Episode Transcript
Please note: This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Elizabeth McIsaac: In today’s Five Good Ideas session, we are talking about an important office that can shape how you experience city services, Ombudsman Toronto. Many of you may be familiar with the role of an ombudsman, whether on the city level or other orders of government, but you may not really know what they do, how they work, and how you can get in touch with them.
Ombudsman Toronto is an internal and independent office that holds the city accountable. It’s a built-in accountability mechanism to ensure the city treats its residents fairly. The Ombudsman makes recommendations on how city services should be managed better and more fairly. It looks at issues both big and small, such as securing housing for a vulnerable senior couple, the fact that one of the departments at the city may have a full complaint box on the voicemail, or whether people in encampments are treated by city officials. And the list goes on. There’s a whole range of city services that fall under the purview of the Ombudsman.
The Ombudsman makes recommendations to the city to improve its services and ensure that they are fair. While it cannot issue orders, the Ombudsman Toronto continually follows up with the city’s implementation of its recommendations until they are satisfied that the city has successfully implemented them.
How do you connect with an ombudsman’s office when you feel you’ve experienced unfairness when dealing with or accessing city services? What’s the best way to engage? And what can you expect to happen? To answer these and other questions, we invited Kwame Addo to speak to us today. Kwame’s 30-year career is widely recognized in the ombudsman community. He is passionate about advancing equity and fairness, human rights, and breaking down barriers. His seven-year term as Toronto’s Ombudsman started in August, 2021. In this session, Kwame will present his five ideas and how you can work with his office to bring about positive change in your community. Kwame, welcome, so glad to have you here today.
Kwame Addo: Good afternoon, Elizabeth, and thank you for inviting me to speak with you today. I thought that maybe before we get started, as you mentioned, some people may be familiar with the role of an ombudsman, but I wanted to just talk briefly about the origin of the word. It’s quite often we get questions about why in this day and age we use a term ombudsman to describe the office and the office holder. So I just thought it might be helpful to let people know the origin of the word and where it came from.
The origins of “ombudsman”
“Ombudsman” is taken directly from the Swedish language, and it’s a gender-neutral term. And it means “representative of people” or “citizens’ representative.” It dates back to the 1800s, and it was designed to create a balance between the power of the government and its citizenry.
The concept or the institution is very well-established in Europe. In the UK, for example, they have various ombudsman that are responsible for such things as police or financial ombudsman. And my office, Ombudsman Toronto, opened its doors to the public in April of 2009. We’re going to be celebrating our 15th year anniversary in a few months.
Elizabeth McIsaac: I guess that makes you a teenager.
Kwame Addo: Yes, yes, we’re a teenager. Yeah, yeah.
Elizabeth McIsaac: That was helpful, because I think most of us don’t know the origin of it, and I think that helps explain the purpose and what the goals and objectives of the office are. When we reach out to the Ombudsman’s office, to your office, if we feel that we haven’t been treated fairly, what should we keep in mind? What should our expectations be?
Kwame Addo: So just a couple of things. Our office is known as an office of last resort. What do I mean when I say that? Well, it means that we need to give the city an opportunity to try and address the complaint before we can become formally involved. And as you said before in your introduction, we don’t have the ability to issue orders or we only have powers of recommendation. And I think that’s really how it should be, because I’m not an elected official, and I think it’s up to the politicians, in my case, the councillors to set the agenda or the priorities for the city. And it’s up to the public servants to implement that agenda.
And so, if somebody hasn’t gone through the city’s complaint process first, we may ask them to do so. But I don’t think there’s ever a bad time to contact our office. So if you’re unsure about whether your concern is something that the ombudsman can deal with or if you’re unsure about where to go, or if you just have a question about a program or something, you can contact our office. We understand that navigating government can be difficult for individuals sometimes, and so we’re there to assist them in finding the right path.
