BC institutions should lose their privilege of closing down a complaint in any “early intake” stage that does not require an investigation for an indeterminate amount of time. The right to close a complaint and deny the complainant an impartial appeal must also be revoked.

A controlled, unsubstantiated complaint form must be filled out at the end of every unsubstantiated complaint. The following points must be in plain language for the complainant to understand:

I think the complainant should have the right to amend their complaint and resubmit with any evidence not provided or asked for before a mandatory appeal process. There should even be a form for substantiated complaints that includes a section for any unsubstantiated aspects of the complaint itself.

For example, “Chris” from the EQA department told me over the phone sometime last year that the Ministry knew that “these things happened all the time.” If the EQA department’s phone line isn’t recorded, “some time last year” is too vague, or there is no one named “Chris” in the office, the fact the Ministry claimed to know abuses were taking place all the time but ignored them could not be substantiated through my complaint.

The Ombuds Office would have to do a separate investigation to see how many students attending an EQA-designated institution had called the Ministry and had their complaints ignored. The Ombuds Office could not have verified if “Chris” told me “these things happened all the time.” But it has a provincial mandate to verify if the Ministry knew that EQA-designated institutions were abusing their power to make complaints go away, and had failed to act responsibly.

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