It was Auditor General Day yesterday, and there were a bunch of reports released, including three from the Environment Commissioner, who is in her office. And so, this is what they found:
- The CBSA’s new digital management software, CARM, is still glitchy two years later and they spend a lot of time on manual workarounds.
- FINTRAC continues to be plagued by reporting backlogs that aren’t going to be cleared until next year at least.
- National Defence didn’t manage their ammunition inventory effectively.
- Ways to improve the dental care programme after it exceeded its budget.
- The government still won’t outline their plan to meet their 2030 emissions targets.
- The procurement process for new call centre technology has been a mess.
- Health Canada isn’t following up on high-risk pesticides identified with monitoring.
- PHAC has not effectively managed their emergency stockpiles.
- The government stopped work on banning thermal coal exports without saying so.
There is a common theme about a lack of oversight in many of these reports, and while a lot of these issues are from the Trudeau era, I have observed that there was an issue with a lack of proper management of government departments, where the attitude seemed to be that these civil servants were left to manage their own affairs, which they didn’t necessarily do effectively. Whether that’s because ministers didn’t feel they were qualified to because they were constantly reporting to the Centre (meaning the chief of staff) was a possibility, or perhaps it was because they didn’t realise that it was their responsibility to do so. I wonder if it will get worse under Carney, however, as ministers are preoccupied with trying to use digital asbestos to “find efficiencies,” or because major projects and decisions are being shunted off to Crown corporations to manage them instead, which are more arm’s-length, and as a result get less scrutiny. We’ll have to see, but the trend is not encouraging.
The government also released their first National Security Strategy in twenty years, and it was a slim, high-level document that had very few details, but outlined five broad themes, including a focus on economic security. There is also concern outlined about “frontier” digital asbestos being a major threat. Philippe Lagassé considers the defence-related items, while Stephanie Carvin has her initial thoughts here.
Carney says we are "forging new partnerships with allies that are anchored in our common values."What are our "common values" with China, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Türkiye, and Modi's India? If the common value is making money, then he should just come out and say so.
— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-10-30T00:54:22.514Z