The other thing that I had forgotten to mention earlier is that we really have a wide jurisdiction. We’re responsible for pretty much all of the city’s divisions, agencies, boards, commissions, including the Toronto Transit Commission, for example, and Toronto Hydro. And in the fall of 2022, the Toronto Police Service approved a memorandum understanding, which allowed our office to have limited oversight over police. So we’ve just begun that work. We have a wide mandate and we can really help people with a lot of issues and services that they may encounter with the city of Toronto.
1. Don’t settle for less than what is fair
Don’t settle for less than what is fair. And what do I mean by that? Well, municipal government is often thought as the level of government that really impacts people the most on their day-to-day lives. So for example, the City of Toronto is responsible for providing police and fire services, snow removal, maybe road maintenance, and even garbage pickup. It matters because there’s only one city government. It’s not like you can opt for an alternative if you’re unhappy. There’s no alternative to city government to turn to. So if you feel that you’ve been treated unfairly, it can have a significant impact on your life.
So I think that most people will understand when we talk about fairness, what that means. But I think the question for the purpose of this discussion is what does that mean in terms of the context of ombudsman work? And when an ombudsman talks about fairness, we’re really actually talking about administrative fairness. And administrative fairness is a set of principles rooted in administrative law that explains fair decision-making processes. Administrative fairness is concerned with three aspects, three key aspects. So fair process, fair outcome, and fair treatment. And so, I’ll just take a few moments to talk briefly about each of those topics.
So when we talk about fair process, we’re really talking about how the decision is made or the process that is used in making that decision. And at a bare minimum, a fair process requires several things, an opportunity for the person affected by the decision to be heard. The decision-maker should offer clear reasons for the decision. There should be adequate notice before an adverse decision is reached. And a decision needs to be made in a timely manner.
And so, when we’re talking about fair outcome, we’re really talking about the fairness of the decision itself. And so, we’re looking at such things as whether or not the decision was reasonable, whether the decision was based on relevant information. Were the relevant rules, policies, and procedures applied consistently and objectively?
And then, we’re talking about fair treatment as the last aspect. And this really has to do with how the parties to a complaint are treated. It’s about making sure that people are treated fairly but not necessarily identically to ensure that they have access to equitable results.
And so, applying these principles of administrative fairness means that decisions that are rendered by the city are going to be done fairly. And the question might be, “Why does this matter?” Well, I believe that fair decision-making helps to build public trust in government. And so, when decision-makers explain how and why they’re making their decisions, people have a sense that they’re treated fairly.
Elizabeth McIsaac: And within all of that, it’s transparent.
Kwame Addo: Exactly.
Elizabeth McIsaac: It’s so important and such a key principle of accountability. So we’ve talked about bringing a complaint forward. A lot of people think about complaining as a bad thing. Is that how you see complaints?
Kwame Addo: So I’ve worked in this area for over 30 years now. It’s hard to believe, but that’s not an uncommon viewpoint to see complaints in a negative light. And I get that perspective a lot when we’re dealing with government. But also, many members of the public feel that complaining is really not valuable. They feel that in the case of the city, they’ve made up their mind, they’re not going to change their mind. It’s not going to make a difference. “Why am I going to put all this time and effort into complaining and nothing’s going to change?” And I recognize that complaining takes a lot of courage, and it also is a lot of work. So if people aren’t prepared to put in that work, I can understand.
But I like to think of instead of looking at complaints in a negative light, I encourage people to see them as an opportunity or a catalyst for change. By addressing complaints or learning from complaints, it can lead to improvement in processes. You can find efficiencies. And ultimately, when I’m talking about the City of Toronto, it can lead to better experience for the users of city programs and services. And in our work, complaints can help shine a light on problems and inequities, which an ombudsman can then recommend ways to address.
2. Use complaints as a catalyst for positive change
Use complaints as a catalyst for positive change. So there are two ways in which we approach complaint-handling in the office. One is what we call early resolution or informal complaint handling.
The second has to do with the investigations that we do that some of the members in the audience may be familiar with.
