AUDITOR GENERAL’S FINDINGS

VETERANS’ MENTAL HEALTH

Veterans Affairs Canada isn’t providing timely access to mental health services. The disability benefits program, “is slow and the application process is complex.” The auditor general says outreach is not wide enough and should, for example, include family doctors.

FEEDING THE NORTH

A special program to subsidize the high cost of food in Canada’s North has not identified eligible communities’ needs properly. As well, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada doesn’t know if retailers are actually passing along the full subsidy to consumers in the North.

PRESERVING RECORDS AND HERITAGE

Library and Archives Canada isn’t obtaining the archival records it should from federal departments and agencies. It has a backlog of 98,000 boxes of archival records and doesn’t know when it will finish processing them, let alone when it will be possible for the public to access them. Further, it doesn’t have a proper strategy to preserve digital data.

HUMANITARIAN AID

While the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development takes into account the needs of populations that require urgent humanitarian assistance, the basis for how much aid it allocates “was often not clearly documented.” Canada can respond quickly to global crises, but the department doesn’t measure its own overall timeliness in delivering help.

AUTOMOTIVE SECTOR

Although the government helped prop up Chrysler Canada and GM Canada after the 2008 economic downtown, there was no “comprehensive reporting ” of information to Parliament. Data on the financial support and its impact existed, but the material was scattered among different reports.

CRIME ACROSS BORDERS

The RCMP generally do not have adequate information about Canadians detained abroad, including sex offenders who may return home. The auditor general recommended that the RCMP and Foreign Affairs collaborate on information about Canadians arrested, charged, convicted or released from prisons abroad.