Auditor General reveals next Nunavut audit: health department

Canada’s Auditor General, Michael Ferguson, left, in the Nunavut legislature in May 2015. Ferguson’s team of performance auditors will soon turn their attention to Nunavut’s health department which comprises more than one fifth of the territory’s operational budget at $317.4 million. (FILE PHOTO)

The Office of the Auditor General of Canada has confirmed that its next audit on the Government of Nunavut will examine the Department of Health.

That decision was made only recently and auditors are still in the process of planning their first trips to Nunavut communities.

Ghislain Desjardins, media relations manager for the Office of the Auditor General, confirmed Nov. 4 that they will look at how the GN delivers health care in the territory, but declined to provide other details.

“Please note that we never discuss the scope of our audits while they are underway,” Desjardins wrote in an email to Nunatsiaq News.

Ron Wassink, communications specialist for the GN’s health department, also said it’s too early to talk about the scope of the Office of the Auditor General audit.

He said health department staff will meet with the Auditor General’s staff “later this month” and will likely have more details at that time.

The Auditor General of Canada’s main function is to audit some 100 federal departments and agencies, “ranging from small boards to large, complex organizations whose activities extend across Canada and overseas,” its website says.

In addition to that, the Auditor General’s office audits 40 Crown corporations, such as the CBC, and also the governments of Nunavut, Yukon and the Northwest Territories, along with 20 territorial corporations and agencies.

Provincial governments have their own auditors general who perform audits on provincial departments and Crown agencies.

The Office of the Auditor General has been auditing the Nunavut government since it was created in 1999, issuing its first general report in 2001.

Since then, the Auditor General has delivered 16 reports to the GN on a variety of topics including financial management, human resource capacity, procurement, education, child and family services and, the most recent one in 2015, corrections.

Always thorough, and sometimes controversial, these reports have highlighted significant legal, safety and even human rights shortcomings in the way the young Nunavut government delivers programs to its citizens.

But the reports also include priority areas for improvement and suggested remedies which help high level GN staffers fix the most pressing problems.

You can find all those Nunavut reports on the Office of the Auditor General’s website here.

Nunavut’s department of Health, which handles everything from front-line care to tobacco reduction programs, eats up the largest chunk of Nunavut’s annual operations and maintenance budget.

The Auditor General last looked at the health department in 2009, when it was part of the old Department of Health and Social Services. That followed years of complaints from MLAs about annual over-expenditures and rising costs in the department.

The next audit will study the health department for the first time since April 1, 2013, when it was restructured as a standalone entity.

Health’s 2015-15 operational budget is $317.4 million — more than one fifth of the territory’s entire budget this fiscal year.

According to the 2014-15 Annual Report on the Operation of the Medical Care Plan, recently tabled in the legislature, more than one third of the department’s operational budget is spent on medical travel ($64.6 million) and physician and hospital services outside the territory ($57.1 million).

As of March 31, 2015, 36,667 individuals were registered under Nunavut’s Health Insurance Plan, which means the number of people who are eligible to receive health care services in Nunavut.

That, according to the Medical Care Plan report, is an increase of 1,350 people from 2014.