So I’ll talk a little bit about our early resolution work first. When somebody contacts our office, there are a number of different ways that they can do so. So they can use regular snail mail, they can contact us through email, telephone. We have an online complaint form on our website that they can use.
Our complaints analysts or our intake staff are usually the first people to interact with members of the public. There’s a couple of things that they would do before the process really starts going. So they would ask some clarifying questions to determine whether or not the issue actually falls within our ability to handle.
You remember earlier I said that we sometimes get complaints that may fall outside our ability to deal with because they’re really the responsibility of other levels of government. Sometimes we might get complaints about unemployment insurance or immigration. Those are federal matters. Or we might get a complaint about disability benefits. That’s a provincial matter. If that happens, we’ll try and find an appropriate referral for the individual to use and start that process that way. We’ll also confirm whether or not they’ve tried to resolve their concern with the city first. So you remember I said that we’re in office of last resort, and so if they haven’t done so, we may refer them back to the city to get a response.
With our early resolution work, we want to really try and resolve concerns at the earliest opportunity. But we don’t use traditional mediation where we have both parties in the room and try and hash out an agreement. We use something that we refer to as shuttle diplomacy, and we act as an intermediary. So we’ll meet with the complainant, get more details about their particular situation, maybe receive some documents that they may have that may help shed some additional light on the concern. And then, with their consent — because as I said earlier, our process is confidential — we’ll speak to the city and see if there’s an opportunity for us to come to some sort of resolution that works for both parties. Our early resolution work probably accounts for the majority of the work that we do in terms of our complaint handling. We handled over 3,500 cases year, and the vast majority of those were resolved without the need of a formal investigation.
Several years ago, we received a complaint from a lawyer who was acting on behalf of her client, who was a vulnerable senior, who was facing eviction from his apartment because of rental arrears. He had previously owned a home with his mother, but his mother had passed away and he had stopped paying the property taxes for whatever reason.
As a result, the city ended up selling the home under a tax sale to recoup the back taxes. There’s a process that the city needs to follow to be able to do that. But after settling the arrears, there was a surplus of about $465,000 left, and that money was paid into court. The city sent several notices to the individual to let him know, alert him to the surplus and how he could go about claiming the money before the deadline happened. Well, for whatever reason, he never did claim the money. And so, that money reverted back to the city’s general revenue.
When the complainant’s lawyer came on the scene, they approached the city about returning the money, but the city took the position or took the stance that they had followed the procedure, and they hadn’t done anything wrong. And the complainant had failed to collect the money or claim the money before the deadline had passed, so they were entitled to keep it.
We became involved at that stage. While the city had fulfilled its obligations under the legislation, we argued that given that the former owner was now coming forward, it would be unfair for them to continue to hold onto the money when they knew that there was somebody out there claiming the money. Moreover, we learned that the provincial government was changing the legislation, so they were moving the time limit to allow somebody to claim tax sale proceeds to 10 years. And so, given that information, we just felt it was unfair, and we recommended that the city return the money to the complainant. And the council agreed, and the money, $465,000, life-altering, was returned to the individual. He was able to pay back his arrears, he maintained his housing, and he had a nest egg to carry him through his retirement years. So a very significant win for that individual.
Elizabeth McIsaac: That’s a really meaningful resolution. And that wasn’t an adversarial process. That wasn’t with a lawyer, that was just your investigation and bringing forward the claim.
Kwame Addo: Exactly. Yeah.
If we’re not able to resolve complaints informally, and that sometimes happens, we can decide to investigate. Usually we launch an investigation when we find that there is an issue or issues that have the potential to adversely affect a large number of people. Another consideration that would go into our thinking about launching an investigation is whether or not we’re able to make significant recommendations that would be able to, one, rectify the concern that was identified and prevent it from reoccurring. Because often, a single complaint can give rise to one of our investigations. It doesn’t have to be a series of similar type complaints. One complaint could be sufficient for us to say, “Hey, this seems unfair. This doesn’t seem reasonable. I think that we need to take a deeper dive in that. And the only way that we can do that is through our investigation process.”
