When officials from the office of the federal auditor general began to investigate the administration of the Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization program in 2005, they were looking for and found evidence of bad program design and implementation.
They also found some cases of potential conflict of interest.
A handful of the CAIS application processors were making money on the side by selling their expert knowledge to help farmers fill out their applications designed to get money from the program.
In other cases, CAIS employees were helping fill out forms for their own farms or their farming neighbours and friends.
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Last week, auditor general Sheila Fraser said it was a conflict of interest because CAIS employees have inside knowledge that would allow them “to manipulate the data in producers’ CAIS applications and to trigger payments.”
Agriculture Canada halted the practice, ordering five employees to stop acting as CAIS application consultants for a fee and reminding all program employees that it is not allowed.
The department also now requires all CAIS employees who fill out an application for their own farm, family or friends to tell their bosses so someone else can process those applications.
Fraser said the department acted after she exposed the existence of employees freelancing as paid consultants.
“This practice contravenes the conflict-of-interest provisions in the Values and Ethics Code for the public service and it could have provided an unfair financial advantage to some applicants,” she told a May 1 news conference as her report was tabled in Parliament.
Her report also said those employees “risk contravening provisions (of the code) that deal with providing preferential treatment and benefiting from information that is not available to the public.”
At first, though, the department said it did not see a problem because the rules for the risk assessment tests that are used to judge applications “are so complex that they would not be useful to employees.”
The auditor general’s office did not buy that explanation and the department reminded 18 employees of their conflict-of-interest obligations and then ordered five to quit their moonlighting.
“The department has informed employees through a deputy minister letter that they cannot prepare CAIS applications for a fee,” Agriculture Canada said in a response to the auditor general’s report. “This will be repeated on a yearly basis.”
