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Jay Chalke helps ombuds and the merely ombuds-curious get to grips with the role

July 17, 2025

OsgoodePD

When Jay Chalke got his first taste of ombudsing back in the mid-1980s, there weren’t many places a fledgling professional like him could turn for advice about what the job would entail.

The Office of the Ontario Ombudsman was barely a decade old when Chalke – a fresh call to the province’s bar – landed a role as a correctional and psychiatric services investigator.

“There’s no university degree in ombudsing, so everyone learns on the job – including me,” says Chalke.

Now serving as the British Columbia Ombudsperson, he is one of the most experienced in the business, having recently celebrated his tenth anniversary in the job – a tenure that makes him the longest-serving ombudsman in that province’s history.

These days, prospective ombuds still have to be comfortable with practical learning, although the formal educational landscape has developed, Chalke says. For example, he is currently co-program director of Osgoode’s Essentials for Ombuds, a certificate program offered jointly with the Forum of Canadian Ombudsman, sharing duties with Hydro One Ombudsman Sophie Petrillo.

“The Osgoode Essentials program is a wonderful foundational course for people who are already working in ombuds offices or are simply ombuds-curious and have an interest in getting into the field,” Chalke says.

The five-day certificate program, which will run for the 14th time over a week from September 22-26, is a comprehensive look at the theory and practice of the ombuds role, covering issues and concerns arising at every stage of the complaints and investigations processes, as well as how to bring a principled approach to common problems that can arise for an ombudsman or their staff.

“It’s both broad and deep – an in-depth survey of ombuds work,” Jay Chalke adds.

Although Chalke harboured an interest in international relations during his youth, he found his calling in the legal profession. Mental health law was a focus of his work from an early stage, inspired by a law school clinic course that exposed him to the legal needs of patients at the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre and reinforced by his articling term with mental health law pioneers Barry Swadron and Susan Himel, now a judge of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.

That experience smoothed Chalke’s transition to his original ombudsing position investigating correctional and psychiatric services, but it would be some three decades before he returned to the sector as B.C. Ombudsperson in 2015.

In between, Chalke served in a number of public service roles across the country, including as Deputy Public Guardian and Trustee of Ontario and Head of the Review of Certain Practices in New Brunswick Correctional Institutions. Following an 11-year tenure as B.C.’s first Public Guardian and Trustee, Chalke spent four more years as an assistant deputy minister in the province’s Attorney General’s ministry that confirmed his desire to return to his ombudsman roots.

“Those four years I was inside the bureaucratic power structure, which has both positive and challenging ramifications,” Jay Chalke says. “Personally, I really like the greater independence I have being a bit more on the outside and so I decided to return to ombudsing.”

“Not many people have an opportunity to be a parliamentary ombudsman and I feel very fortunate to be doing it,” he adds.

Chalke’s current role has run parallel to his work with at Osgoode, where he first taught an Essentials for Ombuds unit on recommendations and remedies in 2016. He says the subject matter of the session, which he will lead again this year, goes right to the very heart of ombudsing.

“Ombudsman roles are all about persuasion, as opposed to coercion. We don’t have order-making powers, so success is tied to the ability to be persuasive in your recommendations,” Chalke explains.

Over the years, he says the program’s appeal has expanded to match the breadth of the ombudsing profession and its related roles, including integrity commissioners, fairness practitioners and media public editors.

“Ombudsing is a big tent. You have parliamentary roles like the office I lead with general jurisdiction and statutory authority, but there’s all kinds of other ombuds offices with a non-statutory foundation and a focused mandate,” Chalke says. “For me it’s fascinating to see the range of people involved in this work in other offices. At the Essentials course, we get to meet people with all kinds of backgrounds. While many have legal backgrounds, others cover the broad professional waterfront.”

Chalke recently announced that he will retire from his B.C. ombudsperson role in 2026, but he will leave behind a rich legacy of investigative work, including the 2017 report Misfire: The 2012 Ministry of Health Employment Terminations and Related Matters, which resulted from the first ever referral to the B.C. Ombudsperson by a legislative committee. Other landmark reports examined government disaster support in the face of displacement due to fires and floods caused by extreme weather and the isolation of youth in custody.

Beyond B.C., Chalke has also left his mark on the Canadian Council of Parliamentary Ombudsman, where he and his colleagues recently released a set of key principles designed to ensure effective ombudsman institutions across the country.

“It’s really important to have leadership renewal and ensure that you have fresh voices delivering messages to public bodies,” he says. “I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to do a job where you help people and at the same time make government better by persuading it that there’s an improved way to do business.”

“Once I step back from this role, I’ll look forward to watching how ombuds offices evolve in the future. It’s a great institution,” Jay Chalke adds.

Want to learn more about the Osgoode/FCO Certificate Essentials for Ombuds?


headshot image of Jay Chalke

Jay Chalke – Ombudsperson, Province of British Columbia
Co-Director of the Osgoode/FCO Certificate Essentials for Ombuds