Once we decide to investigate, we have to provide notice to the city, which we do. And after we do our witness interviews, collect information, review and analyze the evidence, we’ll prepare a draft report which we’ll share with the city, which includes recommendations. Once the city accepts our recommendations, we’ll finalize a report, and typically our reports will be made public. It’s very rare for us not to publicize a report.
One example that people might be familiar with is a recent investigation we did into the city’s clearing of encampments during the summer of 2021. So there were a number of large encampments that sprouted out in city parks, and the city felt that they had to take action to clear these encampments in 2021. So our investigation found that the city, in taking that action, had really prioritized the expediency of clearing the encampments to the detriment of those individuals that were living in encampments.
We also found that the city knew that there were a number of individuals who were living in encampments who were dealing with mental health issues, but yet the city had provided little mental health support or none at all on the day of those clearings. And we also found that the city failed to participate in meaningful engagements with those individuals that were living in encampments.
All told, we made 31 recommendations, which the city accepted. Once those recommendations are fully implemented, the city’s response to encampments will be much fairer, and it will be placing the needs of those encampment individuals at the forefront if there is a need or the city feels that they have to embark in a future clearing. So they’re just a couple of examples of the type of work and how complaints that we receive have resulted in significant changes on both an individual level and on a more systemic level.
Elizabeth McIsaac: Really great examples, and I’m sure we’ll get some more pickup on some of that when we get into the Q&A section.
You’ve provided a great explanation of how the complaints process works, but when do we reach out? I’ve got a problem, I want to get the process started. Do I need to speak to city staff first? When do I call Ombudsman Toronto to help me?
Kwame Addo: In an ideal world, you would contact our office after you’ve gone through the city complaint process and received a decision that you’re not happy with. But I would encourage anybody who feels that they have a concern that our office might be able to help them with to contact our office. There’s never really a wrong time to contact our office. If the individual hasn’t gone through the city process, we’ll probably direct them back to the city and ask them to get a response that they’re not happy with. Then we can take a look at their concern at that time. But as I said earlier, if they have questions about how to go about doing that, who they should get in contact with, we’re happy to provide that information and sort of help them navigate the labyrinth that the city can be. If you’re not familiar with municipal government, that can be quite a daunting task.
3. Address problems before they arise
Address problems before they arise. I would hazard a guess that I think that most people would think that it’s a good idea to try and nip a problem in the bud before it becomes a larger problem. And that’s really the approach that we take with complaints. In the ombudsman world, we call that preventative ombudsmanship. Essentially, that means that we will work with the city to try and resolve complaints or identify trends that have the potential to become larger issues and try and manage them before they get too large.
We do this in several ways. One is through consultation. So we would encourage the public service to work with us whenever they’re planning to bring on new programs, new policies, to enable us to have a chance to review the draft and really comment on it from a point of view of a fairness expert. And so, this is done so as to ensure that there aren’t any unintended consequences or some communities or groups might be adversely affected once the program or policies in place.
In the past we’ve worked with the city when they were developing their respective complaint processes. We’d offered advice about the design and how to simplify it and make that process more accessible for users. That won’t mean though, if we get a complaint about that particular program or process that we wouldn’t investigate it, but we want to try and ensure that as best we can, those type of things are sort of addressed before they go live, so to speak.
The other thing that we do is that we deliver public education and training for city staff and members of the public. With staff, we focus on educating them on the principles of administrative fairness, which I spoke about before, and how they can incorporate those fairness standards into their decision-making. To support those efforts, we’ve developed resources such as fact sheets, posters, and brochures for city staff and the public as well. With respect to our brochures, we have them available in 22 languages including traditional Chinese, Bengali, and Vietnamese.
