Slow start for office to help victims

A federal office devoted to victim rights that the Conservative government set up as it braced for a possible snap election in the spring of 2007 is only now becoming fully operational.
But Justice Minister Rob Nicholson denies he rushed the new federal ombudsman for victims of crime to fulfil a Conservative pledge from the 2006 election as the next one appeared to be approaching.

Government documents indicate staff and infrastructure for the new ombudsman, longtime victim-rights advocate Steve Sullivan, took 18 months to put in place because no budget existed when the position was hastily created in April 2007.

The documents show Parliament was unable to vote on a $1.5-million budget for the office until months later, after the Justice Department was able to include the funding in its supplementary spending estimates in the House of Commons.

Until then, funding was shifted from other areas in the department that had money to spare, said an aide to Nicholson.

Once Parliament approved the supplementary spending estimates, "amounts advanced by the Department of Justice were returned."

A member of Nicholson's staff and Sullivan rejected suggestions that the office was slow to start up because of under-funding for its first year.

New Democrat MP Joe Comartin, however, says the documents and Sullivan's own description of the functions of his office over the long start-up period indicate the government was misleading voters with its claim it had fulfilled a campaign pledge.

"It's a false claim," said Comartin. "It speaks to really shoddy planning, because of the political impetus to get it up and running in anticipation of an election that didn't come."

Sullivan said in a series of recent interviews that, in the end, his office spent only $750,000 of the $1.5 million the government allocated for its first year.

He also confirmed that until recently, notably over its first year of operation, the office depended primarily on temporary staff while it went through the internal process of selecting and hiring full-time employees, including two whose job was investigating any complaints from victims that the office received.

Sullivan also acknowledged he has not yet submitted a formal report to Nicholson about his work and the office's accomplishments for its first 18 months of existence.