November 5, 2003 - 3 — Le Protecteur du citoyen

33rd Annual Report of the Québec Ombudsman (2002-2003)

"Going the extra mile"

The Québec Ombudsman – data

During the 2002-2003 fiscal year, there was 13.8% less requests than the previous year, dropping from 25,249 to 21,763. After full inquiries, a total of 5,316 interventions were completed. Complaints were substantiated in 1,435 of the cases, which means that 27% of the cases investigated were from citizens who were justified in filing a complaint regarding public services.

Requests for information regarding the Québec Ombudsman, cases where the latter had to refuse to intervene based on grounds relevant to its governing law and cases where the intervention was interrupted amount to 3,750. Furthermore, 11,446 requests were found to be outside the Québec Ombudsman's jurisdiction. Finally, the Québec Ombudsman referred 1,348 citizens to the appropriate department within the ministries or organizations or to their complaints offices.
The Québec Ombudsman exercises her jurisdiction regarding over 90 Quebec government ministries and organizations, of which 70 were the object of complaints during the year. Obviously, any Government department and organization that provides services directly to the public are most often referred to. Almost 80% of all requests reviewed refer to the same six departments and organizations; the Ministère de la Sécurité publique (3,209; 30.8%), the Ministère de l'Emploi et de la Solidarité (1,784; 17.1%); the Ministère du Revenu (1,112; 10.7 %), the Commission de la santé et de la sécurité du travail (881; 8.5%), the Société de l'assurance automobile du Québec (814; 7.8%) and the Ministère de l'Éducation (341; 3.3%).
Among the ministries and organizations that have brought to bear at least 75 interventions completed during the year, the following five ministries and organizations had a rate of substantiated complaints exceeding 30%:

Ministries and organizations	Number of substantiated complaints	Rate of substantiated complaints
Ministère des Relations avec les citoyens et de l'Immigration	41 / 79	51,9 %
Société de l'assurance automobile du Québec	183 / 524	34,9 %
Régie de l'assurance maladie du Québec	66 / 205	32,2 %
Commission de la santé et de la sécurité du travail	116 / 365	31,8 %
Ministère de la Sécurité publique	513 / 1 633	31,4 %

As for substantiated complaints, remedies were granted in 1,321 of 1,435 cases or 92%.
The Québec Ombudsman mentioned that objectives have been met regarding processing delays of requests for services. 96% of the requests that were found to be outside the jurisdiction of the Québec Ombudsman (mostly requests for information) were handled within two working days, while 79% of inquiries were completed within a month.

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