Thousands of dollars may have gone missing from B.C.’s welfare system – and a government e-mail indicates that the money might have ended up as extra payments to welfare recipients in drug treatment.

The e-mail also asks operators of the treatment facilities – which were supposed to receive the money – to go after welfare recipients themselves for the money.

That’s an impossibility when they may have spent the money on drugs already, says Vision Quest Recovery Society’s Jim O’Rourke.

“The support cheque was supposed to be $95 – it might be $600. And I have to get that back? Are you kidding me? They’re heading down the dusty highway to Money Mart to cash a cheque and get loaded,” O’Rourke said.

O’Rourke said he is out about $7000 this month in what he calls missing money that was supposed to be received by his facility for about 50 clients.

This week he got an e-mail from a worker at the Ministry of Social Development that blamed “technical difficulties” – a sign to O’Rourke that the missing money is related to a major computer problem.

“We are still working on processing a backlog,” the worker wrote. “Many clients may not receive the correct amount of assistance (e.g. they will receive more than they are entitled to.)

“If they receive more than $95, they have to give the overage to you/the facility…should the client fail to fulfill their payment obligations to you/the facility, you will need to work this out with the client.”

O’Rourke said he had received a payment back from one of his clients, but he isn’t holding his breath for the rest.

Backlogs were a part of a major computer glitch that affected the B.C. government’s Integrated Case Management system in the past month. It was down for about two weeks, and resulted in social workers being unable to access data, welfare cheques not being issued, and workers going back to telephone and hard copy.

The government claimed to have fixed the problem, but that e-mail indicates more may be wrong with the system, said B.C. Public Interest Advocacy Centre lawyer Sarah Khan.

“It’s a large computer system, they’ve invested more than $200 million in it and we’re concerned that problems are continuing to happen to it,” she said.

The NDP says asking a non-profit treatment facility to collect the money isn’t fair.

“To be able to go after clients, that’s the ministry’s job, not the agency’s job,” said MLA Carole James.

The government says it hasn’t pinned down exactly what may be the matter with the missing money, suggesting that it could be reconciled at the end of the month in normal course of business. The problem is likely limited to 150 people a month, as that’s how many people enter and leave treatment.

Ministry staff said they would liaise with O’Rourke to sort the matter out.

“We deal with 175,000 individuals every month, and we want to make sure we’re giving people the services they need,” Minister of Social Development Don McRae said.