Ombudsman works to ensure fair treatment for Albertans

Ryan says her office works to find the balance between not being an advocate and finding the right path forward. She also says they’ve been working hard lately to make more Albertans aware of what it is they do.

“Part of it is the name. ‘Ombudsman’ doesn’t really say what we do. So we’re trying to get the word out about what we do and help people,” she said.

“We sell ourselves as the ‘last resort.’ If you have gone through all avenues of appeal in a particular area and you still don’t feel you’ve been treated fairly in an administrative process, you can come to us.”

The Alberta Ombudsman office, which has been around since 1967, had its busiest year ever in 2018 in receiving around 5,000 complaints. About 1,500 of them were within the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction, while the others were referred elsewhere for assistance.

“It could be because of the economic downturn. It may be because we’ve been really robust in our outreach. The more people know about it, the more complaints go up” Ryan speculated.

“Quite often we will spend hours helping people because they may be from vulnerable areas (of the population) – they may be seniors, people with special needs – that need that extra help. We will take the time to get them on the right path.”

The Alberta Ombudsman can make recommendations to appropriate provincial ministries for changes they feel are necessary. They also have the ability to use what’s called an “Own Motion” if a trend or pattern has been found of issues with administrative fairness of a program or department. An example of this came last year following a review of the province’s Mental Health Review Panels.

“We made nine recommendations to the previous Minister of Health, and she accepted all nine. It was almost a year to review and come up with those recommendations.”

Ryan, who had a 35-year career with the RCMP, feels the Ombudsman role has been a good fit for her personally because she gets to continue serving the public.

“I looked into it and thought I would really find this work interesting, because I wasn’t really ready to hit the golf course four days a week,” she joked.

The fact that all municipalities in Alberta are now under the jurisdiction of the Ombudsman also appealed to her.

“Let’s say someone has a complaint here in Red Deer, and it has to do with water drainage from their property, that there has been some regrading done to their neighbour’s property, and city inspectors have come out and said there’s no issue. You’re still frustrated and have made your complaint and gone through that process, you can come to us now and we’ll take a look at it.”

Ryan says her office received 461 complaints regarding municipalities last year and feels that number will expand as word gets out about the Alberta Ombudsman now having jurisdiction over them.

Ryan also serves at the province’s Public Interest Commissioner dealing with public servants.

“If you are in the public service or a government ministry, and you see something that we’ll call a wrongdoing, we’ll protect your identity and we’ll investigate. And if you lose your job because someone thinks you are whistleblowing, we can also investigate that.”

Overall, Ryan notes that about two-thirds of all decisions reviewed by her office last year were made fairly.

“People do treat people fairly. But sometimes people just want that independent body saying ‘Yeah, I was treated fairly. I may not be happy with the decision, but I was treated fairly.’”

You can contact Ryan’s office by visiting www.ombudsman.ab.ca or following @AB_ombudsman on Twitter.

by Troy Gillard

Ombudsman works to ensure fair treatment for Albertans

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