A new report by Canada’s Auditor General released on Tuesday reveals that the federal government is struggling to ensure that veterans with disabilities, wounded mountains and vulnerable Canadians receive the necessary benefits.
Karen Hogan presented four reports Tuesday reviewing the federal government’s efforts to: provide disability benefits to veterans; providing income and other benefits to vulnerable groups; use gender-based analysis to improve people’s lives and help different groups of prisoners.
“These audits point to long-standing problems and barriers in a wide range of government activities,” Hogan told reporters on Tuesday. “These barriers are unacceptable, whether they are facing local and black offenders, or low-income people and veterans who have access to benefits.
The report concludes that while the Department of Veterans Affairs in Canada has taken steps to try to improve the process of applying for disability benefits, file management is inefficient and the department is unable to reduce the waiting time for veterans.
“Implementation of the initiatives has been slow,” the report said. “There was no data to measure improvements. Both the funding and almost half of the staff in the team responsible for processing the applications were temporary.
“As a result, the veterans waited too long to receive benefits to support their physical and mental health and the overall well-being of their families.
Watch: The Auditor General says the government is struggling to benefit vulnerable groups:
Canada’s Auditor General says government is struggling to benefit vulnerable populations
Auditor General Karen Hogan says the government has known about the obstacles to benefits for some time, but has done little to rectify the situation.
Nearly 40 weeks of waiting
The report found that veterans waited nearly 40 weeks to decide on their first application for disability benefits, when the average processing time for most other department applications was just 16 weeks.
The report says the department has not met its benefit standard for seven years.
The report also found that Francophones, women and wounded RCMP officers had to wait longer than other Canadians to take advantage of them.
From April 2020 to September 2021, wounded RCMP officers had to wait 38% more than members of the Canadian Armed Forces for benefits, women had to wait 24% longer than men, and Francophones had to wait 21% longer than the Anglophones.
“I remain convinced that the government has not kept the promise it made to our veterans: that it will take care of them if they are injured in the line of duty,” Hogan said on Tuesday.
“This has real implications for the well-being of our veterans and their families.”
According to a new report by Canada’s Auditor General, the way veterans ‘benefits are handled by disability benefits is ineffective and the department is unable to reduce veterans’ waiting times. (Combat Camera / DND)
To address the department’s problems, the chief auditor recommended that veterans revise the way they organize their data so that the department can make better decisions. The report also advised the department to better plan resources so that it could process applications in a timely manner.
The department said it accepted the criticism and recommendations, but also blamed the delay in a 40 per cent increase in all applications and a 75 per cent increase in first-time applications.
“By the end of March 2022, the department expects to halve the number of applications waiting longer than our standard of service,” the department said in a response.
Vulnerable groups and federal benefits
The Auditor General also looked at how the federal government benefits hard-to-reach people and vulnerable groups, such as Indigenous people, the homeless, newcomers to Canada, including refugees, people with disabilities, the elderly and young people.
The report found that government agencies had not done enough to track the provision of certain benefits to these groups, including child benefits in Canada, benefits for Canadian workers, the guaranteed income supplement and the Canadian training bond.
“The Revenue Agency of Canada and Canada’s Employment and Social Development Agency did not know whether most of their targeted field activities had helped increase aid rates for hard-to-reach populations,” Hogan said in a statement.
“As a result, they are failing to improve the lives of some people and families who may be most in need of these benefits.
To address the problem, the Auditor General said that the Canadian Revenue Agency and Canada’s Employment and Social Development Agency should: better measure the absorption of benefits to understand the problem; reach out to vulnerable groups more effectively and work more effectively with other government agencies.
Correctional Service Canada
Hogan’s view of the Correctional Service of Canada, CSC, found that the department had not adjusted its programs to respond to the growing diversity of offenders.
This approach, the report said, has contributed to the continuing failure to remove systemic barriers that “permanently disadvantage certain groups of offenders in custody”.
“We raised similar issues in our audits in 2015, 2016 and 2017, but the Correctional Service of Canada has done little to change the policies, practices, tools and approaches that produce these different results,” Hogan said.
The report found that because systemic barriers had not been removed, visible minorities, women and indigenous offenders had not been given access to programs that would help them successfully reintegrate into society once they were released from prison.
Gender-based analysis
The report found, for example, that black offenders were placed at high levels of security when entering the system with twice the percentage of other prisoners. This is important, the report said, as “the offender’s initial guards affect his potential for parole and the length of his sentences in custody.”
The audit also found that the CSC had failed to build a workforce that “reflects the diversity of offender populations.”
The fourth report found that the federal government had not done enough to improve gender equality outcomes for different groups of people.
“We concluded that since our audit in 2015, limited progress has been made in identifying and overcoming obstacles to the implementation of gender-based analysis,” the report said. “Implementation challenges continue, including some identified in our 2009 audit.”
The report says the Secret Service Office, the Secretariat of the Ministry of Finance of Canada and Women and Gender Equality in Canada need to do better work to work together to ensure that gender analysis of the provision of government services and programs yield results.
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