A customer hoping to get high was left low after the Ontario Cannabis Store mailed him an empty box, one of 2,411 beefs about the fledgling operation that contributed to an increase of 30 per cent in overall complaints to Ontario Ombudsman Paul Dube.

“I think they really underestimated the demand,” Dube said Tuesday as he issued his annual report for the fiscal year ended March 31, detailing a litany of complaints handled by his staff from citizens concerned about a wide variety of provincial government services.

They ranged from autism families frustrated at controversial changes to the treatment programs in February, a prison inmate who couldn’t get denture, electric vehicle owners who missed rebates and a college student given financial aid who said she had been wrongly denied in the fiscal year ended March 31.

The sharp rise in the number of complaints is a “wake-up call” for Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government, which took power a year ago this week, said Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner.

“It’s clear from the 30 per cent increase in complaints this year that people were confused and concerned about sudden changes to programs: from autism to social services, from electric vehicle rebates to health-care complaints that are on the rise,” he added in a statement.

“These changes were not only announced suddenly and unexpectedly, but came with a lack of communication and information.”

The Ontario Cannabis Store held the distinction as “the single most complained about government organization of the year,” Dube said, prompting the creation of a special team in his office to sort out customer problems with the store and its overseers at the ministry of finance then headed by Vic Fedeli, who was demoted to minister of economic development in last week’s cabinet shuffle.

In a moment of “absurdity,” the Ontario Cannabis Store told the man who received the empty box that he would have to return it to get a refund, added Dube, whose staff intervened at this point to make sure that demand was waived and the order filled properly.

The ombudsman also recounted the case of a woman whose cannabis package was left on her front porch by Canada Post — contrary to store security policy to ensure marijuana products stay out of the hands of minors. Deliveries are supposed to be signed for by someone over 19.

Most of the problems with the cannabis operation involved a crush of orders after recreational marijuana became legal last Oct. 17 and complaints such as duplicate charges and delayed refunds have “eased considerably since then,” Dube told a news conference.

He said concerns from eager customers rolled in at such a pace that the situation reminded him of “a couple of kids with a lemonade stand on a wharf and a cruise ship pulling up.”

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The ombudsman’s office handled 27,419 complaints in total for the fiscal year, with 575 alone coming from parents of children with autism with concerns about the revamped Ontario Autism Program from Premier Doug Ford’s government and new funding caps that were put in place at the time.

Some were “frankly quite desperate,” said Dube, who noted he cannot dictate policy to legislators.

“A significant number were angry about the government’s policy decision and political approach,” he wrote in the 80-page report. “In dealing with such complaints, the ombudsman and staff distinguish political questions from administrative ones.”

Complaints about jails increased by 701 to 5,711 last year, including one from an inmate who had suffered for a year without dentures while awaiting trial and concerns from inmates who were getting methadone for addictions at different times every day, leaving them with drug withdrawal symptoms.

The family of a lottery winner who died before he could collect $2,000 in winnings got help from Dube’s office in getting the required documents to verify his ticket.

In other cases of note, a college student with a disability got $9,510 in student assistance she had been denied and a Tesla owner got help receiving the second half of his $14,000 electric vehicle rebate following what he called a “comedy of errors” in dealing with the ministry of transportation.

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