"Voci in Ascolto", or "Listening Voices", is an interview series created by an association of Italian ombudsmen to provide a firsthand account of the experiences of ombudsmen around the world. We thank Dr. Marino Fardelli, Ombudsman of the Lazio Region, for the invitation to participate.
"Voci in Ascolto", or "Listening Voices", is an interview series created by an association of Italian ombudsmen to provide a firsthand account of the experiences of ombudsmen around the world. We thank Dr. Marino Fardelli, Ombudsman of the Lazio Region, for the invitation to participate.
Original Italian version: "Voci in Ascolto"
My background is in law, and I began my career as a barrister practising criminal law. In 2009, I was appointed as Canada’s first Taxpayers’ Ombudsman to establish a federal office to promote compliance with the Taxpayers Bill of Rights and ensure that taxpayers were treated fairly and served professionally by the Canada Revenue Agency. In 2016, I was appointed Ombudsman of Ontario, Canada’s largest province, and re-appointed for a second five-year term in 2021. It has been an honour and a privilege to be able to elevate my work on promoting rights and access to justice from an individual level to a provincial level in the service of 16 million Ontarians.
My office oversees more than 1,000 public sector organizations at the provincial and municipal levels. Our oversight is very broad because in Canada, the provinces – such as Ontario – and municipalities are responsible for delivering the majority of public services to residents. These are services like health care, education, and financial support for people with disabilities. We handle over 30,000 cases per year and resolve most of them quite efficiently and effectively. Over 52% are resolved within two weeks.
Our mission is to be an effective agent of positive change for the people of Ontario by enhancing government and public sector fairness, accountability and transparency, as well as promoting a respect for rights.
Our vision is for a public sector that serves Ontarians in a way that is fair, accountable, transparent and respectful of their rights.
The French Language Services Commissioner, who protects the right to receive government services in French, is an important part of our team since Ontario has a significant Francophone population. We are also the Ombudsman for children and youth in Ontario. We work to make sure the rights of children and youth are respected by the many government and public sector bodies that interact with them and their families. In fact, we have a specialized Children and Youth Unit to handle complaints and investigations relating to child protection services.
Our focus is on fair treatment and respect for Ontarians’ rights. A lot of our work is about resolving problems affecting adults and children in their day-to-day lives. In most cases, we resolve individual complaints, but we also look for solutions to system-level problems. Our systemic investigations focus on practical, evidence-based recommendations to help fix those problems, improve public administration, and benefit all Ontarians.
The complaints we receive regarding public services are typically about delays, poor communication or lapses in communication, poor service, administrative errors, unclear or confusing information or decisions, and whether or not policies have been applied fairly. All of these can affect the public’s rightful access to programs or benefits.
More specifically, my office receives significant numbers of complaints about municipalities, school boards, administrative tribunals (which are separate from the courts), and social benefits programs. We have oversight of more than 400 municipalities in Ontario, so municipal services generate a large number of complaints.
Of course, our work also involves the protection of fundamental rights. For example, we oversee provincial jails, which typically house inmates serving sentences shorter than two years. Complaints from inmates and their family members about living conditions and safety in jails is consistently the top complaint to our office. We also handle a high volume of complaints relating to children and youth in foster care or in youth detention facilities.
We recently released a report on our investigation into how adults with developmental disabilities are being inappropriately and unnecessarily housed in hospitals, waiting for months or even years to be transferred to housing in their communities that can support them and help them live full and dignified lives. The fact that our system continues to rely on hospitals as a default placement is not only inefficient – it is unfair and, at times, inhumane.
Part of our investigation process involved talking to individuals with developmental disabilities living in hospitals, and to their families and caregivers, and finding solutions to their individual problems. We were able to help six people move out of hospital beds and into appropriate housing in their communities, where they can access the right kinds of services and have a better quality of life.
I made 24 recommendations to the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services – which both play a role in this issue – so they can work together effectively to ensure adults with developmental disabilities are not left to languish in hospitals. The ministries have accepted all my recommendations and have committed to implementing them. We will monitor their progress regularly.
The problem is extremely complex, and the solutions are not necessarily easy, but raising this issue publicly through our investigation, our recommendations, and regular monitoring can help hundreds of vulnerable Ontarians live better, and by extension it benefits everyone else in the province by improving the way the government manages health care and social services.
The work of our French Language Services Unit, under the direction of the French Language Services Commissioner, is another way we help protect citizens’ rights in a concrete way. Everyone has the right to communicate with and receive services from the government of Ontario in French. Ombudsman Ontario helps ensure that linguistic rights under the French Language Services Act are respected. We help people having difficulty accessing services in French from a government or public sector organization. In addition, we offer all of our services in French, not just English.
Our Annual Report is full of examples of ways we have resolved individual issues and helped protect citizens’ right to public services.