Most people would say — and I do agree — that ombudsman work is typically reactive. We’re responding to complaints and our reviews are really done after the fact. Something’s happened and a decision is made or whatnot; we’re looking at what happened with the hindsight of looking in the rear-view mirror. And so, while this advising role that we do perform may not comprise a large portion of the work that we do, it’s really vital to the work, because proactively addressing concerns allows us to prevent them from morphing into larger concerns and more challenging problems.
Elizabeth McIsaac: We’ve talked a lot about individuals bringing their complaints forward. This conversation is really directed toward not-for-profit organizations, civil society actors who are working on a lot of these systemic issues. Is reaching out to your office sort of, “We’ve got one shot at it, so we’ll bring something forward?” How do we think about relating to you and your office?
Kwame Addo: That’s a really good question. I would say that an individual’s interaction with their office can vary, or an organization’s office with our organization can vary. If they contact us with a specific complaint and we’re able to resolve that issue, that might mark the extent of their interaction with our office. However, it’s not uncommon for individuals or even organizations like legal clinics to come back and ask us to assist with new concerns. And so, that’s something that happens from time to time. And so, with our engagement work, our goal is to develop and build long-term relationships with those community organizations. We want to be seen to be connecting and interacting with them on a regular basis.
4. Build meaningful and collaborative relationships
I just would want to stress that these types of interactions are fundamental to our office and our work, which brings me to my fourth good idea for you today: building meaningful and collaborative relationships. We’re a relatively small office, we have about 24 staff. We’ve had a bit of an expansion recently, but 24 people, and we’re tasked with a very large job. I spoke to you about the oversight of our office. It literally encompasses every aspect of the city except for council and Toronto Library, of all things. So it’s very difficult for us to do our job unless we have good working relationships with, not only those individuals within the city, but outside the city as well.
Internally, the public service has come to see our office as an impartial, professional, independent complaint-handling body. When we come to them with an issue that we feel needs to be addressed, they’re responsive. Based on our history, they know that we’re not an advocate for complainants, nor are we an apologist for the city. There’s a trust that’s been earned over the years.
With our external stakeholders, there’s a similar relationship-building exercise that’s taking place. One of my key priorities when I became the Ombudsman was that I wanted to make sure that people that lived in the city or interacted with the City of Toronto knew who we were and how they could access our service, regardless of where they lived in the city and regardless of what community they may have come from.
Our engagement efforts have prioritized building relationships with groups that historically haven’t contacted our office for whatever reason. Maybe it’s due to mistrust of government or there could be some other reason, language or some other barriers to accessing our service. And so, these priority groups include members of the Indigenous and Black communities, newcomers, seniors, and unhoused people.
Getting back to your question about whether this is a one-and-done type of thing, that’s not our intention at all. We realize that it’s going to take time to build trust with some of these communities that we’ve identified as a priority. We understand that we need to meet people where they’re at, not only to build awareness of our services, but I think this is really important to listen and learn about the issues that are important to them. I think that’s key. Nobody knows better than the people in the respective communities about what’s top of mind and what’s important to them. We’re very grateful for the opportunities to have those conversations with those organizations and community leaders.
I would encourage the members who are in attendance today if they believe that they wish to contact our office or think there’s an issue that may be of interest to the office for sure to come and reach out to our office. The easiest way to do that is through our website, OmbudsmanToronto.ca.
Elizabeth McIsaac: That sounds like an invitation. Thank you. So now we’ve reached out, we have a relationship with you. What else should we be thinking about?
5. Monitor, follow up, adjust
Kwame Addo: A lot of the work that we do goes on behind the scenes, and that brings me to my last point that I wanted to talk today about monitoring, follow-up, and adjustment. So it’s very important that any plan or strategy has an appropriate follow-up. I like to say that our work doesn’t end with the release of an investigation report. And you sort of alluded to it in your introduction, Elizabeth. We monitor the city’s implementation of our recommendations until we’re satisfied that the recommendations have been fulfilled. This is done through regularly scheduled check-ins and meetings with the city staff. And if we feel that the city isn’t moving quickly enough or fast enough, we could reopen the investigation or we could ask Council to intervene if we thought that that was necessary. We haven’t had to go to those lengths to this point, but you never know what might happen in the future.
