Deportation failures, costly passports focus of AG's report

07.05.2008 02:00 Health - Source: cbc.ca

The federal government doesn't know the whereabouts of almost 41,000 people ordered to leave Canada as of last September, the auditor general said Tuesday, and has been overcharging Canadians who want passports.

Those were two of the findings of Auditor General Sheila Fraser's latest report, tabled Tuesday in the House of Commons.

Fraser looked at eight key areas in her scrutiny of the federal government, including the way the Canadian Border Services Agency tracks people such as foreign criminals, non-status immigrants and refugee claimants who have been ordered deported.

While the border agency's tracking of such individuals has improved since 2003, Fraser said, it does not monitor its officers' decisions about detentions and removals to ensure they are consistent across Canada. It also needs to collect more information to better manage deportations and better manage their cost.

Some of the other areas Fraser examined were:

• User fees

Adults who apply for passports are being overcharged a consular fee, Fraser's report found.

By law, the maximum fee allowed is the cost of providing the service, but the $25 consular fee included in the charge for an adult Canadian passport exceeds that cost, the report says.

In all, the government collected $1.9 billion in user fees in 2006-07 for goods and services ranging from passports to commercial fishing licences. While some organizations take into account the full cost of their services in setting their fees, Fraser said, "others do not know the cost of what they are providing for the fee."

• Official residences

Many parts of the prime minister's official residence at 24 Sussex Drive are in poor condition, the auditor general's report found.

According to the National Capital Commission, the residence — which hasn't had major renovations in 50 years — needs about $10 million in repairs and upgrades that would require the commission to have "full access" for at least 12 to 15 months.

The commission is the federal agency that manages the government's six official residences, most of which have seen their condition improve since the NCC received some funding for repairs in 2005, the report says.

• First Nations child welfare services

Some of the 8,000 children in the care of child welfare agencies on First Nations reserves aren't getting the services they need because federal funding to support the services is based on a 20-year-old formula that doesn't reflect what the programs actually cost to deliver, Fraser's report says.

• Watching for infectious disease

In the case of a disease outbreak, the Public Health Agency of Canada may have trouble assessing an emergency situation and notifying the World Health Organization as quickly as required, the report says.

That is because the agency, which was created after the 2003 worldwide outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome and which is tasked with watching for eruptions of infectious disease, has data-sharing agreements with only one province, Ontario, the report says.

• Support for overseas troops

The Department of National Defence has been relying on a growing number of contractors to provide maintenance and other services to the military in Afghanistan, the auditor general's report says. The department has faced challenges in keeping track of its supplies, delays in moving them, and a shortage of spare parts as equipment wears out.

Overall, it has been able to deliver equipment and supplies to Canadian troops in Afghanistan who need them, Fraser said. "But unless the problems we found can be resolved, National Defence could have increasing difficulty supporting the mission."

• Air transportation safety

Transport Canada needs to better manage its transition from directly inspecting and auditing air carriers to taking a more indirect role in assessing companies' own safety systems, as part of a new air-safety approach being instituted by the International Civil Aviation Organization, the report says.

While planning the transition, the department didn't forecast the costs of the change nor the risks involved, the report says. It did not identify ways to minimize those risks and has not yet identified how many inspectors or engineers it needs even though it is halfway through the transition.

• Crown corporations

Federal Crown corporations have, since 2000, improved the systems and practices they use to manage their assets and function effectively, Fraser's report says.

'A lot of bright lights'

Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre appeared pleased with the "fairly positive report," saying it pointed to a lot of improvements made by the government and was not as alarming as those in previous years.

"This is not the kind of auditor general's report that we saw with the billion-dollar boondoggle, the billion-dollar long-gun registry or the Liberal sponsorship scandal," he told Don Newman on CBC's Politics.

"There are a lot of bright lights in her report and also a lot of areas we have to work on improving."

He cited the example of how Ottawa is "by and large" managing to deliver equipment and supplies to soldiers in Afghanistan.

Fraser's report states that the Canadian Forces is struggling to stock the roughly 2,500 troops in Afghanistan with equipment and supplies and called for changes to be made to its complicated military supply system.

Only about 10 per cent of the critical supplies ordered by troops in Afghanistan are delivered on time, according to the report, and one-quarter of all ordered supplies are late before they are even shipped.

Hard work, ingenuity aid flow of supplies to Afghanistan

Success in the complicated supply chain that brings tools, clothing, weapons and equipment to troops owes its success more to the hard work of individuals rather than efficient organization, the report says.

"It's only really because of the good hard work and the ingenuity of the people there who've been able to compensate for lack of equipment and spare parts," Fraser told CBC.

The report found the supply system lacks a reliable method of tracking goods from Canada to Kandahar, with supplies tracked manually once they've arrived.

In one supply inventory, the report notes that a defence team couldn't locate $7 million worth of items, then located $6.6 million worth of goods that weren't supposed to be there.

A suggested solution is a new computerized tracking system to keep a closer eye on the movement of supplies, the report says.

Part of the cause of excessive delays is the number of broken-down mechanical cargo handlers used to load planes at the Canadian Forces Base Trenton, the report says, suggesting new cargo handlers could fix the problem.

Transport Canada needs to 'step up to the plate'

The report also points out weakness in how Transport Canada managed the transition to a new approach that requires aircraft operators to carry out their own safety checks, without direct government inspections.

Tory MP Pierre Poilievre noted that the auditor general says airlines were unable to account for a lot of the work that should have been done.

"As a result, we as a government have to take responsibility to work with them to ensure that we improve on the work," said Poilievre.

Poilievre said the government has accepted all the auditor general's recommendations concerning air transportation safety.

The Liberals called on the government to take a more active role in ensuring airline safety standards are met.

"I think Transport [Canada] has to step up to the plate and do more," said Liberal MP Dominic LeBlanc, calling it "fictitious" to think that airlines can self-regulate with safety standards.

NDP MP David Christopherson said his concern was more with the government's failure to ensure a proper transition to a new system.

"To let go of a system you currently have, move to another one and not have proper control over making sure things that matter in passenger safety are taken care of, again, is incompetence."

Aboriginal kids far more likely to end up in foster care

Opposition MPs also took aim at the federal government for its funding of child welfare services delivered to those on aboriginal reserves.

Fraser's report blasts Ottawa for shortchanging provinces by using a 20-year-old funding formula no longer representative of the real costs for providing child welfare services to aboriginal children on reserves.

It also says Ottawa lags behind provinces in the types of services provided.

Speaking to Don Newman on CBC's Politics, Fraser said the trend among provinces is to use preventative services rather than taking children into care, but the federal government hasn't followed their lead.

Children on aboriginal reserves are eight times more likely to end up in foster care, the report said.

The funding formula "has not been changed to reflect variations in legislation … or the actual number of children in care," Fraser said. Its use "has led to inequities."

To illustrate the inadequate funding, she points to an agreement being hammered out between Alberta and the federal government that will see a more "up-to-date" funding arrangement, increasing the allotted money by 74 per cent.

NDP MP David Christopherson criticized the government for "yanking" aboriginal children from their homes instead of providing other services to them.

"Here's yet another example where Canadians as a whole are not treating their fellow Canadians who live on reserves in the way they expect their families to be treated," he said.

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