Thank you.
Mr. Chair, thank you for this opportunity to discuss chapter 8, Disaster Relief for Producers, from our 2013 fall report.
Joining me at the table are Dale Shier, Principal, and Dawn Campbell, Director, who were responsible for the audit.
AgriRecovery is a joint federal-provincial initiative that was established to fill gaps in existing programming and provide quick and targeted assistance to producers affected by disaster events.
We examined Agriculture and Agri-Foods assessment and payment processes for disaster events, from the start of AgriRecovery in 2007 to the end of 2012. This included whether the department assessed disasters according to program criteria and whether it communicated with stakeholders and applied lessons learned since the program's inception. We did not audit AgriRecovery activities beyond 2012 and we did not audit the provincial role in this initiative. Our audit was completed in September 2013.
Overall we found that AgriRecovery had significant timeliness issues. We noted that the department had developed two performance indicators related to timeliness: assessing disaster events with 45 days of a provincial request 90% of the time, and processing 75% of payments within nine months of an approved assessment.
While the department does not have a performance indicator for total processing time, the assessment and payment standards add up to 10 and a half months. We found that 67% of initiatives met this combined timeline, while the remaining third exceeded it by 5 months on average.
In these cases the delay occurred because the department seldom met its own 45-day target for the assessment component of the program. Only 16% of initiatives met this target.
On the other hand, the department achieved its target for the payment component of the program, processing payments for 84% of initiatives within nine months of the approved assessment.
Exhibit 8.4 of our report provides examples of the consequences of not receiving financial assistance on a timely basis. For example, some producers had to sell livestock, and some were unable to purchase feed when they needed to.
We also found that although the department has established and documented a process for assessing formal AgriRecovery requests, it does not streamline its processing for smaller, lower-risk initiatives. For example, we found that a small initiative of $44,000 took 228 days, while a large initiative of $150 million was delivered in less than half that time. Both initiatives were responses to excess moisture events for which assessment information is usually promptly available.
The department has not improved the timeliness of payments over the life of the program. The department needs to streamline its processing of smaller initiatives, actively track against the timeliness targets it has set, and publicly report this information.
In one of our previous audits—the Payments to Producers chapter in our 2011 fall report—we found timeliness issues related to two other programs. In our audit on disaster recovery, the subject of today's hearing, we found that the department continues to struggle with timely program delivery.
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada has agreed with our four recommendations and has set implementation deadlines ranging from March 2014 to March 2018.
Mr. Chair, this concludes my opening remarks. We would be pleased to answer any questions the committee may have.
Thank you.