Evaluation of the Duties Relief and Duty Drawback Programs: Conclusion and recommendations

6.1 Conclusion

By relieving duties, the DRP and Drawback Programs are an important source of support for domestic importers, especially during the post-COVID-19 pandemic recovery period.

[redacted] for recruiting additional staff, which are taking longer than anticipated to be realized. Even as of the end of last fiscal, one-quarter of all positions remained vacant, including a large proportion of Ontario's positions. Staff turnover has been high and remains an on-going challenge, as does on-boarding and training of new staff in the COVID-19 pandemic in what are highly technical and complex programs.

The evaluation found evidence of increased compliance activities for the DRP. [redacted], 16 verifications on high-risk SMG DRP importers have been completed, resulting in five DRP participants having their licences suspended or cancelled. Changes have been made to introduce more rigour when processing new DRP licence applications [redacted]. However, [redacted] at a time when surtaxes had caused a spike in DRP licence applications; however this was short-lived, and surtaxes were removed within the year. This, together with changes in the external environment, including the increase in high-value litigation and the COVID-19 pandemic, has greatly reduced the relevance of the indicators. In addition, the indicators themselves have not been systematically tracked over the past three years. Neither the evaluation team nor program experts were able to recreate the original baselines for the quantitative indicators, and some indicators could not be calculated at all.

An internal audit of the response to the 2017 OAG recommendation related to the DRP determined that the CBSA had considered making licences renewable and requiring financial deposits.

[redacted]. For this reason, the evaluation recommends developing a new PMF containing sound indicators of performance [redacted], which would help demonstrate progress that has been made.

6.2 Recommendations

Recommendation 1

[redacted]

Recommendation 2

A new PMF should be put in place for the DRP and Drawback Program, which includes the following activities:

1. Revising the logic model and developing performance indicators [redacted];
2. Developing SOPs on how all performance indicators are calculated and reported on;
3. Instituting a process to regularly track and report on all performance indicators; and
4. Developing a plan, and beginning to implement improvements to the quality and consistency of data entered into systems.

The target date for completion is March 31, 2023.

Recommendation 3

Given the significant changes in the external environment [redacted] and the implementation challenges that the program faces, it is recommended that the program develop an action plan (roadmap) to optimize [redacted] in support of strengthened program compliance. The target date for completion of the action plan is July 31, 2022.