Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Despite everything, we found the action plan prepared by CIDA to be very encouraging. It contains important aspects. Things appear to be moving. However, we did point out in the report that many good intentions had been expressed in the past, but that a cer

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, the chapter contains a certain number of recommendations. We have had discussions with CIDA on the appropriateness of these recommendations. CIDA has provided us with a response. As the president mentioned earlier, CIDA agrees with all of our recommendations. There i

Public Accounts committee  The act was promulgated while we were doing the audit, so right at the planning of the audit we considered that. A good portion of the act is also related to reporting requirements. The first report was due in fall 2009, which was after the report was finalized, so it was not pos

Public Accounts committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Thank you for this opportunity to discuss chapter 8 of our 2009 fall report, “Strengthening Aid Effectiveness”, concerning the Canadian International Development Agency. As you mentioned, I'm joined at the table by Mr. John Reed, principal, and M

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There is a backlog of about 50,000 files. Clearly, the fact that the member positions were not filled and that there were many vacancies had a significant impact on the ability to process these cases. This report is fairly recent. Of course, we have not done any follow-up in this

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Mr. Chair, we talk about this program in the report. I think when we mentioned examples of major decisions without sufficient analysis, that was one, in terms of risk and whatever. After seven years, it is still a pilot, so it hasn't been evaluated, but it's part of the evaluatio

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think it's planned for 2010-11, unless I'm wrong.... It's 2012.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Mr. Chair, that's a point we raise in the report. I think there was a previous question about the impact of the delays. If it takes five years to process a permanent application, and the employer needs the employee--and we talked to a number of employers while we did the audit--e

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Mr. Chair, I will add that when we did the work, we found that most of the missions are meeting their targets. The overall target for Canada as a whole is allocated to each mission, and the missions are meeting their targets. The department is following that very closely. If one

Citizenship and Immigration committee  This should certainly have an impact on efficiency. However, it's important to realize that it took so long to develop the system that in the meantime, current technology has taken great steps forward. We refer to that in this chapter. This means that the department is now consid

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, for some things, but not for others.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  You are referring to documents that for the most part have been issued by Canada from the Vegreville centre in Alberta. Here, we are talking about what is being done in the missions abroad.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Not all applications are made electronically. The message here is that the department needs to put in place a new system. It will already have to update a number of new technologies. It will be important for the department to properly manage all those elements.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  This is all still just a project but it should be implemented within the next two or three years. It's important that the department make sure that it takes all these aspects into consideration.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. The overall case management system was a response by the department to a recommendation we made in 2000, dealing with all the technological difficulties. The project commenced in early 2001. In 2006, the office conducted another audit on major IT projects: