Highlights of Auditor General Michael Ferguson's spring report

Auditor General Michael Ferguson has released his 2016 spring report. Here are some highlights of his report:

• Canada's auditor general is urging the Department of Veterans Affairs to get a handle on its drugs benefit program including the amount of medical pot being prescribed to veterans, which it found is "poorly documented" and not always based on evidence.
• The number of veterans receiving medical marijuana jumped from 112 in 2013-14 to 1,320 in 2015, and the cost rose accordingly: from $408,810 to $12.1 million. The audit estimates the cost could reach $25 million in 2016-17, nearly one third of the drug costs of the Veterans Affairs health benefits program.
• Veterans Affairs also lacks a "well-defined approach" for monitoring drug use among veterans, and does not monitor trends that could indicate "high-risk" behaviour. For instance, while it will not cover the cost of acetaminophen that exceeds the maximum recommended dose, no such limits exist for narcotics or sedatives.
• Efforts by the Department of Immigration to detect and prevent citizenship fraud were were inadequate, resulting in citizenship being granted based without proper security checks.
• People with serious criminal records and others using potentially phoney addresses are among those who managed to secure Canadian citizenship, thanks to a system that doesn't do enough to root out fraud.
• Between 2008 and 2015, 50 different applicants used the same single address on their citizenship applications during overlapping time periods; seven of the applicants became Canadian citizens before the address was flagged during a residency fraud investigation.
• Compounding the problem, the auditor general said, was "poor information sharing" between the Immigration Department, the RCMP and the Canada Border Services Agency.
• Out of 38 criminal cases since 2010 involving a permanent resident or foreign national, the RCMP shared the relevant details with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada in only two of them.
• Immigration officials are looking at revoking the Canadian citizenship of about a dozen people after the auditor general found the government isn't doing enough to root out fraud in the citizenship system.
• Reserve soldiers are not fully prepared to deploy on missions due to the dwindling number of soldiers and a lack of equipment and training.
• Individual units of the Canadian Army's reserve units lack sufficient soldiers — just 14,000 instead of a needed 21,000 — as well as access to key equipment for domestic missions and clear guidance on training, counter to National Defence's stated goal.
• The number of Canadian Army reservists has dwindled by about five per cent, or about 1,000 soldiers per year between the 2012-13 and 2014-15 fiscal years.
• While the selection processes for governor-in-council appointments such as chairpersons and full-time appointees were open and transparent, there was no documentation to support several part-time appointments.
• The Immigration and Refugee Board has long-standing vacancies that are contributing to decision-making delays: 21 positions are vacant, leading to wait times of an average of 18 months.
• Receiving short-term approval of its funding and corporate plan, often late in the fiscal year, has made it difficult for Via Rail to carry out its operations in an effective manner.
• The process of choosing fund managers for the government's $400-million "Venture Capital Action Plan," established in the 2012 budget, was onerous, laden with red tape and insufficiently fair, open and transparent, resulting in just nine submissions out of a possible 100 would-be candidates.