Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you very much for those kind words. It has indeed been an honour to serve as the Interim Auditor General and to work with this committee over the years, but in particular it has been an honour to serve as Interim Auditor General as an officer of Parliament. I have done my best to meet the needs of this committee. Thank you for your kind words.
Good afternoon, Mr. Chair.
I am pleased to present my fall report, which was tabled in the House of Commons yesterday. As you mentioned, I am accompanied by Assistant Auditors General Neil Maxwell and Wendy Loschiuk.
The first chapter in this report contains the findings of our second audit of Canada's economic action plan. Our first audit, tabled a year ago, focused on the design and roll-out of the plan. The second audit looked at how three programs were implemented.
For the three specific programs we audited, the government was diligent in monitoring the progress of projects and their spending. It also took corrective action as required to ensure projects were completed as intended. The decision to extend the deadline was supported by appropriate analysis.
The government invested $37 billion in the economic action plan. It is important that the government report to Parliament on the overall economic impact of the plan and the jobs created, as it announced it would do by early 2012.
In our chapter on issuing visas, we report that Citizenship and Immigration Canada and the Canada Border Services Agency need to do a much better job of managing the health, safety, and security risks associated with issuing a visa.
Visa officers are responsible for deciding whether to grant or refuse a visa to enter Canada. The system lacks basic elements to ensure that they get the right information to make those decisions. We found that many of the indicators that visa officers use to identify high-risk applicants have not been reviewed in years. Medical screening for danger to public health has focused on the same two diseases--tuberculosis and syphilis--and this has not been updated for 50 years.
Quality assurance practices focus on decisions to refuse a visa. In cases where the applicants are found admissible, the quality of the decisions is rarely reviewed. This means that CIC and CBSA don't know if a visa was issued to someone who in fact was inadmissible.
We've been reporting some of these problems with visas for 20 years, and I find it disturbing that fundamental weaknesses still exist. It's time for CIC and CBSA to resolve them.
The third chapter in our report deals with income support programs for farmers. We note that Agriculture and Agri-food Canada has improved in some areas, such as the accuracy of payments, but that problems remain. Farmers can wait up to two years for payment and the amount of the payment is hard to predict.
The audit also looked at the $284 million program that provides funding to enable tobacco growers to leave the industry. The design of the tobacco transition program was rushed, making its delivery challenging. In some cases, recipients who received money for exiting the industry continued to produce tobacco, undermining one of the program's objectives. This underscores the importance of sound program design, including considering what could go wrong and how to prevent it.
I turn now to the fourth chapter in our report, which deals with Health Canada's role in regulating pharmaceutical drugs for use in Canada.
Canadians rely on Health Canada to ensure the safety and effectiveness of drugs. Health Canada has taken steps to ensure the quality of its drug reviews; however, we found that the department is struggling with timeliness and with transparency in some areas. In addition, it has not determined what measures are needed to address the potential for conflicts of interest in its reviews of drug submissions.
Health Canada is slow to act on potential safety issues related to drugs already on the market. It needs to get safety information out to Canadians more quickly and address the potential for conflicts of interest.
Moving on now to the last chapter in our report. This audit looked at how National Defence manages the maintenance and repair of its military equipment.
DND has adopted new approaches to contracting for maintenance and repairs. These new approaches have the potential to help DND better manage maintenance and repair activities and realize cost savings.
However, because implementation has been slow and hampered by lack of concerted effort and follow-through, the department has missed out on some of these opportunities. I encourage DND to take the necessary steps to move ahead with these new approaches.
In closing, Mr. Chairman, I would like to share with you some reflections based on the many years I have spent as an auditor of the federal government.
In my experience, government programs require certain fundamental elements in order to be successful. These include clarity of purpose, committed and sustained leadership, predictable and stable funding, and sufficient and appropriate management information. Most of the problems found by our audits over the years can be attributed to weaknesses in one or more of these areas. I encourage the government, as it undertakes its current review of spending, to ensure that these core elements are in place to secure the success of continuing programs.
Thank you again, Mr. Chair. This concludes my opening statement. We would be pleased to answer the committee's questions.
