Deadbeat parents get 'free ride'

Ontario lax in collecting cash: Ombud
$1.3B in child, spousal support unpaid

Toronto Star, August 10, 2006, KERRY GILLESPIE, QUEEN'S PARK BUREAU

More than $1.3 billion in child and spousal support remains unpaid because the provincial office responsible for collecting the money doesn't aggressively go after deadbeat parents, says ombudsman Andr Marin.

"Deadbeats in this province have been having a free ride," Marin said yesterday when he released the results of his investigation into the Family Responsibility Office (FRO).

"FRO is lackadaisical in its approach and too laid-back," Marin said.

Taxpayers have also been left on the hook for paying $200 million in social assistance to families left destitute by delinquent support payers, he said.

Marin's report, a scathing indictment of the practices of the Family Responsibility Office, focused on the case of a single father known as Mr. F. His ex-wife got away with pocketing $20,000 on the sale of her home despite being thousands of dollars in arrears on child support because the office put the wrong name on legal documents.

The office is so bad at enforcing support orders the government is at a crossroads, Marin said.

"Either we decide this is an enforcement agency and it's going to do its job in enforcing, or we should ask ourselves the question: Should we not privatize some aspects of the FRO?" he said. Marin said other options could include turning the job over to a private collection agency to ensure support is paid out.

The Family Responsibility Office was set up a decade ago to enforce court-ordered support payments. If someone doesn't pay, the office has sweeping powers including the ability to garnishee wages, suspend drivers' licences and seize proceeds from property sales.

But the office hasn't been aggressively using those powers to make sure the 185,000 families who depend on support payments get what they're supposed to, Marin said. And through "carelessness," the office has botched up cases, like Mr. F's, leaving families without badly needed money, he said.

"For the last decade (FRO) ... has been a money pit for the government and it has been the source of immense frustration by those receiving child-support payments so we need to fix this," Marin said.

Minister of Community and Social Services Madeleine Meilleur, who is responsible for the office, said the government is already on it.

"We have the same goal in mind, it's to help parents and children get the support they're entitled to," Meilleur said. The problems at the office have long been known and the Liberals have increased the budget, toughened up legislation, and are halfway through a four-year transformation plan, she said.

"We're not there yet, but we're aiming all the time at giving better services," she said.

That's not good enough, says Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory.

"From where I come from, if you had $1.3 billion in absolutely uncollected arrears of anything, whoever was in charge of that would lose their job," Tory said, adding Meilleur and her deputy minister should be sacked.

But a closer look at the numbers show most of the arrears were built up under the former Conservative government.

In 1996, when the office was created to replace another government agency, arrears were already at $1 billion. Over the years, they have climbed to today's figure of $1.3 billion.

The $1.3 billion may be an all-time high but it is still a sign of improvement when the number of new cases 1,200 to 1,400 each month are taken into account, Meilleur said.

For Mr. F, unpaid support payments meant he wasn't able to get braces for his teenage son. He said he warned the office his ex-wife was using a new name but they went ahead and issued a writ of seizure on the house in her old name. That meant the writ was legally useless.

"I find them the most inept, unprofessional, callous office in this government," he said.

The office has agreed to Marin's recommendation that it compensate Mr. F $2,400, which was what he would have received from the sale of the home if the office hadn't made a mistake on the name.

The office has also accepted Marin's other recommendations to change its policies to make sure what happened to Mr. F doesn't happen to others.

"Child support is the right of the child, belongs to the child and the means and tools available to enforce that right should be abundant and rigorously applied," Marin said.

with files from Robert Benzie