But it’s also the same with our engagement work. It’s not a one-and-done, and I can’t emphasize that enough. When we talk about engagement, we’re describing a dynamic interaction. So it’s a two-way conversation. We provide information about our work, and then as I said earlier, we’re going to be incorporating intentional learning and listening about a community’s needs, their issues, or concerns. And so, in order to have a successful engagement, we need to have an effective feedback loop. And so, that involves building trust and mutual exchange and follow-ups and multiple sessions with the same stakeholders. The goal is really to build longstanding relationships, because our ability to affect change is really dependent on these relationships that we are able to establish both within and outside of the city government. It includes many of the diverse communities that exist within the city of Toronto.
Elizabeth McIsaac: So those are five really good ideas. I’m going to quickly recap. Don’t settle for less than what’s fair. Use complaints as a catalyst for positive change. Address problems before they arise. Build meaningful collaborative relationships. Monitor, follow-up, and adjust. Five really, really good ideas. Thank you, Kwame.
As you’ve been speaking, people have been adding some questions into the Q&A box. We also have a range of questions that came in in advance. I’m going to do my best to cover off a variety of questions that are coming in. I warn the audience, we won’t get to all of them, but we will do our best. We have about 20 minutes to do this.
So I want to talk about scope a little bit. A couple of people have asked, can you comment a little bit, we know that you’ve recently been enhanced as an office in terms of taking on a very specific mandate around housing as a human right. Can you comment a little bit on how you’re supporting residents’ housing rights and how this will apply to your office?
How does the ombudsman support housing rights?
Kwame Addo: I’d like to begin by saying that we’ve always had the ability to look at housing complaints. If you look back at any of our annual reports, you will see that housing issues are a large source of the complaints that we get. They’re mostly related to the city’s social housing provider, Toronto Community Housing, or TCHC.
We’ve embarked on a number of investigations. One, the eviction of seniors for housing arrears. We recently just finished an investigation into Toronto Community’s Housing human rights process. One of the things that came to our attention was that there really wasn’t a process, and the information that was publicly available was outdated and didn’t recognize changes that had been made to the entire human rights process. That was a very important review that we just completed in, I think it was June that we released that report.
But in terms of the new housing unit, the city and Council had asked us to consider what resources and infrastructure we would need to be able to focus on systemic housing discrimination and any obstacles in the city’s delivery and planning of housing. And so, we provided a response to Council and we got the funding and we’ve set up this new unit. So that unit will be operating a little differently from our regular work, in that we’re not going to be taking specific complaints from members of the public like we usually do, but we’ll be conducting systemic investigations.
One of the important things that Rima Patel, who is the permanent Deputy Ombudsman and Luke Brown, who is the Interim who is replacing Rima while she’s on parental leave, one of the important things that we realized that we had to do is that we had to really get out and meet and talk and engage with those housing organizations, housing providers, people who support individuals who are looking for housing, to really understand from them what sort of issues are top of mind. Because those sorts of relationships and understanding what concerns are really driving people’s fears, for lack of a better word, are important for us to understand and help us sort of plan out and manage our work. You’ll see that’s a big, big part of the work of the current unit, is to really get out and understand and forge these good working relationships.
The other thing that we are doing, we’re looking and working with other similar type organizations. So the Federal Housing Advocate, we’ve had several conversations with that office about the work that we’re doing, and to see if there’s any type of way that we might be able to make sure that we’re not duplicating efforts but learn from one another in terms of what they’re seeing. They have a federal purview, and we’re sort of focused on the things that are happening within the city of Toronto. So there’s a lot of different things that we’re doing to sort of support housing.
The other thing that’s important to mention is that this role that Council has given us is just one piece of a more broad-based approach to ensuring that the housing objectives of the city are being met. So there’s other things that the city is doing in concert with our work, and some of you may be familiar with the Housing Rights Committee that has just been struck. Elizabeth is the chair of that committee, and I see that working and having a relationship with that committee will also help to inform us in terms of things that they’re seeing from their respective constituencies that would help us identify things that we need to look into further.
