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In addressing the changes proposed by Bill 57, I will devote most of my comments to those amendments that affect the Office of the Ombudsman of Ontario, and the Ombudsman Act. Most notable among these are amendments that will expand the mandate of this office into areas that are presently within the mandate of my fellow Officers of the Legislature, the Provincial Advocate for Children and Youth (Child Advocate) and the French Language Services Commissioner.

A father contacted us after he went to pick up his daughters at their after-school program and discovered they were off premises without any prior notice.

Our staff helped two parents whose local school board wanted to charge them more than $6,000 in tuition for their son because his legal guardian lived outside of Ontario – even though the boy did not live with the guardian.

A mother of two sought our help after she was unable to get a response from her school board about why she could not get busing for her four-year-old son, even though her eight-year-old son was being bused to a school closer to home.

We referred a man to the right internal complaint mechanism at the Office of the Children’s Lawyer so he could voice concerns about delays in receiving documents and in setting his court date, all of which resulted in added legal costs for him.

A man serving weekend time in jail who required anxiety medication three times a day sought our help because the correctional facility would not give him his medication on Saturday mornings when he arrived, or on Sunday evenings before he left.

We helped a woman from Manitoba who had struggled for six months to get Legal Aid Ontario to recognize her approval for legal aid in a custody case in Ontario.

A woman who broke her collarbone before she was sent to jail complained to us that she had been waiting for eight days for a sling for her arm.

The Ontario Ombudsman has a long history of independently and impartially resolving and investigating concerns about Ontario’s provincial correctional facilities. Of the more than 21,000 complaints we receive each year, close to 4,000 are about correctional facilities. In addition to resolving countless individual matters, my Office has actively monitored and, when necessary, investigated serious systemic issues within the correctional system.

Since 1974, there have been dozens of cases in which the use of force by police in Ontario – especially the use of lethal force on people in crisis – has raised profound questions about policing standards, training and accountability. As a result, there have been more than a dozen reviews and numerous recommendations for reform. Despite incremental improvements through the years, Ontario’s police oversight system has continued to attract criticism and undermine public confidence in policing. 

Investigation into Legal Aid Ontario’s role in the funding of the criminal defence of Richard Wills.

The Office of the Chief Coroner of Ontario sped up its process, improved its practices and addressed a backlog of cases after the Ombudsman launched an investigation in 2008 into complaints that mandatory inquests were not being held within a reasonable time frame. 

Investigation into the Toronto District and Toronto Catholic District school boards’ oversight of student transportation and their response to delays and disruptions at the start of the 2016-2017 school year.

A woman whose teeth had been damaged as a result of physical abuse by her partner years earlier contacted the Ombudsman for help in obtaining funds to have them fixed.

A primary school student with special needs was put on a waiting list for placement in a support program for children with autism. The boy's mother was told that a spot was unlikely to become available soon. Concerned that her child's needs were not being met, she escalated her concerns with the school board and then called our Office.

The mother of a kindergartner with special needs contacted the Office with concerns about busing services.

The mother of a Grade 4 student was concerned for her son’s safety because he had to cross a busy intersection on his walk to school.

After a teacher-in-charge kept a student out of class for more than two hours over an incident, the student’s mother complained to us about the board’s response to her concerns.

A mother felt that her daughter's school board didn't follow its own rules after she tried to appeal a change to her daughter's school bus route, which effectively doubled the amount of time her daughter spent on the bus.

A woman contacted our Office when she discovered the school board would only bus her granddaughter to a school that was more than twice as far away as the next closest option.