Report of the Auditor General of Canada to the Board of Governors of the International Development Research Centre—Special Examination Report—2016
Opening Statement to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts
Report of the Auditor General of Canada to the Board of Governors of the International Development Research Centre—Special Examination Report—2016
(International Development Research Centre—Special Examination Report—2016)
13 December 2016
Sylvain Ricard, CPA, CA
Assistant Auditor General
Thank you, Mr. Chair, for this opportunity to discuss our Special Examination Report on the International Development Research Centre. I am accompanied today by Lissa Lamarche, the Principal responsible for this audit.
As you know, a special examination seeks to determine whether the Crown corporation’s systems and practices provide reasonable assurance that its assets are safeguarded and controlled, its resources are managed economically and efficiently, and its operations are carried out effectively.
Our examination covered the period between August 2015 and March 2016.
Overall, the Centre had in place good corporate management practices for governance, strategic planning and risk management, and performance measurement and reporting. However, our examination identified a significant deficiency in the Centre’s Board of Governors’ complement. We found that the Board did not have enough members to ensure it maintained the statutory quorum of seven members, despite the Centre’s efforts to proactively identify to the Minister the skills gaps created by the departure of particular governors, as well as potential candidates with the necessary profile. This threatened the Board’s ability to validly conduct business, repeatedly putting at risk its ability to fulfill its oversight and decision-making responsibilities.
As noted in our report’s Subsequent Event section, in June 2016, the Minister of International Development and La Francophonie announced the appointment of a new chairperson and 6 new governors to the Board. The new Board complement of 12 members will help the Board ensure and maintain a quorum and thus validly conduct business.
We also found that there was room for improvement in the Centre’s management practices. We noted that the Centre was inconsistent in integrating project-level activities into corporate-level activities. Specifically, the performance measures it used at the project level did not align with and adequately inform the measurements at the level of strategic objectives. Further, projects did not have clearly defined implementation activities to support the Centre’s strategic objectives.
We found that the Centre managed its research projects and donor agreements well. However, we noted that, for its new area of parallel-funded partnerships, the Centre was still developing its systems and practices. We found that in engaging with these potential parallel partners, the Centre did not have a systematic approach to assessing partners and the risks that it might be exposed to from these parallel partner agreements.
The Centre agreed with all of our recommendations and prepared an action plan in response to our concerns. However, because our audit work was completed in March 2016, I cannot comment on any measures the Centre has taken since then. The Committee may wish to ask the Centre’s officials to clarify what measures the Centre has taken in response to our recommendations.
Mr. Chair, this concludes my opening remarks. We would be pleased to answer any questions the Committee may have. Thank you.