Ombudsman crean takes exit, telling it like it is
The final report of Fiona Crean’s sometimescontroversial tenure as Toronto’s first ombudsman, released Friday, won’t go down as one of her most salacious.
It details what 123 of the city’s paramedics and dispatchers complained were inadequate resources to cope with the acute and specific stresses they encounter on the job. She even lauds the Toronto Paramedic Service’s existing efforts, which include a full-time in-house psychologist and peer support groups for traumatized employees. “The (TPS) is known as a leader,” says Crean. “but, they need a much more coordinated approach toward their planning and service.”
TPS has accepted the report’s recommendations. That’s good news for the city’s paramedics, and all of us who rely on them. but for those of us who greatly appreciate the ombudsman’s office’s contribution, it might have been preferable had Crean gone out with a bang. Considering the incompetence, indifference and skulduggery she and her team have unearthed over the past seven years, the office should really be more popular than it is.
Crean’s reports made the most headlines when they criticized spectacular bureaucratic failures: city staff who cut down an Alzheimer’s-afflicted woman’s perfectly good tree, then slapped her with a $5,000 bill for the privilege; city departments that spent two years trying to find someone at another department to call about sewage backing up into a resident’s basement; residents slapped with inexplicably enormous water bills, in some cases spiking tenfold overnight; vulnerable seniors threatened with eviction by Toronto Community Housing for as little as $400 in arrears.
Coun. James Pasternak once accused Crean of employing “unnecessarily harsh language.” Considering the subject matter, that took some cheek. but then, as Crean says, “City Council is not yet used to having independent oversight.”
Indeed, she likely sealed her fate in 2012 by reporting on then-mayor rob Ford’s meddling in appointments for city boards, agencies and commissions. Her report alleged a list of the mayor’s preferred candidates, but didn’t provide it. Ford and his allies denied it. “making up lists!” Giorgio mammoliti bellowed. Then the list emerged, and they all looked quite ridiculous.
Too vocal, too visible, too solicitous of media attention, too demanding of additional public resources, and perhaps just a left-wing crusader: these were charges commonly levelled against Crean. She dismisses all of them, and is unapologetic about her approach.
“It’s a figment of their imagination,” she says of those who think her reports are politically motivated. “(The reports) tend to be about vulnerability, about poverty, about marginalization, about exclusion” — but not, she insists, by design.
“Often those are the very people that depend on government services more than the likes of you and me. They have much more contact with government, so guess what, things go wrong,” she argues.
She says she’s most proud of systemic changes that resulted from the improperly felled tree and its dementiasuffering owner: the city now has a framework to deal with people of diminished capacity, which will only become more crucial for them — and their children — in coming years.
As for being too vocal in advocating her office, Crean says, “All I’ve done is ruffle some feathers. big whoop.” An ombudsman doing her job properly shouldn’t be popular anyway, she credibly argues. The fact is, if politicians are complaining about an oversight officer’s attitude, as opposed to her opinions, it’s more than likely a good sign.
Asked if she had any regrets, Crean says she would have liked to have the resources to go beyond emergency situations — people losing their jobs, their houses, their sanity — and dig into the “red tape” at City Hall. She cites byzantine and time-consuming licensing procedures for small business owners and a general adherence to rules and regulations at all costs.
“Treating people differently for an equal result is an anathema to public servants,” Crean says, arguing from an equity and human rights standpoint. but really she’s talking about empowering civil servants to solve problems in ways they might not have thought of before. That’s the value of a “fresh eye,” she argues. If council were inclined to provide her successor with greater resources, he or she might find more economic efficiencies than any demand for a one or two per cent budget cut would.
but first councillors would have to come to terms with the oversight in principle. Crean leaves officially Nov. 21, and will take up the role of Hydro One’s new ombudsman. “I have nothing to say about privatization or any of those other roaring debates,” she says. “(but) I know that in an organization that big and complex, delivering a fundamental public asset to people, it is important to have some kind of oversight role that isn’t embedded in the company.”
It’s a concept that has yet to take hold at City Hall as firmly as it ought to have.