Opening Statement before the Standing Committee on Public Accounts
2024 Reports 2 to 4 of the Auditor General of Canada
19 March 2024
Karen Hogan, Fellow Chartered Professional AccountantFCPA
Auditor General of Canada
Mr. Chair, I am pleased to be here today to discuss the 3 reports that were just tabled in the House of Commons. I want to begin by acknowledging that we are gathered on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe people. This area is also known as Ottawa. I express my gratitude and respect to all Indigenous peoples who have contributed to shaping and safeguarding the beautiful lands they call home throughout Canada. I am accompanied today by Glenn Wheeler, David Normand, and Mélanie Joanisse who were responsible for the audits.
Two of the audits I will be discussing today focus on programs supporting Canada’s Indigenous peoples. The third, which I will cover first, examined the design and implementation of the National Trade Corridors Fund. This fund is intended to improve the movement of goods across the country by strengthening the network of roads, rails, airports, and seaports. Fluid and resilient transportation systems help foster trade through imports and exports and contribute to Canada’s economic health.
We found that Transport Canada did a good job of designing and implementing the fund. The department gathered and used evidence on the status and performance of transportation corridors to identify bottlenecks and other fluidity constraints. This evidence-based approach supported the selection of projects that would address known gaps in the infrastructure.
However, because of weaknesses in Transport Canada’s monitoring of and reporting on performance, it was unclear whether projects were having the intended impact. Infrastructure programs like the National Trade Corridors Fund take years to produce results. This time factor makes it all the more important to have a robust system to track performance so that Transport Canada can show the extent to which the fund has contributed to improving the fluidity of Canada’s transportation infrastructure.
Turning now to our audits of programs intended to support Canada’s Indigenous peoples. The first focused on housing in First Nations communities. We found that Indigenous Services Canada and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation had made little progress in supporting First Nations to improve housing conditions in their communities.
Indigenous Services Canada and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation are responsible for working with First Nations to meet their housing needs by 2030. Over the past 5 years, they have spent close to $4 billion to build new homes, repair existing ones, and increase First Nations’ capacity to manage housing. We found that in 2023, 80% of needs were still not met. The percentage of homes that need major repairs or replacement remains largely unchanged, despite the effort that has gone into building and repairing homes. In 2021, the Assembly of First Nations had estimated that $44 billion was needed to improve housing in First Nations communities, and needs continue to grow.
We found that the department and the corporation had not prioritized communities with the greatest needs. First Nations communities with the poorest housing conditions received less funding than communities of the same size with better housing conditions.
Mould in First Nations homes is a long-standing health hazard, and we found that Indigenous Services Canada and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation still did not know the magnitude of the problem. In fact, the department and the corporation are currently not following the strategy that they developed in 2008 to address this problem, and neither could explain why the strategy is no longer used. There is no plan in place to tackle this issue.
This is the fourth time since 2003 that we are raising the alarm about unsafe and unsuitable housing in First Nations communities. Adequate housing is a basic human need. After 4 audit reports, I can honestly say that I am completely discouraged that so little has changed and that so many First Nations individuals and families continue to live in substandard homes.
The findings of our last audit, of the First Nations and Inuit Policing Program, are equally concerning. Overall, we found that neither Public Safety Canada nor the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or RCMP, worked in partnership with Indigenous communities to provide community-based proactive policing services. They did not collect enough information to know whether the program was achieving its intended results, including whether the requirements set out in policing agreements were being met.
We last audited this program in 2014, 10 years ago, and again this time, we found critical shortcomings in how it is being managed. While funding has significantly increased over the last 10 years, we found that $13 million of funds related to the 2022–23 fiscal year went unspent. This is concerning in the context of a program intended to support the safety of Indigenous communities.
We found that Public Safety Canada did not have an approach to allocate funds equitably to communities. The department told us that it relied on the provinces’ or territories’ readiness to fund their share of the program and on past funding received by communities to determine the amounts allocated.
We found a lack of consistent engagement and partnership with communities. For example, many agreements are automatically renewed with terms of 10 or 15 years. This means that engagement with communities can be deferred for a very long time.
We also found that because of staffing shortages over the past 5 years, the RCMP has been unable to fully staff the positions for which it receives funding under the program’s agreements. This leaves First Nations and Inuit communities without the level of proactive and community-focused policing services that they should receive.
Time after time, whether in housing, policing, safe drinking water, or other critical areas, our audits of federal programs to support Canada’s Indigenous peoples reveal a distressing and persistent pattern of failure. The lack of progress clearly demonstrates that the government’s passive, siloed approach is ineffective and in fact contradicts the spirit of true reconciliation. A fundamental shift is urgently needed to drive significant progress in providing proper support to Indigenous families and communities across the country—especially those most in need, who currently are too often left behind.
By failing to take meaningful action to achieve a full transfer of authority and determination to First Nations, the federal government’s approach is not aligned with delivering on its commitments to support the self-determination of Canada’s Indigenous peoples.
It is important to understand that these are not legacy issues that live in the past. They are ongoing and perpetual, with direct consequences that people experience on a daily basis, and they stand in contradiction to Canada’s commitments to truth and reconciliation.
Mr. Chair, this concludes my opening statement. We would be pleased to answer any questions the committee may have. Thank you.