Section C: Saskatchewan Region

In addition to the consolidated findings, conclusions and recommendations found in the main body of this report, this appendix provides an overview of results that are specific to the Saskatchewan region. This appendix must be read in context of the main report. This appendix provides observations specific to the Canada-Saskatchewan agreements.

Overview and Criteria Results

The Management Committee and the Joint Secretariat have established appropriate systems and procedures for the successful management of the program. Exemplary is that program staff documented virtually all activities on project and program files in spite of limited WD staff during the audit period.

There was evidence that pro-active interaction between WD staff and provincial partners and program recipients contributed immensely to the programs’ success considering the sparsely populated nature of the Province and the large number of relatively smaller dollar-valued projects. A dedicated internal auditor assigned to the Joint Secretariat further supplemented the monitoring and payment reviews. Key project and administrative decisions and other matters were effectively documented and communicated. The region consistently utilized the SIMSI tool effectively to capture and organize most of the day-to-day project management intended information.

Results of selected audit criteria that were used to assess key risks and control elements, which impact achievement of program objectives, are summarized as follows:

Risk and Control Element	Assessed Criteria Results
Governance and Administration	Criteria mostly met
Risk Management	Criteria partially met
Financial Management	Criteria met
Stewardship and Project Management	Criteria mostly met
Information and Performance Reporting	Criteria met
Communication	Criteria met
Compliance with Agreements and Policies	Criteria met

Observations

Because of staff shortages, WD assigned limited staff to the INFC file in the audit period. Two key WD staff retired in 2008 in the region and the Joint Secretariat also has some pending retirements of key personnel. Functional organizational charts did not exist to describe the roles and responsibilities that needed to be replaced. Maintaining a functional organization chart and accurate job descriptions are good management practices. These should be reviewed on a regular basis. WD has added new resources to the file since the summer of 2008 and was clarifying staff roles and responsibilities. Given the anticipated additional retirements, this should continue to be a priority in the Saskatchewan region.

The staff shortages during this audit period had an impact on workload and deliverables. The Annual Reports and Audit Plans with a risk based audit framework were not up-to-date. The region had not submitted its annual MRIF report. The region had processed some CSIF claims without demanding the required financial reports. There were some adequate mitigating factors due to the credibility and capacity of the recipient involved; however, failure to demand required documents compromises the integrity of the due diligence process.

Several regional officers kept very sound documentation on their individual project files. This good practice could be introduced into as a standing operating procedure for use by all staff to ensure greater consistency in the region.

The auditors found three cases where the recipient did not provide complete information on the final claim form as to whether or not actual benefits listed on the project applications were achieved. An effective monitoring and payments process requires some assessment of achieved results compared to intended results, and an explanation of any variances.

Saskatchewan is the only western region that had not produced its audit plans and required annual reports for MRIF. The auditors recognize the staffing and turnover challenges that the Saskatchewan region faced over the audit period; however, the Saskatchewan region needs to address these deficiencies as soon as possible.