No one wants to hear the old promise that “the cheque is in the mail.” Especially when it isn’t.

But that has been the frightening case for numerous welfare and disability program recipients as the Ontario government tries to sort out a litany of problems with its new $242-million-and-counting Social Assistance Management System, or SAMS.

It took three cruelly long months, but the government is finally admitting that problems with the computer system are so serious that they can’t be solved simply by more staff training or tampering with codes.

In fact, the problems are so overwhelming that the government plans to shell out another $225,000 to $300,000 for a third-party adviser to conduct an independent review of the troubled system.

It’s high time for such a review. But tinkering with a software program almost certainly won’t be enough. The computer problems have focused a spotlight on the fact that Ontario’s welfare system itself needs fixing.

But first, the computer system:

The 570,000 vulnerable families and individuals who rely on Ontario welfare and disability cheques have been paying the price for the systematic problems with the SAMS system that politicians initially dismissed as “glitches.”

Those “glitches” meant some welfare recipients did not receive cheques at all. Others received cheques for as little as $5 for a family of five. Still others received overpayments — which were then clawed back from future cheques.

As if that wasn’t stressful enough, the system also generated letters to some recipients erroneously informing them they had been cut off from certain benefits when they hadn’t been.

As one welfare recipient who didn’t receive his monthly cheque wrote to the Star: “I’m not prone to anxiety issues but there is nothing like complete uncertainty to ramp up cause for concern.”

For vulnerable families, the independent adviser’s interim report, due March 31, clearly can’t come soon enough. It should deliver recommendations for short-term fixes to urgent problems as well as further redesigns and possible upgrades for the system.

All of this may help resolve the computer problems, but in the end it likely won’t come to grips with the real issues.

The deeper problem may well be the fact that no computer coding can handle the “discretion” required to manage the province’s overly complex welfare and disability system. As John Stapleton, Innovations Fellow at the Metcalf Foundation and a former provincial social assistance policy analyst, told the Star in January: “You have a system now that is so complicated . . . you have exceptions to exceptions to exceptions based on discretion.” No code is ever going to be able to deal with that, he argues.

In other words, a computer program can’t provide judgment on individual cases and penalize recipients for deviating from the welfare system’s complex rules. Nor can it make allowances for unforeseen circumstances: domestic violence, evictions, sudden changes in earnings, medical emergencies or funerals.

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The province shouldn’t be looking to a computer system to handle all the emergencies and changing circumstances its clients face. It shouldn’t prioritize “efficiency” over needs.

The province must do better. First it has to fix the computer system. Then it must simplify the overly complex welfare system so it can be responsive to recipients. Only then will Ontario be able to claim that it is taking care of its most needy.