Before Prime Minister Martin came to power he spoke often and long about reforms to reduce the democratic deficit. But an obvious reform that escaped his attention is the creation of a federal ombudsman plan to handle complaints from citizens about unfair treatment and maladministration. Since the February release of the auditor general’s report on the sponsorship scandal, he has also talked loud and long about the need for transparency and accountability. A national ombudsman scheme would help to meet both of these objectives. And it would greatly reduce the democratic deficit, not only by remedying thou- sands of citizen complaints, but also by improving adminis- tration with its recommendations.
The fact that the provinces have been operating suc- cessful ombudsman plans for many years means that a national ombudsman would be a popular, well-tested reform whose benefits clearly outstrip its cost. In the 1970s the provinces were world leaders in adopting this reform, which has since spread throughout the democratic world at all levels of government. There are now national ombuds- man systems in 65 democratic countries. It is ironic that the headquarters of the International Ombudsman Institute is located in Canada, and that the federal government has been promoting the ombudsman idea in developing democ- racies, yet has never implemented a general scheme of its own. In these countries an ombudsman is widely regarded as one of the indispensable pillars of a democratic society.
By now there is certainly plenty of experience on which to base a federal scheme. Besides the provinces, nearly all of the western democracies now have a national ombudsman system. So our federal government has dropped well behind them, as it has with other democratic reforms. Australia, for instance, has an elected senate, a federal adminsitrative court, a law protecting whistleblowers, and not only an ombuds- man for each state but also a federal ombudsman system that has been operating with great success for nearly 30 years. This office now handles more than 17,000 complaints and over 23,000 inquiries yearly. Yet it is done with fewer than a hun- dred employees. Canada’s population is much larger than Australia’s, and its political system is much the same. So these figures reveal the tremendous number of citizen complaints that are never remedied at the federal level in Canada. A democracy should be ashamed of treat- ing its citizens in this way.
Each year the provincial ombuds- men receive thousands of complaints against federal departments and agencies that they are powerless to remedy. They became so frustrated about this that in 1999 the Canadian Ombudsman Association, composed mainly of provin- cial ombudsmen, issued a discussion paper and held a press conference in Ottawa urging the federal government to create a national scheme, but so far to no avail. The collective experience of the provincial ombudsmen would make it much easier to design a national scheme.
Interestingly, Stephen Owen, Martin’s minister of public works, was former- ly the ombudsman in British Columbia and at that time was one of the main lobbyists for a federal scheme. The asso- ciation’s discussion paper contained an extensive extract from an article of his which pointed out that ”œan ombuds- man, as an officer of the legislature, can…provide citizens with direct, acces- sible, timely, impartial, confidential and effective remedies to bureaucratic unfairness.” If he could persuade the Martin government to adopt a national scheme, his experience would be invaluable in its design.
Other national organizations that in recent years have advocated a nation- al scheme are: the Canadian Bar Association (1990), the Law Reform Commission of Canada (1991), the National Council of Women of Canada (1993), and the Canadian Federation of University Women (1997). So it seems clear that there would be wide public support for the idea.
Why the federal government has so far failed to adopt a scheme to match the provincial ones is somewhat of a mystery. The superiority of the ombuds- man system to other methods of reme- dying citizen complaints, such as through members of Parliament, the courts or the press, was already well doc- umented when the provinces adopted their plans. Since then this superiority has been fully demonstrated by the experience of many countries. And over the years there have been many studies and proposals for a federal system.
A main reason for the federal failure to adopt may be the fear that a strong ombudsman would be too critical of the government in power. In 1978 the Trudeau government was on the point of adopting a scheme, but then with- drew its bill, perhaps because at that very time there was a war of words beween the Ontario government and its ombudsman. There may have been a fear among the federal ministers that an ombudsman would make embarrassing revelations of government wrongdoing. This fear may have continued, because the Liberals have been in power most of the time since. It is a truism that the longer a government is in power, the more it has to hide.
Another reason may be that the federal government began creating spe- cialized ombudsmen for particular departments or agencies where the need was most obvious. So it could argue that a general plan was not needed. But some of them are not fully independent because they were created by the execu- tive rather than Parliament. Examples of executive ones are the ombudsmen for the armed forces, Indian and Northern Affairs, and the postal service. Examples of ones created by law are the ombuds- man for prisons, and the language, pri- vacy and information commissioners.
To the average citizen the federal public service is frighteningly big and complex. Altogether it has over half a million employees, work- ing in more than fifty departments and department-like agencies, and in over a hundred semi-independent boards, commissions and corpora- tions. For this reason it is hard to understand why the federal govern- ment hasn’t created an ombudsman scheme that supervises all administrative agencies.
One problem with such a scheme is the difficulty of integrating the exist- ing specialized offices into it. However, this could be done by making the gov- erning head of the scheme a multi- member commission instead of a single ombudsman. The heads of the specialized offices could then become members of the commission, with oth- ers added to take care of other admin- istrative segments, as the ombudsmen do in Sweden. A chairman of the com- mission could then be appointed to oversee the whole scheme. Such a plu- ral commission could use its collective wisdom to decide the more difficult cases, as the ombudsman commission does in Austria. And the current exec- utive ombudsmen would then be inde- pendent of the department or agency they are monitoring because they would be established by law.
If such a system had existed earlier, pri- vacy commissioner Radwanski would have been supervised by the chairman of the commission and thus would not have been free to run his own show so arbitrarily. And if the ombudsman com- mission had been given the usual power of protecting the identity of public ser- vants as well as citizens, the sponsorship affair might have been nipped in the bud long before it became a scandal, because public servants could have blown the whistle on their superiors to the commis- sion without fear of retaliation. It is inter- esting that the model whistleblower law prepared for the Organization of American States refers to the office to which the whistleblower takes his information as the Ombudsman Office.
Now that he is leading a new gov- ernment, Prime Minister Martin has a golden opportunity to reduce the democratic deficit and to leave a per- manent legacy by instituting this important democratic reform. It would no doubt be supported enthusi- astically by the other political parties, so that it could be quickly adopted and implemented. If his government fails to do this before the next elec- tion, the other political parties should add it to their electoral platforms and should press whatever party forms the government to implement it.