Elizabeth McIsaac: Great. Thank you. So the other sort of scope and areas, you mentioned at the beginning that there’s sort of now a limited police oversight that you’re going to be taking on. Someone in the audience is working in a citywide, city-funded mediation service with a long history of doing work with police. Can you talk a little bit about how that will dovetail? What’s that going to look like?
How does the ombudsman oversee police work?
Kwame Addo: So I’ll sort of take a step back. The genesis for this occurred during the Black Lives Matter movement, and there were calls for the defunding of the police. And City Council made a clear statement that that wasn’t going to happen, but they were looking at ways that maybe there might be some more local oversight afforded to Toronto police.
One of the things that Council had determined when they did agree to provide us with oversight is that we don’t duplicate existing oversight mechanisms that are currently placed in the province. There’s the OPIRD, the Office of the Independent Police Review Director; the SIU [Special Investigations Unit]; and now the Inspector General that’s going to be coming online. Those agencies can deal with individual police conduct, and that’s something that’s removed from our purview.
What the city had asked us to do is to review Toronto Police Services board policies and procedures and assess the fairness of them and their impact on the residents of Toronto. In our enabling legislation, it never envisioned that we’d have the oversight of police. We had to enter into a memorandum of understanding with the police service and the board to set out how this work would be carried out. And I mentioned that was passed in December of 2022. So we just announced our first review that’s currently underway. We’re looking into the Vulnerable Person Registry that is operated by the Toronto Police Service, and we hope to be in a position to release our report in the next little while.
Elizabeth McIsaac: Great, thank you. There’s a few questions around process and access. So you talked a little bit already about when it is better to talk to civil servants versus the ombud’s office. Are there things that civil servants can do more of with your office? We also have some of them in the audience.
How can civil servants work more productively with the ombudsman?
Kwame Addo: It really boils down to the attitude of the division or the area of the city. Because like I said, if the city is really just focused on the negativity around complaints, then they’re not really going to see the benefit that somebody complaining might be able to bring to their business. There are a number of things that can happen, particularly if they’re monitoring complaint trends, issues that seem to be recurring time and time again, they can take steps to address those by bringing in new processes and dealing with them that way.
And so, I think it really depends on the willingness of the city or the civil servant to really forge a good working relationship. Our office needs to be mindful about not getting co-opted by the city. But as I said earlier, it’s really the only way that we can do the work that we need to get done because we just don’t have the capacity to deal with all the things.
We offer best practice ideas about complaint handling, ways to interact with individuals. And there’s a lot of lessons to be learned from some of the investigations that we’ve conducted in the past. And so, referring them to those type of resources.
I’ve always made a point to not only limit our sort of public education to the public and outside agencies, but I think there’s a lot to be learned from engaging with the people that we oversee. Because they get a better understanding of the work and then they don’t have to be fearful of our office because we can, to a certain extent, work with them to try and make things better. Because our goal, I think at the end of the day, is the same. We want things to work better and more fairly for people. Those things are not misaligned. And so, I think that there’s an opportunity for us to work together in partnership.
Elizabeth McIsaac: It’s a bit of a culture change to begin to view this as a performance enhancer as opposed to a performance admonishment.
Kwame Addo: Yeah. Now that our office is now entering our 15th year, we have established a foundation within the DNA of city hall, for lack of a better word. So people have come to know what to expect of the office. My approach has always been one that is not adversarial and really wanting to work in a collaborative way with the city service. And really, the Ombudsman process is supposed to be remedial, not punitive, and so to try to remove the fear from those people who may wish to want to work with us.
I think there’s also, within the city, there may be sort of a culture that they don’t want to… It’s easier to just sort of not try something new for fear of something going wrong and then having to deal with the fallout. So I think to get them out of their comfort zone is a good thing. It can be a good thing sometimes.
