Feds fail to measure social, economic gaps between First Nations, others: audit
OTTAWA — Indigenous Services Canada is failing to measure and accurately report the social and economic gaps between First Nations people on reserves and other Canadians, auditor general Michael Ferguson said Tuesday.
“There are so many discussions about the need to close the socio-economic gaps between Indigenous people and other Canadians in this country and we don’t see those gaps closing,” Ferguson told a news conference after his spring report was tabled in Parliament.
“We don’t even see that they know how to measure those gaps.”
The centrepiece of Tuesday’s report was the embattled Phoenix pay system for federal civil servants, which Ferguson described as an “incomprehensible failure” — a description he also ascribed to Canada’s intractable failure to get better results for Indigenous people.