Dead-beat arrears hit historical high

The Kingston Whig-Standard and other newspapers of the Osprey News Network James Wallace, Queens Park - Friday, August 11, 2006

Dead-beat parents owe an all-time historical high of $1.35 billion in support arrears, Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin has found.

As a consequence, welfare bills in this province have been inflated by some $200 million, Marin concluded in a report released yesterday.

Dead beats in this province have been having a free ride on the backs the citizens of Ontario, he told a Queens Park press conference.

As revealed by Osprey Media earlier this week, Marins report blamed a decade-old, lackadaisical attitude at the provinces Family Responsibility Office (FRO) for having repeatedly frustrated both parents who pay and receive child support.

The office has consistently demonstrated a slavish and blind adherence to rules. The agency also suffers from both a profound attitudinal problem and conflict of identity which results in a failure to aggressively enforce support payments which is its fundamental reason for existing.

When senior officials at the agency and the ministry confronted with specific problems, FRO offered platitudinous excuses or outright evasions and attempts to deny responsibility, Marin said yesterday.

I can tell you for the last decade it has been the bane of existence for overseers in this province, he said.

It has been a money pit for the government and it has been the source of immense frustration for those receiving child support payments.

We need to fix this and put it to rest once and for all, Marin said.

Madeleine Meilleur, the minister of community and social services, said she appreciates the auditors comments and recommendations and will review them.

Meilleur said the government has invested $40 million over four years to reduce wait times, step up arrears enforcement and improve service at the agency.

That has already resulted in fewer public complaints and Read More ..ney being collected, she said.

We have done a lot and were seeing now the results of our investment, Meilleur said. Its not perfect, we know we need to continue the service and that's what were doing.

I'm seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, she said.

The Family Responsibility Office is a government agency created in 1996 to enforce court-ordered child support payments in Ontario.

When courts make a child custody order, FRO is responsible for collecting money from the parent that is paying and directing it to the parent receiving support.

The Supreme Court of Canada recently upheld the principle that support orders should be rigorously enforced.

But that isn't happening in Ontario, Marin said.

Just 70 per cent of the 185,000 support orders filed annually with the office are compliant, which the FRO defines as someone who pays at least 85 per cent of order.

Marin said he takes those numbers with a grain of salt.

I found an instance of someone who was incarcerated, a payer who was incarcerated and they considered that to be compliant because they couldn't enforce payment by someone who is incarcerated, he said.

Marin raised a specific case about a man, Michael, who was owed $5,000 in back support from his wife due their 16-year-old.

When his ex-wife tried to sell her home and the man informed FRO which then botched the execution of a Writ of Seizure and Sale to recover his arrears. Because the woman used her new married name (instead of her maiden name) to sell the property, the Writ couldn't be executed and FRO insisted it had followed its procedures and done nothing wrong.

Marin found FRO had been warned by the man that his ex-wife was using multiple names and had failed to take adequate steps to ensure back support was recovered.

Sadly, this case reflects the very malaise I have been attacking these many months, he said in his report. Administrators have taken a wooden view of their rules and obligations and forgotten that they are dealing with real people.

Marin suggested the agency is at a crossroads and must be fixed, privatized or otherwise set right.

Conservative leader John Tory said Marins report shows the public relations and advertising claims of the Liberal government that they've got this office functioning among the best in the world have proven to be categorically false.

What the Ombudsman has revealed here is another (government) office among many he looks at where people seem to be less concerned about getting results and more concerned about bureaucratic rule making, Tory said.

From where I come from, if you had $1.3 billion in absolutely uncollected arrears, whoever was in charge of that would lose their jobs, he said.

Michael Prue, the NDP critic, called on the Liberals to conduct a full audit of the Family Responsibility Office for failing to enforce child support orders.

The McGuinty government has been ignoring problems at the Family Responsibility Office for three years - now its grown into a billion dollar mess, Prue said. Its time for a full and complete audit of the FRO to investigate if there are other cases like the ones the Ombudsman addressed today.

James Wallace is the Queen's Park bureau chief for the Osprey News Network.