Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on April 23rd, 2009

[Sheila Fraser]

This is the evaluation of the program, the one you were talking about earlier.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Has it been done?

[Frank Barrett]

We have not seen it. That would be a question to put to the department.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Were you not concerned that the benefits of the economic impacts of negotiated settlements were not being evaluated? Would this not be something you would naturally be following up on?

[Frank Barrett]

Just to clarify, on the economic benefits, part of the agreement for the Inuvialuit Final Agreement itself was that after five years there be a devaluation of the economic benefits of that agreement. We found in the audit that the first one was done and the second one had not been done. The department, in effect, had not done it.

There was also a program evaluation that was to be done of land claims, which was a separate thing.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

But on the one that was supposed to be done by early 2007, you don't know if it has been done or not.

[Frank Barrett]

The program evaluation at the end, the conclusion of our audit, had not been done.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

All right. Then that's something we'll go to the department about.

I have another question, Mr. Chairman, and it's for Madam Fraser. I verified the French text and it's the same.

[Sheila Fraser]

Good. I'm reassured.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

I'm going to quote from paragraph 10. At the end of it you say, “They lack clear milestones and feedback mechanisms to assist in meeting its obligations”. “They” is referring to...the department's processes for managing its responsibilities under these agreements to be incomplete.

This is the next sentence that I'm curious about: “Most notable was the Department's focus on completing specific activities required in the land claims' implementation plans rather than on respecting the spirit and intent of these agreements”.

My question is this. How is completing specific activities that the land claim implementation plans require not in the spirit or intent of the agreement?

[Sheila Fraser]

I'll go back to the example that I use all the time. It's when we looked at the Nunavut land claim. One of the objectives that are clearly stated in that is to increase Inuit employment in the north, and under that there is a series of actions. At the initial time they had a percentage of how many people were employed. So we said to the department, actually expecting that they would have all of this information, “What progress is being made on that objective? Has employment increased?” They said, “Well, no, we have to do the specific actions that are listed, one of which is, for example, a meeting every year to discuss progress, and we've held the meeting.”

We ask whether there has been progress. And they will say, “We held the meeting.” So yes, there are a number of actions that will support an objective, but one would expect some measure of evaluation or some measure of progress on meeting an objective. Did you hold a meeting? If it was completely useless, have you done what you were set out to do?

So they're very much focused on the legal activity requirements in the act rather than saying these are things that are supporting--

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

All right. So it's like we've seen in other examples, where environmental assessments are done and basically they have a check mark, a bunch of things. So the criticism here is that the department is more interested in check marks as opposed to actually getting results.

[Sheila Fraser]

Yes.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

I understand now. Thank you.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Bélanger.

Now we'll turn to Mr. Clarke, who is going to share his time with Mr. Payne.

[Rob Clarke, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Earlier on, you mentioned community consultations for first nations, right? My perception of community consultations is going to the first nations and asking them for the information that you need to actually complete your report. In these consultations held, were they done in person or in a questionnaire format or in regular e-mail questionnaires? If so, what follow-up did your department have in verifying that this information obtained was correct?

[Sheila Fraser]

I would say almost all of our work, because there could be occasionally a letter, would be done in person by meeting first nations in their communities. We do not audit it, so we would not present it unless they obviously gave us all of the documentation required. We would not present it as audit evidence but more as that we were told this or that, or we would give little case studies. When we give those case studies, they would provide us with the documentation to support it.

[Rob Clarke, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

So it would be someone from the regional office who would go out there and interview them. Or would it be someone from Ottawa who would physically have to travel out to the first nations?

[Sheila Fraser]

No, no, it's from our audit team. Our audit teams go out. In this case they would visit first nations in Manitoba and Saskatchewan because we would be there auditing those regional offices anyway. So they extend their audit work and go to visit various communities.

[Rob Clarke, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

How many consultations were held in Saskatchewan?

[Frank Barrett]

Maybe I'll first just say a word of clarification. Yes, we always do meet with first nations. We don't take a representative sample and reach our audit conclusions; it's really the context. For this follow-up audit specifically, we visited, I believe, four first nations in Saskatchewan.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Thank you.

Because I have a bit of an auditing background, I have a great interest in that, and I just wanted to refer back to the comment you made in terms of the first nations and the province having their own audits.

My question is, did your department auditors and the first nations and the province share any of their own audit information around these?

[Sheila Fraser]

Let me just check. The first nations are required to produce audits to the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs. Audited financial information is one of the requirements, and in fact if they do not do that, they do not get their funding renewed.

So all first nations—some produce them, we've noted in the past, a little late—produce audited financial statements to the department. In fact, when we did a study on reporting requirements, we found that in some cases they had requirements to produce up to five different financial statements.

So they're producing it. We have done work on the reports themselves and how the department will deal with them, but we don't necessarily share information, for example, with the particular auditor.

As for our provincial colleagues, each province has a legislative auditor, and we act as the auditor of the three territories. We do work together. It's sort of collaborative or concurrent work. For example, when we audited the B.C. treaty process, the Auditor General of British Columbia looked at the same process from a provincial point of view. Our reports were released on the same day, and we had a common forward, raising common issues between the federal and provincial government.

So at times we will do collaborative work. For example, the Auditor General of Alberta did some work on child and family services in Alberta, so we're aware of what our colleagues are doing as well.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

I was thinking more in terms of the conversion times. Is there any aspect there?

[Sheila Fraser]

We have not done anything on that, no.

And this is really a federal responsibility, to take the land and then do the conversion.