Standing Committee on Public Accounts

Comité permanent des comptes publics

For immediate release

Ottawa, September 26, 2017 -

OTTAWA – Canada Border Services Agency and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada developed controls to mitigate the risk of corruption of its employees, but did not adequately monitor them to ensure they were working as designed, according to a report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts tabled today in the House of Commons by the Hon. Kevin Sorenson, Chair of the Committee.

In the spring of 2017, the Office of the Auditor General of Canada (OAG) released a performance audit whose objective was to determine whether the Department and the Agency implemented selected controls–meaning policies, procedures, processes, and activities–to address the risk that immigration and border services staff could be corrupted. The audit found that although both organizations had identified corruption as a risk that could result in unauthorized foreign nationals travelling to and entering the country, and in Canadians re-entering the country, without undergoing all elements of a required inspection, neither organization adequately monitored the controls to ensure they were functioning as intended.

Specifically, the OAG found that Agency staff did not use available information for ongoing assessments, meaning it missed opportunities to detect improper actions in a timely way, leaving it vulnerable to corruption. Additionally, the Department did not use the information gathered through their checklists to develop a comprehensive risk assessment. In this report, the Committee made five recommendations that seek to ensure that these organizations, as well as Global Affairs Canada, implement each of its proposed corrective measures in order to properly address the deficiencies identified in the OAG’s audit.