PACP meeting 34 · 2026-04-27 — Committee Evidence — LegisWatch

Summary

The House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Accounts met to study the Auditor General’s follow-up report on programs for First Nations, tabled in October 2025. Appearing were Auditor General Karen Hogan, Deputy Minister Michelle Kovacevic, Assistant Deputy Minister Jennifer Wheatley, Director Curtis Bergeron, and Senior Assistant Deputy Minister Candice St-Aubin.

Karen Hogan stated that Indigenous Services Canada made unsatisfactory progress on over half of 33 recommendations from six audits since 2015, despite an 84% funding increase to $24 billion. She identified four barriers: lack of sustained management attention, unclear service levels, insufficient support for First Nations capacity, and a passive, siloed approach to funding. She noted that nine long-term drinking water advisories have lasted over a decade and that fewer emergency services agreements exist than in 2022.

Michelle Kovacevic acknowledged the findings but argued that progress has been made, citing 157 long-term drinking water advisories lifted and improvements in education and emergency coordination. She committed to sustained management attention and highlighted a departmental reorganization to create a single regional access point for services. She disagreed with the implication that no progress occurred, emphasizing improvements relative to baselines.

Jennifer Wheatley explained that the reorganization aims to proactively engage communities, especially smaller ones, and shared examples of deploying staff to Peguis First Nation during floods and funding emergency management coordinators in Alberta. She conceded that no region has fully solved the issues, but best practices are being shared.

Curtis Bergeron noted that 97% of water systems meet Health Canada guidelines and that the operations and maintenance funding formula was updated in 2022-23 to cover 100% of costs, including remoteness factors. He confirmed that $749 million is allocated this fiscal year for water infrastructure upgrades.

Candice St-Aubin addressed performance indicators, acknowledging that some data, like mental wellness metrics, rely on older surveys due to data governance challenges. She noted $178 million spent to improve data governance in communities and efforts to reduce and refine key performance indicators.

The committee also debated a motion regarding documents from the Minister of Finance, with Sébastien Lemire reporting that negotiations were ongoing but unresolved, and he pledged to provide an update soon.

AI-generated summary — may contain errors; verify against the official evidence.

Witnesses · 5

Karen Hogan

Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General

Opening remarks

Good morning, Mr. Chair. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before the committee today on our follow-up report on programs for first nations, which was tabled on October 21, 2025. I’d like to begin by recognizing that we are meeting on the traditional, unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe people. I’m grateful for the contributions and stewardship of indigenous peoples across Canada, who for generations have cared for the lands they call home. Programs for first nations have been a concern for my office for decades. In this follow-up audit, we examined Indigenous Services Canada’s progress on 33 recommendations from six audits my office has conducted since 2015. These audits covered a range of programs important to the health and well-being of first nations communities, including programs providing access to primary health care, emergency management services and safe drinking water, things that many Canadians take for granted. Despite almost doubling spending on programs over the last five years, we found that Indigenous Services Canada made unsatisfactory progress on more than half of our previous recommendations. For instance, as early as 2005 we identified…

Full testimony ↗

Michelle Kovacevic

Deputy Minister, Department of Indigenous Services

Opening remarks

Thank you and good morning, Mr. Chair. I am privileged to be here on the unceded Algonquin territory. Good morning, everybody. My name is Michelle Kovacevic, and I am the deputy minister of Indigenous Services Canada. This is my first time appearing before this committee in this new role. I’m quite grateful for the chance to be here so early in my mandate to talk about the path ahead and the important recommendations that the Auditor General and her team have identified. I will be super brief to allow maximum time for discussion. The Auditor General’s follow-up work offers important insight into where more attention is needed, clearly. The report highlights that, while progress has been made, gaps remain in how federal programs function for first nations. We agree with the Auditor General’s call for clearer service expectations, stronger coordination, better support for local capacity and sustained management attention. I acknowledge that these are long-standing issues and they require continued attention. I would like to emphasize the words “continued attention”, because I believe that is indeed the key to truly improving services and benefits for indigenous peoples. Key to…

Jennifer Wheatley

Assistant Deputy Minister, Regional Delivery Sector, Department of Indigenous Services

Opening remarks

As the deputy spoke about, reorganizing ourselves to create a single window for indigenous communities is positioning us to be able to be more proactive and engage and meet communities where they are, with particular attention—I take the point—on smaller communities with less capacity. I would say there's no region that's cracked this nut. We wouldn't have this audit report if we had cracked it already. I think there are best practices. We are learning now with this new organizational structure to share those best practices more consistently and quickly across the country. For example, with the most recent impending flood in Peguis First Nation, we actually deployed people—not for a tour of the community, but to stay in the community—so that we could facilitate, coordinate and be more proactive in our active offer of service at the leadership level and with our engineers and technical staff. I think that region is showing that leaning in more proactively, as the Auditor General suggested, is helpful in meeting communities where they are and helping to fill the gaps. Alberta is another region that is leaning in more proactively, as the Auditor General suggested we had to. The…

Full testimony ↗