From falling acorns to utility bills, watchdog helps Torontonians fight city hall

City ombudsman Susan Opler says her office helped more than 1,500 residents last year who were unsatisfied with city services.

Thestar.com
March 24, 2017
By David Rider

Complaints about Toronto city staff and services last year ranged from a man whose car was damaged by falling acorns to a mom whose welfare benefits were improperly terminated.

City ombudsman Susan Opler said her office helped 1,540 residents unsatisfied with services they received from the city - “a steady and large number of complaints” involving a tiny fraction of the total interactions with Toronto’s bureaucracy.

The biggest problem is communications, Opler said, with some city staff not understanding how their own policies work, or residents misunderstanding the way the city deals with an issue, or both.

“Communications problems pervade virtually every case that we deal with,” said the lawyer, who took over the office of last resort for Torontonians having no luck fighting city hall in September 2016.

Opler cited a homeowner who signed a form redirecting utility bills to his tenant while he was abroad. Nobody told him that would cancel pre-authorized payments for the utilities and city staff refused to reverse all the penalties for nonpayment.

“There was a failure by the city to communicate,” she said. In the end, the man had to pay arrears because the city had made no errors, but the form was changed to warn people that redirecting bills ends any pre-authorization arrangement.

Some other cases cited in Opler’s annual report:

• Acorns falling from a tree in a park dented a car in a neighbouring driveway. The city paid a claim to the owner and suggested he park on-street, but wanted to charge him for a pass. After the motorists asked the ombudsman for help, the city granted him on-street parking for acorn season.

• A woman was cut off city-administered Ontario Works benefits partly because she refused to seek legal custody of her three children from their father, with whom she had a “delicate” relationship. The ombudsman discovered the city had no authority to compel her to seek custody. The city apologized, agreed to reinstate her benefits, with back payment, and to improve staff training.

• After a complaint, the ombudsman discovered some city-run long-term care homes were breaking provincial law by not offering residents kosher food. The city agreed to contract a third party to provide kosher meals at no extra cost.

• A Toronto Community Housing resident who witnessed a violent crime outside her home was refused a priority transfer and ended up living in a shelter with her child. Somebody broke into her vacant unit and left a weapon in her child’s drawer. The woman got a new home only after the ombudsman found TCH’s transfer denial was “not in keeping with their policy.”

Opler predecessor Fiona Crean repeatedly asked city council to boost the ombudsman’s budget, saying restraint imperiled her ability to conduct wide-ranging probes of systemic problems bedevilling Torontonians.

Council this year cut the ombudsman’s $1.834 million budget to $1.81 million, after Mayor John Tory convinced his colleagues to ask all city departments to find 2.6 per cent in savings.

“If we had a larger budget we could have a bigger impact ... ” Opler said, adding she does not think the cut will reduce the number of investigations this year. Instead, her office is looking at using less formal, and less costly, “inquiries” to handle some complaints and reserving formal investigations for “very large, systemic issues.”