Performance Context: Risks and Challenges

To earn and keep the trust of our clients, we need a redress process that is not only fair, but is also perceived to be fair. Clients who are not satisfied with the results of our reviews can appeal to the courts. For trade administration issues, they can appeal to the Canadian International Trade Tribunal.

Our goal in Appeals is to ensure that all of the CCRA's clients have access to responsive and impartial redress. Although we have been able to increase the number of disputes we resolve, we are still unable to keep pace with the intake of new objections. As a result, inventories continue to grow, especially of non-workable files. A file is considered to be “non-workable” if a court decision or legal opinion on it or a related file is pending, additional information from the client is required, or the file is awaiting an opinion or direction.

Almost 20,000 of our 54,000 cases in non-workable status relate to pay equity objections. These objections have been filed by the pay equity recipients who may have felt dissatisfied with the impact of our legislation on their equity receipts, such as the imposition of tax on the accumulated interest portion of the receipts. However, a large number of non-workable files may move into workable status with little notice as these cases are resolved. We mitigated this risk by implementing the recommendations of our comprehensive study to improve timeliness.

To date, we have made limited progress in measuring the consistency of fairness decisions or in implementing fairness monitoring, and are still unable to report on our performance in this area. We mitigated this risk by developing monitoring plans for all program areas that are involved with the administration of the fairness provisions, and by reviewing our Fairness Registry to expand its information capabilities. Despite these initial efforts, more quantitative measures of performance will not be possible until additional progress in enhancing our systems is made.

Date modified:

2003-10-29