Financial recovery: compensation, restitution and civil remedies

Most victims of crime lose money. Ruth Lindqvist paid a 1,000-dollar insurance deductible and lost two days of sales. Grace Whitford lost 18,400 dollars from her savings. Daniel Ferreira lost six weeks of wages, a new phone and a wallet, and faced bills for dental and jaw care. Brooks tells the class that financial loss is one of the most common reasons victims contact her agency, and one of the hardest to fix. 'People assume that if a crime caused the loss, someone must pay it back,' she says. 'Sometimes someone does. Often no one does, or it takes years.' This lesson covers the three main routes to financial recovery: state compensation, restitution from the offender and civil remedies, along with insurance and other sources that usually come first.

Why financial help matters

Financial harm compounds the other harms of crime. A victim who cannot work may fall behind on rent; a victim whose locks were broken may stay in a home they no longer feel safe in because they cannot afford new ones; a family that must pay for a funeral may go into debt at the worst possible time. Research on victims' needs consistently lists practical and financial help among the most important, especially for victims with low incomes, who are more likely to be victimized and less likely to have insurance or savings. Brooks adds that financial help can also be a form of recognition: a payment from a compensation program tells the victim that society acknowledges the harm.

Compensation programs in Ontario

Every province has had some form of financial help for victims of violent crime since the first programs in the 1960s, but the programs differ widely. Ontario's Criminal Injuries Compensation Board, a tribunal that for decades heard claims and awarded compensation, including for pain and suffering, stopped accepting new applications on October 1, 2019. In its place, the province expanded the Victim Quick Response Program, now called the Victim Quick Response Program+, or VQRP+, which pays for specific expenses rather than awarding general compensation. Supporters said the change would get help to victims faster; critics, including legal clinics and sexual assault centres, said victims would receive much less, especially victims of historical abuse who had used the Board to pay for long-term counselling.

The VQRP+ is for victims and witnesses of violent crime in Ontario, and in some cases their immediate families. Applicants work with a local victim services agency, such as Victim Services Port Ardent, which explains what can be covered and submits the application, though the province decides. The program covers categories of expenses with set limits, including immediate safety expenses such as replacing locks or a phone, up to 1,000 dollars; short-term counselling, up to 1,000 dollars; funeral expenses, up to 5,000 dollars; crime scene cleanup, up to 1,500 dollars; traditional Indigenous health services; practical expenses such as groceries or temporary housing; and support for people who suffered serious injuries. Most categories have short deadlines: 45 days from the crime for immediate safety, funeral, cleanup and practical expenses, six months for counselling, and one year for serious injury support, with extensions possible for good reasons.

Eligibility rules matter, and officers often hold the key. The crime must have been reported, usually to police, though for intimate partner violence, sexual assault, human trafficking and some other crimes, a report to a community agency can count. The applicant must have no other money or insurance to cover the expense, and usually cannot be someone charged in connection with the crime, with some exceptions. Brooks has seen applications delayed for weeks because the victim did not have a file number, which is one more reason for the written information described in Lesson 6.

The program below shows how Brooks worked out what Daniel could expect from the program. It applies the rule that other sources come first, and the program's limits.

# Daniel's expenses and what the Victim Quick Response Program+ can pay (amounts in dollars)
caps = {"short-term counselling": 1000, "immediate safety": 1000, "serious injury support": None}
claims = [
    ("short-term counselling", 1450, 0),       # (category, cost, amount covered by other sources)
    ("immediate safety", 380, 0),              # new phone to replace the stolen one, for safety
    ("serious injury support", 2600, 1900),    # dental and jaw care not covered by provincial health
]
total_paid = 0
for cat, cost, other in claims:
    need = cost - other                        # program pays only what no other source covers
    cap = caps[cat]
    paid = need if cap is None else min(need, cap)
    total_paid += paid
    print(f"{cat:24} cost {cost:5}  other {other:5}  paid {paid:5}")
print("total paid by the program:", total_paid)
print("left for Daniel:", sum(c for _, c, _ in claims) - sum(o for _, _, o in claims) - total_paid)

short-term counselling   cost  1450  other     0  paid  1000
immediate safety         cost   380  other     0  paid   380
serious injury support   cost  2600  other  1900  paid   700
total paid by the program: 2080
left for Daniel: 450

The program covered most of Daniel's immediate costs but left a gap. Brooks helped him apply for a hardship fund run by a local service club for the rest, and his employer agreed to advance some of his vacation pay. Desjardins notes that none of this money comes quickly. Even the quick response program takes weeks to approve claims. A victim who needs a locksmith tonight needs a different answer, which is why many victim services agencies keep small emergency funds.

