Management Response and Action Plan: Audit of the Competition Bureau

For follow-up purposes - Detailed actions to address the recommendations in the report

Recommendation Planned Action on the Recommendation Responsible Official (position) Target Completion Date

Recommendation 1
(Medium Risk):

The Bureau should ensure that Bureau-wide information is presented to MEAC that includes current and future committed financial and human investments against available resources for major enforcement and competition promotion.

Agreed.

Review the terms of reference for the Major Enforcement and Advocacy Committee (MEAC) such that its mandate includes considering Bureau-wide resources. This will include additional information requirements to ensure that governance and decision making properly consider the full impact of current and future resource allocation on the overall Bureau wide budget and commitments. This will be accomplished by updating the current MEAC submission template that is presented to the committee members to support the recommendations and assist members with their decision-making.

Chief of Staff, Commissioner's Office

October 31, 2019

Recommendation 2
(Low Risk):

The Bureau should define and implement a process to regularly review and update MOUs, including the MOU with the Public Prosecution Service of Canada, and ensure that resourcing expectations, roles, and responsibilities are clearly defined.

Agreed.

Establish an annual MOU review process to ensure continued alignment with priorities. This will include working with partners to review commitments and resource requirements, adjust roles and responsibilities, identify efficiencies, and implement lessons learned, where possible.

This will also include taking any necessary action such as amendments, discontinuation or renewal of any MOU.

In particular, the Bureau will work with the Public Prosecution Service of Canada to review the current MOU and identify areas for improvement to help clarify roles and responsibilities during an investigation and a prosecution, as well as resource implications and limitations.

Deputy Commissioner, Competition Promotion Branch

December 31, 2019

Recommendation 3
(Medium Risk):

The Bureau should document and implement a process with a defined methodology and criteria for triaging and prioritizing requests and complaints to ensure that they can be resolved efficiently. The process should also include capacity considerations.

Agreed.

Create and implement an internal triage and prioritization document for use by the Bureau's Information Centre. This will include a review of methodology and criteria to provide consistency across all branches, and to clearly identify and address branch specific procedural requirements.

Executive Director – Corporate Services Branch

October 31, 2019

The capacity issue has been addressed through a restructuring of the Information Centre. A classification exercise conducted with Human Resources Branch resulted in the creation of a stand-alone quality assurance position at a higher level, providing the group more depth. An additional employee has also been trained in quality assurance to ensure adequate backup and service continuity. Capacity issues will continue to be assessed on a regular basis as part of ongoing planning and resource management reviews to mitigate risks related to abnormally high volumes, staffing pressures or other internal or external factors.

Executive Director – Corporate Services Branch

Completed

Recommendation 4
(Medium Risk):

The Bureau should develop, document and implement a process to monitor alternative case resolutions and consent agreements.

Agreed.

Shortly after the completion of the audit, the Deceptive Marketing Practices Directorate launched the Compliance Monitoring Unit (CMU). The CMU has responsibility to track reporting obligations, assess and monitor compliance with the terms of consent agreements, orders or Alternative Case Resolutions, and to identify and reduce the risk of recurrence of the target's misconduct.

Deputy Commissioner, Deceptive Marketing Practices Directorate

Completed

Finalize the CMU's internal procedures for compliance monitoring and ensure proper communication with staff. These procedures will include steps and timelines for implementation, periodic review, and planned monitoring cycles.

Deputy Commissioner, Deceptive Marketing Practices Directorate

June 28, 2019

Establish a monitoring system for criminal Prohibition Orders issued by the courts in the Cartels Directorate. This includes updating Cartel's inventory and setting up a bring-forward system to ensure that parties are meeting their obligations, and establishing a procedure to ensure continued monitoring of these court orders and to notify parties should they not meet their obligations.

Deputy Commissioner, Cartels Directorate

September 27, 2019

Recommendation 5
(High Risk):

The Bureau should strengthen their information management policies to include key methodologies and controls to support the Bureau's record-keeping requirements throughout the information lifecycle, including record retention periods.

Agreed.

Branches will review and update the Bureau's Record Creation, Handling and Destruction Policy (RCHDP), including record retentions periods.

Executive Director, Corporate Services Branch

November 29, 2019

Branches will review and update their Essential Decision Procedure (EDP) and a template case file folder structure (Folder Structure). The EDP sets out expectations for the documentation of approvals and key decisions to be contained in the Essential Decision Folder (EDF) of a case file. The Folder Structure will set out a prescribed method to structure shared drive case files to strengthen how information is organized and maintained. The Folder Structure will include an EDF. The EDF and Folder Structure will be incorporated into GCDocs.

