OTTAWA, Ont. - Auditor General Karen Hogan tabled nine audit reports in the House of Commons on Thursday, October 29, 2026, covering dental care, the national emergency stockpile, border systems, ammunition, call centres and the environment, in one of the largest single audit days of the year.
The nine reports, listed on the Office of the Auditor General’s media room, are: the Canada Border Services Agency’s import assessment system, which is processing duties with expected efficiencies yet to be realized; the Canadian Dental Care Plan, where millions are benefiting from more affordable dental care with opportunities to improve the plan; National Defence’s ammunition inventory, which was not managed to meet its needs; the Public Health Agency of Canada’s management of the medical stockpile, where weaknesses were found; procurement processes to update call centre technology, where rigour and accountability were lacking; Environment and Climate Change Canada’s failure to report on how Canada will meet its 2030 emissions target, in a report from the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development; Health Canada’s water monitoring program for pesticides, which is producing useful information with opportunities to strengthen follow-up; work stopped on a thermal coal export ban despite Canada’s international commitments; and the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC), where weak oversight and slow financial intelligence limited effectiveness.
Five federal ministers responded to the six performance audit reports the same day. Health Minister Marjorie Michel, Government Transformation Minister Joël Lightbound, National Defence Minister David J. McGuinty, Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne and Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree issued a joint statement thanking the Auditor General and setting out the government’s replies.
On dental care, the ministers’ response says the Canadian Dental Care Plan has made dental care more affordable for its members, with more than 7.6 million Canadian residents enrolled since its launch in December 2023 and more than 4.9 million having received care. On the emergency stockpile, it says the Public Health Agency of Canada responded to all 81 requests for assistance from provinces and territories during the audit period, supporting emergencies including wildfires with medical equipment, vaccines and beds, and will implement recommendations on documentation consistency, timeliness of corrective actions and performance measurement.
On financial intelligence, the response says FINTRAC’s intelligence contributed to 348 major, resource-intensive investigations as well as many hundreds of other investigations at the municipal, provincial and federal levels and internationally. On border systems, it says the CBSA’s Assessment and Revenue Management (CARM) system effectively calculated duties and taxes using information submitted by importers, processing around $42 billion in duties and taxes in 2024-25, with nearly all imports (99.65 percent) processed electronically. The agency will phase out temporary workarounds in favour of system upgrades, improve user guidance tools, publish inquiry response times and refine support processes.
For Surrey readers, three of these audits land close to home. Dental care costs are a monthly reality for families without workplace coverage, and the plan’s enrolment figures show how many Canadians are now using it. Border and import systems affect Surrey’s importers, customs brokers and cross-border businesses directly, since duties and taxes on commercial imports flow through CARM. And emergency stockpile management matters in a province where wildfire seasons now regularly require emergency supplies, even though the audit’s focus is federal management, not provincial fire response.
Readers should note what this article does not claim. News coverage of the audit day has circulated additional figures about stockpile write-offs and dental plan costs. Those figures do not appear in the Auditor General’s release titles or in the ministers’ response relied on here, so they are not repeated in this article. What is reported above comes only from the Auditor General’s own report list and the government’s official response, both dated October 29, 2026.
(Source: Office of the Auditor General of Canada media room, October 29, 2026)
