City.
In September 2015, the Legislature defeated a motion to grant Marin a second extension on his position, ending his term.
Although the independent group’s recommendations are not binding, almost all have been accepted by government over the past decade, resulting in reforms to everything from newborn screening to lottery security to monitoring of unlicensed daycares.
Ombudsman Ontario already has jurisdiction over the province’s 24 community colleges, as well as the Ontario Student Assistance Program. Only two other ombudsmen, British Columbia and Newfoundland and Labrador, have oversight of universities.
Its history with colleges will provide a basis for the office’s work with universities, Finlay said.
“From our dealings with colleges, we’ve learned a lot about the challenges and issues they face, that students face,” she said. “Universities are obviously unique. They are a little bit more diverse; some of the bureaucracies are a lot bigger. The challenges will be different.”
Finlay continued, “Each area of our jurisdiction is unique – we’re about to learn more and more about that in the university environment. But our approach is very much the same. We want to work constructively and find solutions to complaints. Our focus is on making recommendations to improve the system in the public interest.”
On average, the Ombudsman’s Office receives more than 20,000 complaints per year about more than 500 provincial government bodies (ministries, agencies, boards, commissions, corporations and tribunals). Most cases are resolved informally, but the Ombudsman has broad powers to investigate both individual and systemic problems and recommend solutions.
Before officially opening the doors on Monday, the Ombudsman had received 2,227 complaints about municipalities and 70 about universities. The office has also handled 246 complaints about school boards since assuming that responsibility Sept. 1.
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LINES ARE OPEN
Anyone with an unresolved complaint about a university can contact the Ombudsman via the online complaint form at ombudsman.on.ca. Complaints can also be filed by phone at 1-800-263-1830, or by emailing info@ombudsman.on.ca.