Executive Director, Corporate Services Branch

October 4, 2019

Corporate Services Branch will ensure that Branches review the RCHDP, EDP, Folder Structure and Access Control Directives on a regular basis.

Executive Director, Corporate Services Branch

Ongoing

Recommendation 6
(High Risk):

The Bureau should develop and implement system access controls with defined roles and responsibilities associated with user access authorities and permissions.

Agreed.

Corporate Services Branch will develop principles to guide the creation of account management policies (Access Control Directive) to ensure consistency between the Branches. The Access Control Directives will include:

  • definitions for user access groups, user types and access rights; and
  • a process for granting, revalidating and deactivating access rights.

Executive Director, Corporate Services Branch

July 26, 2019

Each Branch will approve and implement an Access Control Directive consistent with the principles developed by CSB for their respective shared drives, Ringtail and GCDocs. CSB will approve and implement an Access Control Directive for the Bureau Information Management System.

Executive Director, Corporate Services Branch

November 29, 2019

Recommendation 7
(Low Risk):

The Bureau should document and implement processes for the measurement, calculation, tracking and reporting of service standards.

Agreed.

The Bureau will document its processes for the measurement, calculation, tracking and reporting of service standards, in order to strengthen their implementation.

Deputy Commissioner, Competition Promotion Branch

September 16, 2019

The Merger Directorate also now records the reason for any delay from the creation of a new Bureau Information Management System matter and the initiation of a service standard. It has put in place a process to ensure this is done before a matter is closed.

Deputy Commissioner, Competition Promotion Branch

Completed

Recommendation 8
(Medium Risk):

The Bureau should develop and implement controls and processes over revenue collection, including a finalized process narrative.

Agreed.

The Bureau has developed and updated its revenue process narrative (Revenue Narrative) on January 22, 2019. The purpose of the Revenue Narrative is to document the Bureau's controls and processes for ensuring proper handling, and recording of revenue. The Revenue Narrative is divided into the following sub-processes and related controls: Managing and Processing Fees, Invoicing, Refunds, Adjustments and Posting, Processing Cash Receipts and Depositing Funds. Work and discussions are currently underway with ISED's Corporate Management Services Branch to finalize the Revenue Narrative.

Executive Director, Corporate Services Branch

June 30, 2019

CSB Finance will complete the implementation of the controls and processes in the Revenue Narrative, including communicating roles and responsibilities with the revenue generating branches.

Executive Director, Corporate Services Branch

September 30, 2019

Recommendation 9
(High Risk):

The Bureau should regularly review the Learning Unit's training offerings to ensure they meet the training needs assessments, and implement a mandatory training program for competition law officers.

Agreed.

The Learning Unit will meet with each directorate to identify needs and update the Bureau's training offerings on a quarterly basis. Needs will also be identified through monthly meetings of the Learning Network. This will help identify and prioritize the Bureau's training needs, identify who will be responsible for the delivery of the training, and determine funding requirements, which are managed centrally. The allocation and re-allocation of training budgets will be based on the results of the quarterly reviews.

Executive Director, Corporate Services Branch

Ongoing

The Unit will work with branch leads to support the development and deployment of a mandatory training program for competition law officers. The Mergers and Monopolistic Practices Branch has already launched a mandatory training program and the Cartels and Deceptive Marketing Branch will be launching a mandatory training program.

To complement the mandatory training for the competition law officers, the Bureau is revamping its onboarding program for all employees.

Executive Director, Corporate Services Branch

September, 30, 2019

In order to track training:

  • an inventory of training that is available to officers will be updated on a quarterly basis and posted on the Bureau's intranet site; and
  • an inventory of training completed by officers will be maintained on an ongoing basis.

Executive Director, Corporate Services Branch

November 29, 2019

Recommendation 10
(Low Risk):

The Bureau should implement formal review processes and share good practices and lessons learned on a regular, pre-determined schedule across the Bureau.

Agreed.

Review the terms of reference for the Major Enforcement and Advocacy Committee (MEAC) such that its mandate includes continuous improvements. This will include the addition of a mandatory post-mortem on all major enforcement cases and advocacy initiatives. The focus will be on processes, best practices and lessons learned related to: outputs, outcomes, use and application of the law, resource management, stakeholder relationships, interactions with counsel and parties, communication strategy, and risk management.

The information collected by MEAC will be documented and shared with all employees through debriefing at the Branch, Directorate and Divisional levels, as well as the Bureau's Intranet site.

Chief of Staff, Commissioner's Office

October 31, 2019