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Archived - Evaluation of Administrative Monetary Penalties (AMPs)

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Evaluation

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency's (CFIA) Evaluation Directorate is responsible for evaluating the relevance and performance of Agency programs, policies and initiatives. This effort supports informed decision-making and enhances performance and accountability.

The Evaluation Directorate is accountable to the CFIA's Evaluation Committee, chaired by the President. All evaluations must be reported to the Evaluation Committee and must be conducted in accordance with the Treasury Board's Policy on Evaluation. Evaluation projects are selected based on higher risk or significance during an annual Agency planning process, and then reflected in the Agency's Evaluation Plan, which is approved by the Evaluation Committee.

Overview

As part of the Agency's five-year evaluation plan, the CFIA conducted an internal evaluation of Administrative Monetary Penalties (AMPs). AMPs are intended to address non-compliance in areas in which corrective action requests are not enough, but where prosecution, seizure, or license suspension or revocation are not considered appropriate.

At the CFIA, AMPs are currently applied to select areas of the Health of Animals Act and Health of Animals Regulations and of the Plant Protection Act and Plant Protection Regulations.

The CFIA evaluated AMPs to assess their effectiveness and efficiency, and to provide guidance on the merits of expanding their application to other acts and regulations, as the AMPs Act currently allows. The evaluation assessed the relevance and performance of AMPs, by conducting

The scope of the study included the application of AMPs at the CFIA from 2000 to 2010.

Key Findings

The evaluation found that AMPs are often an effective compliance tool, successfully employed at the CFIA as a response to cases for which prosecutions would be excessively time-consuming and costly. The evaluation also found some opportunities for improvement and made two recommendations.

The CFIA continually improves its programs and protocols. Management's commitment to addressing recommendations made by internal evaluations like this one is a critical part of that continual improvement.

Recommendation 1: The CFIA should establish a plan to build learning into the delivery of current AMPs for their ongoing development, and for any expansion of the use of the tool. The plan should include the following elements:

The CFIA is developing a plan to incorporate ongoing learning into the delivery of AMPs, with the following elements:

Recommendation 2: The CFIA needs to ensure that all AMPs are operating under the key conditions identified, and that AMPs processes, guidelines and strategies are included in program specific enforcement strategies, where relevant.

Complete report:

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