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Thursday, September 17, 2015

Ryan Thomas Speaks - a PA Story

I came across this personal account of a man who was Alienated as a boy - and has/is (somewhat) recovered.  Go to his channel if you want to see more of these very inspiring videos.

[I met a 52yo man this summer who told me almost the same story.  He reconnected with his Dad before he past away from Cancer.  He now keeps a safe emotional distance away from his mom/sisters as he felt that they never recovered from the experience and were happy to perpetuate for their own gain.  He realized his loss.]

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Ontario FRO is subject to Ombudsman Office Review - unlike Alberta

Upon searching for an article about an Ontario Dad who was challenging the practice of FRO (Family Responsibility Office - equivalent of Alberta's MEP) to intercept Child Support payments when a creditor has been on welfare - until the "Crown Arrears" are extinguished - I found alot of material about various oversight of FRO actions.

This is interesting as - similar to other problem areas within Government like Child & Family Services - the tradition of having a Minister act as overseer seems to have failed in Alberta during the 42yr run of the Alberta Progressive Conservatives.  The Ombudsman takes on that role - where politicians have failed.

1) Ontario Ombudsman can investigate complaints about FRO



























In this July 28, 2015 CBC article Andre Marin puts FRO on notice for it's poor performance over 2015/14 - no doubt exacerbated by the damaging CBC slam-job against "Deadbeat Parents" (corrected from "Deadbeat Dads" only after vociferous complaint.) in Oct 2014.  It is notable that the Ontario Ombudsman Office actually tallys complaint and their status - and follows-up to see decide if they can move the issue on.

In Alberta neither of these options exist. If there is a problem you have to prove it can be escalated - normally to the very person who created the problem in the first place.  This may be improved a bit by the new "Case Management" system recently put in place at MEP - but that remains to be seen.

Here are some of the most recent complaints against FRO and how they were resolved by the Ombudsman's Office (various dates selected from July 28, 2015 - June 23, 2014).





















































































































































It is also interesting to see that FRO is #2 on the Top 10 Departments complained about to the Ombudsman'sa Office.


Furthermore, here are the Top 5 Reasons for Complaints.

























2) April 2010 Report by Ontario Auditor General on FRO.
  • 80% of Telephone calls don't get answered
  • Payers and recipients do not have direct access to their assigned enforcement services officer
  • There is only limited access to enforcement staff because many calls to the Office do not get through or are terminated before they can be answered.
  • The Office is reviewing and working on only about 20% to 25% of its total cases in any given year.
"At the end of our audit in April 2010, there were approximately 91,000 bring-forward notes outstanding (FRO has 190,000 Cases), each of which is supposed to trigger specific action on a case within one month. The status of almost one-third of the outstanding bring-forward notes was “open,” indicating either that the notes had been read but not acted upon, or that they had not been read at all, meaning that the underlying nature and urgency of the issues that led to these notes in the first place was not known. In addition, many of the notes were between one and two years old."

"For ongoing cases, the Office took almost four months from the time the case went into arrears before taking its first enforcement action. For newly registered cases that went straight into arrears, the delay was seven months from the time the court order was issued."

3) MEP is a small department within Alberta Justice

All Alberta Ministry's release their "Annual Reports" on June 30 - the last step after finalizing the year-end on March 31 and after Budget Plans have been prepared, approved and released (usefully by April).   Here are all the Financials Reports for Alberta Justice.

MEP is a large part of Justice Services Group which only comprises $38 million Expense allocation of the $1.25 billion budget allocation for Alberta Justice.  Off-setting MEP Direct Expenses of $22 million are approximately $6 million per year in fees generated from Arrears and Late payments. The MEP Trust Account was about $11 million on March 31 and acts as a "holding tank" for payments "in transit" as received from Debtors/Payors and before forwarded on to Creditors/Recipients. It should probably bear a rough relationship to the Gross Value of payments that flow through MEP each year - likely only a week or so.



Also a brief comment on MEP Operational Developments and Future Plans.  The legislative changes to including Recalc Program (RC) clauses - plus setting a base rate of Alberta Minimum Wage for a 44hr Work Week became effective March 2, 2015.





































Detailed descriptions of initiatives are on p28 but in general major objectives are:
Ongoing initiatives to increase regularity of payment include the following:
 • Continuation of initiatives to streamline processes, allowing staff to focus more attention on bringing files into compliance.
• Improving internal communications to increase consistency in handling files and applying enforcement actions across the Program.
 Re-allocating internal resources to reduce call wait times and provide clients prompt, proactive service. 
• Continuing to work closely with our reciprocating partners across Canada and elsewhere, to identify best practices, harmonize policies where appropriate, and streamline processes when clients move from one jurisdiction to another
Among each department are "Performance Benchmarks" that give some measurable, tangible target. For MEP it is the Compliance Rate of Debtors meeting their required monthly payments - in this case 72% a slight drop from last year due to the Oil Price impact on Rig Workers - and below the target of 73% (p11).



Alberta's MEP has recently finished a top-to-bottom Business Process Re-engineering program to weed-out unproductive/un-clear processes and integrate with updated software procedures - so how that will work is anyone's guess.  But it is noteworthy that outside "clients" were not included in anyway - typical of the know-it-all bureaucrats at Alberta Justice.  But this has always been the case.

As a small budget entry that mostly employs low-status, non-lawyers in a percieved "data-entry/call-center" environment - MEP gets little official attention within Alberta Justice.  Yet in Ontario its equivalent - FRO - is the second largest generator of complaints and I bet that is the same thing here in Alberta.

4) A discussion of the usefulness of setting targets for Compliance is conducted here - in this article from the London School of Economics - that points out how a very large component of Arrears are  "non-collectable" bringing into question exactly what the true purpose of a collection enterprise like MEP is.  In truth Arrears are not the focus for MEP - it is to maintain Compliance with current Court-ordered Support Obligations.

5) Finally, here is a Canadian Lawyers views on why Arrears are a figment of most peoples imagination.


PDF1 - CBC Article about Andre Marin

PDF2 - Ontario Ombudsman Investigations - Sept 2015

PDF3 - Ontario Auditor General April 2010 Report of FRO