Ombudsman offices around the world face insecurity and threats to their work. We don’t take our situation for granted here in Ontario. We strive to demonstrate the value of our work on a daily basis to both the public and government administrators. As I said in my speech during the 2023 International Conference of Ombudsmen in Rome, during my Ombudsman career in Canada at both the national and provincial levels, I have been in constant outreach mode to inform and educate the people and agencies we serve about my role.
Security of tenure, including stable funding, is one challenge I have spoken publicly about in recent years, and I often stress the importance of collaboration and mutual support across Ombudsman offices. This is also why my office values membership in organizations like the Canadian Council of Parliamentary Ombudsman and the International Ombudsman Institute. These organizations have also spoken out in support of my office in the past when the provincial government considered making changes to the law that would have fundamentally undermined my office’s independence, impartiality and non-partisan nature.
We urgently need to enlist allies who can help defend the Ombudsman institution by countering misinformation and disinformation and emphasizing its value to liberal democracy. We must strive to position ourselves as not just valuable, but indispensable.
Our office’s core values include independence and impartiality. More concretely, this means we seek to build appropriate and productive relationships based on trust and credibility, treat everyone with dignity and respect, offer accessible service, and strive for the highest professional standards by delivering efficient service and high-quality work.
I often give presentations about relationship-building and the importance of trust and collaboration. These are vitally important to the work of an Ombudsman. We cannot be an effective democratic institution and make an impact as an oversight mechanism without trust-based relationships and credibility.
We focus on collaboration and cooperation. It’s not about “naming, blaming, and shaming.” We are actually looking for those “win-win-wins” – cases where citizens’ concerns are addressed, the institution’s work is validated or improved, and we’ve demonstrated our value. And we strive to do that by resolving complaints without conducting an investigation, which is always a last resort.
For members of the public, we’re a safe, accessible place to raise concerns about public services.
For government administrators, we’re here to help them in their work, in two ways (I call this our value proposition): The first is by validating good work through independent, impartial review of complaints. We remain neutral and rely on evidence to assess an issue. The second is by offering constructive feedback and best practices to strengthen governance, improve processes, and promote fairness. We focus on practical solutions when we make recommendations for change. Our recommendations are overwhelmingly accepted, and millions of Ontarians have benefited as a result.
We are an active member of 10 Ombudsman organizations in Canada and worldwide, including the International Ombudsman Institute, the Canadian Council of Parliamentary Ombudsman, the International Association of Language Commissioners, the Canadian Council of Child and Youth Advocates, and the Association des Ombudsmans et des Médiateurs de la Francophonie.
In the spirit of continued collaboration, we have also signed Memoranda of Understanding with several of our international colleagues -- including the Hong Kong Ombudsman, the Netherlands Ombudsman, the Ombudsman of Curaçao, and the Chief Ombudsman of Thailand – and Canadian counterparts, namely, the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages of Canada. A cornerstone of Ombudsman work is the ongoing collaboration and exchange of knowledge with esteemed colleagues in the global Ombudsman community.
We also follow internationally recognized principles that define, promote and protect the role of the Ombudsman in strengthening democracy and promoting fundamental rights, namely, the Venice Principles and the United Nations Resolution on the Ombudsman.
Most recently, as part of our 50th anniversary events, my office hosted an international symposium with participants from Ombudsman and oversight offices from all over the world -- an event that encouraged stimulating discussions about our role in promoting procedural fairness, protecting rights, and evolving to meet the demands of these complex times.
I constantly feel inspired and invigorated by the work of my global Ombudsman colleagues. We can learn from the challenges and celebrate in the successes of other offices like ours, whose mandate to protect democracy has never been more crucial. I envy the degree to which European Ombudsman are able to come together in person to strategize, share best practices, and support each other. This was reinforced when I was privileged to attend the wonderful conference in Rome a couple of years ago.
We must remain current with the international standards, principles, and tools that protect and strengthen our institutions. Those of us who have seen our work trigger changes in policy and legislation know this to be true. Personally, I appreciate seeing how offices around the world have relied on and applied international standards such as the Venice Principles to protect and bolster the important work we do.
Our office has grown tremendously in its scope of oversight since its founding 50 years ago. We are focusing now on developing an Indigenous Services Plan to guide us in how we deliver services to Indigenous people in Ontario, which is home to the largest Indigenous population in Canada. Putting the recommendations of the national Truth and Reconciliation Commission into action is a priority for this Office, and developing an Indigenous Services Plan is a transformative opportunity to increase our cultural humility, competence and responsiveness. This plan signals our long-term commitment to reconciliation and building trust so that we can provide services for a better shared future.
When the Office of the Ombudsman was first proposed in 1975, Ontario’s government pledged it would “ensure the protection of our citizens against arbitrary judgment or practices.” Over the past five decades, we have remained a steadfast advocate for transparency, fairness, and accountability, working alongside democratic institutions across Canada and around the globe.
We are stronger when we stand united, ensuring that fairness, accountability, and the protection of rights continue to be the cornerstones of our public institutions.
