The Auditor General’s report
May 7, 2008
The Auditor General has just delivered her report on how Canada is dealing with a variety of issues before it, including (perhaps most importantly) how the government is handling the issue of over 60,000 people who have immigrated here illegally.
That is also the most alarming of the statistics contained within the report:
The Canada Border Services Agency must improve how it tracks individuals ordered to leave the country. Last fall, the agency had no idea of the whereabouts of 41,000 individuals ordered out of Canada for being in the country illegally.
What I would like to know is: where are the majority of these people from? What countries did they immigrate here from? What are their criminal histories, if any? Do they have any affiliation with known terrorist groups?
And, of course: how the heck did we lose track of a group of people the size of the population of West Vancouver? Oh…wait…
Anyhow, here are some other interesting tidbits from the report:
- Children living on First Nations reserves are eight times more likely to seek the aid of child welfare services than children living off reserves. Last year, there were 8,300 on-reserve children using family service programs — about five per cent of all children in reserves.
- National Defence should improve how it sends supplies to troops in Afghanistan. The department has trouble keeping track of supplies being used in the war and maintaining some key equipment because of spare-part shortages, making it increasingly difficult to support the mission.
- Canadians pay too much for passports. The consular fee — about $25 of the $87 cost of an adult passport — is disproportionate to the cost of consular services being provided and should be adjusted.
- Health Canada has been charging too little for medicinal marijuana.
A 2007 report shows that the department underestimated the cost of administering and regulating the program, and the fee to consumers did not recover the full costs of the program.
- The Public Health Agency, created following the 2003 SARS outbreak, has trouble keeping track of the spread of infectious diseases due to gaps in its information-sharing agreements with the provinces and territories.
Kind of depressing, isn’t it?
