That’s the promise of the Ombudsman of British Columbia. A crucial check on abuse and wrongdoing, the Ombudsman ensures integrity in government and the rule of law by promoting fairness betweengovernment and citizens. His mandate reminds us that – in a democracy – citizens, not governments, are sovereign.
As a legislative committee considers the re-appointment of current Ombudsman Howard Kushner, British Columbians must ask whether the Ombudsman is effective. The B.C. Civil Liberties Association’s view is that the promise of the Ombudsman’s office has fallen too short in recent years.
The Ombudsman promotes fairness for British Columbians by investigating complaints or his own concerns about government decisions, policies and programs that may be unfair.
His power is limited to making recommendations. His authority thus depends in large part upon his ability to marshal public interest and scrutiny to pressure governments to remedy their unfair action.
How can we measure Kushner’s effectiveness? What about looking to “objective” statistics? For example, the number of intakes to his office have declined since the peak of 24,462 intakes in 1993 to 11,865 in 1999, the year Kushner became Ombudsman, to 8,563 in 2004. In 1999, his office opened 8,297 jurisdictional files for investigation and 4,791 in 2004.
From 1999-2004, Mr. Kushner produced five special reports and five public reports. Dulcie McCallum, Kushner’s predecessor from 1992 to 1999, issued six special and seven or eight public reports. Stephen Owen, Ombudsman from 1986 to 1992, released no special reports and 24 or 25 public
reports.
An imperfect indicator, our search of the Canadian Newsstand Database reveals that Kushner’s name appeared in 57 articles in the National Post, Vancouver Sun and Victoria Times-Colonist since 1999 while Ms. McCallum’s name appeared in 143 articles during her tenure. Stephen Owen’s name came up 488 times in the Vancouver Sun alone before he left the Ombudsman’s job in July of 1992.
Of course, one needs to be cautious about statistics. Mr. Kushner’s Annual Reports (www.ombud.gov.bc.ca) cite others in his favour including positive performance numbers. Maybe his style is to work diligently behind the scenes. And to be fair to Kushner and his staff, they have been hampered by severe budget cuts. Between 2002/03 and 2004/05, his office’s budget was cut 35 per cent by the government. These cuts have not yet been restored.
To cope with these cuts, Kushner closed his Vancouver office and refused to accept complaints (with some exceptions) about local governments and professional associations.
Whatever the objective statistics, the Office of the Ombudsman no longer enjoys the public profile and status that it once enjoyed. This loss of profile and status is bound to have negative consequences for the effectiveness of the Ombudsman’s office – whether that be measured by the number of people turning to him for help or governments looking or listening to him for advice to get out of a jam.
Watchdogs must be careful about barking too often and too loudly at the risk of being ignored. But bark forcefully and judiciously they must if they are to have any bite at all.
On balance, we believe that it is time for a new dog to nip at the heels of government.
Jason Gratl is the president of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association and Murray Mollard is its executive director.