Elizabeth McIsaac: The area that you work in in trying to hold the city to account can inevitably sort of begin to touch into the political realities of City Council, of Civil Service, of residents, the electorate, so forth. There’s quite likely limitations of what you can say to this question, but what is your office able to do to manage some of that, to sort of encourage the systemic responses in spite of where councilors may push back? And we know that councillors are vulnerable and sensitive to resident push. So is there a role for your office in this, or is this some of the diplomacy you were talking about earlier?
How do politics affect the ombudsman’s work?
Kwame Addo: I think that it is always recognized that there’s going to be some political element to the work that we do. I think we would be naive if we thought otherwise. It is a delicate balancing act, because as I said earlier, I’m not an elected official. But I think that the way that we can get people onside is to ensure that the work that we do is of high quality; it is unassailable. And it’s important for us to not just create recommendations, but create recommendations that are reasonable and achievable. Because it doesn’t make any sense for us to issue a report and those recommendations just stay on the shelf. It doesn’t do anybody any good.
So I think that a lot of that speaks in the work that we do and the work speaks for itself. And I think that that is really sort of the best calling card that we have: the professionalism of our work, the thoughtfulness, the accuracy. Because one slip-up from us and that’s it. Because we don’t have the ability to issue orders, all we have is our reputation. And if our reputation takes a significant hit, it’s really hard to get that back on track.
Elizabeth McIsaac: There’s a bit of ombudsman envy out there, as in other organizations wanting an ombuds function, be it school boards or other jurisdictions and so forth. What is your advice to residents or users of other systems or organizations or institutional, government-type functions to bring forward an ombuds rule, if there isn’t already that function related to an adjacent institution?
How can an organization or institution set up an ombudsman’s office?
Kwame Addo: There are lots of examples where organizations have decided to bring in an ombudsman or retain ombudsman services to assist. That professionalism to complaint resolution is not something that is apparent in all organizations. It’s also important for the person that’s complaining to feel that they’ve had a fair and impartial look at whatever the concern might be. So it’s probably in their best interest. And from time to time, we do get calls from organizations thinking about, “We’re thinking about setting up an ombuds-type office. What would that look like?”
And there are a lot of examples of what we call organizational ombudsman. So Toronto Hydro, Hydro One has one. The home warranty program Tarion has one. When I was in the university setting, Toronto Metropolitan University had one. It really depends on the structure, how independent they are, who they report to. There has to be some thinking of whether they report to a board or they report to an individual.
So there’s a lot of good literature, a lot of good resources out there. The Forum of Canadian Ombudsman is a good resource. The International Ombudsman Institute is another. They have a lot of information about some of the things that an organization might want to consider when setting up an ombuds-type office. And if anybody has questions or would like to know where they can access these services or these resources, I’d be happy to share them with them.
Elizabeth McIsaac: You’ve given us some good oversight of how the follow-up happens, the process involved. Obviously, there are details that you can’t go into because there may be work in progress, but this has been a tremendous overview of what your office is mandated to do, what you’re able to do, and how we can relate with you in achieving some of the change that we want to see happen in our city. I’m going to give you the final word. Is there anything else you want to add?
Kwame Addo: My journey to the point I’m at now was something that I never envisioned. But I can honestly say that this work is really fulfilling, because I know that at the end of the day, we’re able to really make positive change in a lot of people’s lives. And there’s a lot of job satisfaction that comes with that, and it’s really an interesting area to work in. I encourage people who are curious by nature, like interacting with people, and really problem-solving, not just outside of the box. Because we are not bound by precedent. We can come up with some novel ideas to try and resolve issues. And that’s the type of things that I enjoy about this job. I really feel that we are making a real difference and we have made a difference to how the city of Toronto operates.
Elizabeth McIsaac: I agree. Thank you so much, Kwame. And thank you to our audience for participating, for listening, and for staying there with us for the hour. Thank you.
