OTTAWA — The federal government has lost track of 41,000 illegal immigrants who should be deported, Transport Canada's move to overhaul aviation safety is falling short and 24 Sussex Dr., home to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, is falling apart.
Those are the highlights of Auditor-General Sheila Fraser spring report released today in Ottawa.
Fraser's findings on air safety are sure to stoke criticisms of Transport Canada's push to let individual aviation firms take responsibility for the safety of their operations.
Canada is the first in the world to make the move but Fraser's report highlighted "weaknesses" with the government's approach.
"In planning the transition, it did not formally assess the risks involved in the change or forecast the overall costs of managing it," Fraser said in her report.
She concluded that Transport Canada's approach to air safety "needs to be better managed."
Fraser told reporters today that it's impossible to spell out the risks of this new approach.
"That's the issue. We don't know because they haven't done the risk assessment and they haven't indicated to us how they are mitigating those risks," she said during a news conference.
"We would have liked to have seen more identification of the risks and how they were addressing those . . . and that it show that they clearly understand what the risks are," she said.
"Potentially it could be serious but we still think there is time for them to adjust and correct this," Fraser said.
In an eight-volume report, Fraser and her officials passed judgment on everything from the state of Ottawa's official residences to infectious diseases to the defence department's ability to keep the Kandahar mission supplied.
Highlights of her report today include:
— the Canada Border Services Agency does not collect enough data to "properly manage detentions and removals." As a result, the agency has lost track of 41,000 people who had been ordered to leave Canada, although some may have already left, the report said.
"The agency does not monitor its detention and removal decisions across the country to ensure they are consistent," Fraser said.
She said many of those missing deportees are failed refugee claimants.
— Harper's official residence needs $10 million worth of urgent renovations and the prime minister will have to move out for up to 15 months while the work is being done. Fraser said no major renovations have been done to the residence, built in the 1860s, in 50 years, dating back to its first official occupant — Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent.
She says the building — used often to host international dignitaries — suffers from cracked windows, outdated and overloaded wiring, "deficient" plumbing, aging air conditioners and an inefficient heating system.
She warned that delays are likely to result in further deterioration and higher costs.
— the Public Health Agency of Canada still has troubles in its ability to keep vigil for infectious diseases. Fraser noted that except for Ontario, the agency has no formal information-sharing agreements with provinces and territories.
The lack of information sharing could hobble the agency's ability to react to a public health emergency, the auditor-general noted in her report.
"Outbreaks of diseases such as SARS and avian flu have underscored the need to track and report cases of infectious diseases," the auditor-general notes.
— the defence department has been able to keep its Afghan mission adequately supplied but it took hard work to overcome "supply chain weaknesses." The audit revealed that shortcomings have caused delays in moving supplies but
It also found that the department lost track of items needed for operations and that some key equipment has been hard to maintain because of spare parts shortages.
"So far the military has been able to adapt and adjust so that operations have not been significantly affected," Fraser told reporters today.
"But unless the problems we found can be resolved, the Canadian Forces could have increasing difficulty supporting the mission," she said.
— an assessment of the fees charged by various federal departments concluded that Health Canada was undercharging for its distribution of medical marijuana while Foreign Affairs was overcharging Canadians for passports.
TheStar.com | Canada | 41,000 illegal immigrants missing
