(Queen’s Park) – Progressive Conservative MPP Sylvia Jones (Dufferin-Caledon), Critic for Community and Social Services questions why the Liberal government has not made any movement over the last seven years to fix the issues pointed out by the Auditor in his 2003 review of the Family Responsibility Office.
“Although the Office agreed with our 2003 recommendations addressing these issues, this year we again concluded that it is not yet successful in effectively achieving its mandate of collecting unpaid child and spousal support payments,” said Ontario Auditor General Jim McCarter of the Family Responsibility Office (FRO) in his 2010 Annual Report.
Today, the Auditor highlighted a deficient IT system, lengthy delays in getting families registered, 80% of calls to the call centre go unanswered, months before action is taken on a file in arrears, and a lack of managerial oversight as some of the main problem plaguing this agency.
“The McGuinty government has had seven years to address these problems,” said Jones. “I hear from families daily who are frustrated with the lack of service and enforcement from the Family Responsibility Office. Over two-thirds of families registered with the FRO are in arrears. The Ministry needs to take a hard look at this damning report and finally fix the problems.”
After the last report in 2003, the Office spent about $21 million over three and a half years in an attempt to develop a state-of-the-art IT system required to support a new service-delivery model. However, this effort was abandoned in December 2006 without a new system being implemented. Now the office has committed to spending $50 million on another new computer system.
Cases in arrears are up 23% since the 2003 audit, amounting to $1.6 billion. Also, there is almost $3 million held in a “suspense account” at the FRO that have yet to be paid out to families, which the FRO has failed to follow up on.
“We have to remember that these are children who are not receiving their court-ordered child support,” said Jones. “Nearly 20,000 individuals who have their support orders enforced by the FRO collect social assistance, in many cases because their former partners failed to pay spousal or child support. Almost 1,500 cases are in arrears of over $100,000. There are some major problems with this agency that need to be addressed now.”
The Family Responsibility Office has been identified as the second most complained about government agency in Ontario by the Ombudsman.
Ashley Hammill
ashley.hammill@pc.ola.org