Where the money comes from

Desjardins asks the class who pays for compensation and victim services. The answer, in both countries, is partly offenders. Section 737 of the Criminal Code requires an offender to pay a victim surcharge in addition to any other sentence, set at 30 of every 100 dollars of any fine, or a fixed amount for each offence if there is no fine, and the money goes to the province to fund victim services. In 2018, in R. v. Boudreault, the Supreme Court held that making the surcharge mandatory for every offender, including people living in poverty who could never pay it, was cruel and unusual punishment. Parliament amended the section in 2019 so that judges can waive the surcharge where it would cause undue hardship, and can impose separate surcharges for each offence or a single one. Brooks notes that this creates a tension. When fewer people are convicted or when courts reduce fines for people who cannot pay, the money available for victims can fall, even though the number of victims has not.

Helping with the paperwork

For many victims, the obstacle to financial recovery is not eligibility but the paperwork. Compensation forms ask for receipts, medical records, employer letters and police information. Insurers ask for police reports and lists of stolen property with serial numbers. Banks ask for affidavits. A victim in the recoil phase described in Lesson 4, struggling to concentrate and sleep, may simply not manage it. Brooks's agency spends a large share of its time helping people gather documents and fill in forms, and she asks officers to help in three small ways: give victims the file number and the name of the officer in charge in writing, tell them early to keep every receipt and to photograph damage, and respond promptly when an insurer or compensation program asks to confirm a report. A two-minute phone call from an officer can release a payment that a victim has been waiting on for weeks.

Restitution from the offender

Restitution is an order made at sentencing requiring the offender to pay the victim for losses caused by the offence. It has an obvious moral appeal: the person who caused the harm pays for it. Section 738 of the Criminal Code allows a court to order restitution for damage to or loss of property, for pecuniary damages such as lost income and medical expenses resulting from bodily or psychological harm, and for certain expenses in cases involving intimate partners and identity fraud. The loss must be readily ascertainable, meaning it can be calculated without a complicated hearing; disputed or uncertain losses belong in civil court. Since the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights, section 737.1 requires the court to consider restitution in every case and to ask whether reasonable steps were taken to give the victim a chance to describe their losses. If the offender does not pay, section 741 allows the victim to file the order in civil court and enforce it like any judgment.

The weakness of restitution is collection. Many offenders have little money, and some are in custody with no income at all. Orders can be paid in installments over months or years, and many are never paid in full. Brooks tells victims to hope for restitution but not to plan their finances around it. Kyle Brandt, a labourer, was ordered to pay Ruth Lindqvist her 1,000-dollar deductible and her lost sales, in monthly installments over a year, as a condition of his probation. Ruth told Brooks that she did not care much about the money, but that she wanted him to understand that her losses were real.

Grace Whitford's case shows the harder side. The callers who defrauded her were part of an organized group operating from several countries. A courier who collected cash from another victim was arrested in Port Ardent, but the people who received Grace's money by wire transfer were never identified. Without a conviction connected to her loss, there could be no restitution. Compensation programs do not cover money lost to fraud. Her bank reviewed the transfer and refunded part of it, because its own staff had missed warning signs, but most of the money was gone. Priya Sandhu tells the class that this is common in her old field, and that the best financial protection for fraud victims is prevention: the bank alerts and trusted contacts that stopped the second fraud.

Civil remedies

A victim can also sue the offender in civil court for damages, including losses that criminal courts do not compensate, such as pain and suffering. The standard of proof is lower than in a criminal case, a balance of probabilities rather than proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and a conviction can be used as evidence. Ontario's Victims' Bill of Rights also presumes that victims of certain offences, including sexual assault and attempted sexual assault, suffered emotional distress, so they do not have to prove it separately in a civil claim against the offender. Claims for smaller amounts can be brought in Small Claims Court without a lawyer.

Civil suits face the same collection problem as restitution, and they cost time and money. They are most useful when the offender or a third party has assets or insurance. Third-party claims, against an institution that failed to prevent abuse, a landlord who ignored repeated warnings about security, or a business whose negligence enabled a crime, are sometimes the only route to significant compensation, and are common in cases of institutional abuse. Brooks refers victims who want to explore civil options to legal clinics and to lawyers who specialize in this work, and reminds them that limitation periods apply and are often short, though for sexual assault and some other claims many jurisdictions have extended or removed them.

Other sources

In practice, most victims' financial recovery comes from ordinary sources. Home, business, tenant and auto insurance cover much property loss. Health insurance and provincial health plans cover much medical care. Workplace compensation programs cover employees injured at work, including staff injured in robberies. Employers may offer paid leave and employee assistance programs. Banks may reimburse some fraud losses, especially where an account was accessed without authorization. Brooks's practical advice to officers is to tell victims about these sources early: to call their insurer, to keep receipts, to photograph damage before repairs, and to ask the police for the documents insurers and compensation programs will need.