Roundup: Another diminished Auditor General Day

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It was Auditor General Day yesterday, and she had five reports that weren’t terribly complimentary of the government and its efforts, especially as some have been in the works for years and are making progress that is far too slow for the task at hand.

  1. In spite of working to make changes to the processing, there is still a massive backlog of permanent resident applications at Citizenship and Immigration, as well as a major problem with asylum claims that are taking years to be processed.
  2. The efforts to combat racism in government departments and the RCMP are falling short (which is not a huge surprise because this government has a particular problem of saying “intersectional” and “GBA+” and assuming that it will magically fix things rather than doing the actual hard work).
  3. The work to modernise the critical IT infrastructure of the government, particularly when it comes to delivering services Canadians rely on, is getting worse and Treasury Board doesn’t have plans yet on how to replace some of it (which should be alarming).
  4. Modernising the delivery of benefits like CPP, EI, and OAS is behind schedule and facing cost overruns, because of course it is.
  5. Canadians can’t get access to critical antimicrobial drugs as drug resistant strains get worse, and while data collection is improving, there remain gaps in access, which the Pandemic made worse.

You might also note that only three of those five items had news stories attached to them, and not all five. Even more to the point, two were Canadian Press wire stories, one came from the Globe and Mail, and that was it. The National Post had their own version of the immigration story, but of the major outlets, that was all that got covered. It used to be that on Auditor General days, the lock-up room at the OAG was packed, and each outlet sent several reporters to ensure that most of the reports got adequate coverage (some of the special audits of Crown corporations excepted). What we see now is a sad indictment of just how diminished our media capacity is, and how little value we are placing on these reports, which is a problem.

Ukraine Dispatch:

New overnight attacks focused on both the north and south of Ukraine, but no casualties have been reported yet. Russian forces resumed their onslaught of the eastern city of Avdiivka, which Ukrainian forces continued to hold at bay. Russians have also stepped up their bid to re-take the city of Kupiansk, which was liberated late last year. Meanwhile, Ukraine is looking to fill 2000 judicial vacancies (and we thought it was bad in Canada), while also looking to vet the current roster of judges for malfeasance as they work toward cleaning up corruption in order to meet the conditions for acceptance into the EU.

Good reads:

  • Being pressed to make a “correction” on his statement about the explosion at the hospital in Gaza, Justin Trudeau says he needs more time to work with allies.
  • Trudeau spent more time with Caribbean leaders in Ottawa yesterday, discussing investment in the region, and sanctioning elites in Haiti benefitting from the gangs.
  • Mélanie Joly confirms that Canada has pulled most of its diplomatic staff and their families from India after the threats to remove diplomatic immunity.
  • Anita Anand has declined to act on committee recommendations to fix the Access to Information system, citing ongoing changes and a 2025 legislative review.
  • Seamus O’Regan is tasking some academics with finding ways to prevent labour disputes at ports from escalating to the point of strikes like they did this year.
  • The Commissioner of Competition released a report showing weakening competition over the past two decades, and “efficiencies” leading to higher prices.
  • The RCMP are calling on people to turn in banned military assault rifles that were mistakenly sold in Canada after being misidentified.
  • The special envoy for combatting Islamophobia is warning of another 9/11-esque stereotyping of Muslims after the Hamas attacks.
  • Once again, an Oath to the King is found to be constitutional and not about the natural person but our constitutional system and rule of law.
  • Myanmar has been receiving shipments of plastic waste from Canada, that we were supposed to have stopped shipping but apparently still are.
  • Ontario NDP MPP Sarah Jama has served Doug Ford with a libel notice after his characterisation of comments about the Hamas attacks on Israelis.
  • Emmett Macfarlane points out the hypocrisy of the Ford government demanding “accountability” for York students’ statement of the Gaza situation.
  • Paul Wells offers his look at being on Substack for 18 months, and that that means for his journalism.
  • My Xtra column looks at how Scott Moe is demonstrating his moral bankruptcy with everything he has included in his school pronoun policy bill.

Odds and ends:

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One thought on “Roundup: Another diminished Auditor General Day”

  1. With regard to the Auditor General’s Report, we can only hope that, with Anita Anand in charge of Treasury Board, things will move more quickly.

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