CEO/Registrar’s message – BAO wraps up a year of progress for consumers and thanks professionals for their commitment

Year In Review

By Jim Cassimatis
CEO/Registrar
Bereavement Authority of Ontario

The year 2024 streamed by at pace with a string of accomplishments in place for consumers, and the continued commitment of professionals licensed by the Bereavement Authority of Ontario (BAO).

Throughout the year, our BAO Board of Directors, management and staff have been putting together key components required for a solid foundation for the future.  

Those key components include:

• Consumer protection actions and public communication;
• Completion of more than 90 per cent of the Office of the Auditor General of Ontario’s recommendations for the BAO;
• Continuing to increase the number of inspections conducted;
• Implementation of our fee increase, announced in May of 2023, which made it possible to implement those recommendations. This in turn has led to the financial sustainability of the BAO enabling it to add needed staff including additional inspectors and licensing officers;
• Modernization that came in the form of our new information system;
• Discussing and exploring options to address a funeral director shortage in the north and other parts of Ontario. On behalf of the BAO, I’ve also been actively listening and sharing possible solutions from our licensed professionals and associations, who want to better serve families across the province.

Established in 2016, the BAO had been under-resourced in terms of staffing and technology for its first several years. So, we took to heart the value of the Auditor General’s recommendations by addressing the majority of the 51 action items.  

Developing a new information system was a key component of serving the public better, as recommended by the Auditor General. Thanks to our Information Technology (IT) team, working with all staff especially Licensing, our 20-year-old system was successfully replaced. The Ontario Bereavement Information System – or OBIS as we call it – went live in April. OBIS has been our largest investment in technology ever. Our IT Team has also been busy securing our systems from phishing and hacking attempts that have become so rampant everywhere in recent years.

Plus, the work of our diligent Licensing and Financial Compliance (FC) teams in contacting late filers of licensing fees resulting in our most effective year of compliance. The FC Team also identified and made sure that large sums of money were properly accounted for, detected and addressed income shortfalls for small volunteer-run cemeteries, and secured the movement of a multi-million-dollar Care and Maintenance Fund to an eligible depository. The trust fund helps ensure the long-term upkeep of a cemetery.   

The Inspections, Compliance and Enforcement (ICE) team is on track for the most inspections it’s ever conducted. This trajectory will continue to increase in the coming years as part of the BAO’s assurance of compliance across the sector.

Our Finance Team modernized our payroll system and also assumed direct management of the BAO’s Funeral Service Compensation Fund, designed to compensate consumers who have suffered a financial loss as a result of a licensed funeral professional or transfer service licensee mishandling prepaid funds. As relatively rarely as it is needed, the fund certainly did its job earlier this year as you’ll see as part of the list of ‘Consumer protection actions’ in this Year In Review.

Effective regulator

To be an effective regulator, an organization needs the right staff and resources. We’ve made significant strides in having appropriate resources and tools, including hiring additional inspectors and licensing officers.

My role as the CEO and Registrar of the BAO is to ensure we harness our team and technology toward greater effectiveness and compliance in the public interest. And that we did in 2024.

Consumer protection actions

There have been several tangible examples of BAO consumer protection at work for grieving families during 2024.

Day-to-day, we have Licensing and Financial Compliance staff who make sure that professionals in the bereavement sector are licensed, compliant with all regulatory requirements and that they renew their personal and operator licences each year.

We have inspectors, who review and investigate while also advising those not in compliance on what they need to do. When that doesn’t work, which is quite rare, there are consequential actions that I can consider.

Registrar’s actions  

As Registrar, of the Funeral, Burial and Cremation Services Act, 2002, I may impose actions to make sure outliers comply and act in a professional and ethical manner with grieving families, who are the consumers of those we license.

Here’s a sample of Registrar’s actions that I’ve taken this year to protect grieving families:

• A Notice of Proposal to revoke the licence of a funeral director was carried out in September as a result of concerns with past conduct and breach of previous conditions placed on the person’s licence. The licensee did not contest the notice;
• A funeral home in Scarborough was shutdown in September following a decision by the Licence Appeal Tribunal upholding of our Notice of Proposal to not renew the licences of a funeral director and of a funeral home;  
• In June, I ordered a Toronto cemetery to immediately stop accepting new burials and sales of licensed supplies for not establishing the required Care and Maintenance Fund;  
• A Niagara cemetery was ordered to immediately stop selling new burial services and licensed supplies at several cemeteries it operates. The cease order, issued in July, included selling burial services to licensed funeral establishment operators and their staff, licensed crematorium operators and their staff, and the public. This order was issued once we determined that the cemetery operator had invested Care and Maintenance Funds with an ineligible depository and mingled the trust fund with other investments contrary to the law;
• As a result of the work of the BAO’s Inspections team, who worked with the Ontario Provincial Police and the Crown Attorney’s office, in May a judge of the Ontario Court of Justice sentenced a former Simcoe funeral director and funeral establishment owner to 12 months house arrest. The former funeral director was ordered to pay $386,064.97 restitution to the BAO. The matter concerned fraud over $5,000 in relation to prepaid services. The BAO’s Funeral Service Compensation Fund reimbursed about 100 people affected, as the fund was designed to do.
• In April, an unlicensed cemetery operator in the Township of Hamilton was ordered to stop selling or providing burial and other services. Licensing of cemetery operators requires operators to follow the law including maintenance of the property and of the required Care and Maintenance Fund.

Engagement

We also advise licensees on how to comply. For example, our financial compliance team makes sure that volunteer-run small cemeteries have the information they need to maintain and preserve those cemeteries.

We thank the volunteers for their unheralded and underappreciated work that means so much to their communities across the province.

The BAO also engages with the public at small and large events in community halls, conference centres, and online, where we reach more than 400,000 people through our quarterly consumer magazine, on social media, and our website, where we also had almost 400,000 pageviews.

Thanks

We thank the public for seeking and finding us online, by phone or in person to learn what they need to know in planning a funeral, filing a complaint, or asking us a question.

I thank our licensees and associations for engaging with us on the needs of the profession and the public.

I recognize that the vast majority of individual licensees and business operators comply with the law and treat grieving families with respect and dignity every day. As an example of their commitment, I note that of the nearly 10,000 licensees we have in Ontario, the BAO received only 44 complaints from the public in the 2023/24 fiscal year. That is an accomplishment.

I also thank our very committed staff for their work, and our BAO Board of Directors for their leadership.

A special thank you to Minister Todd McCarthy and the Ministry of Public and Business Service Delivery and Procurement, for continuing to work in collaboration with us.

We look forward to continued progress in 2025 and wish you a happy new year.

—Read the Chair’s Yearend Message here.