Canadian Grain Commission’s 2020-2021 Departmental Results Report

Grain Regulation

Description

Internal Services are those groups of related activities and resources that the federal government considers to be services in support of programs and/or required to meet corporate obligations of an organization. Internal Services refers to the activities and resources of the 10 distinct service categories that support Program delivery in the organization, regardless of the Internal Services delivery model in a department. The 10 service categories are:

• Acquisition Management Services
• Communications Services
• Financial Management Services
• Human Resources Management Services
• Information Management Services
• Information Technology Services
• Legal Services
• Material Management Services
• Management and Oversight Services
• Real Property Management Services

Internal Services support the Canadian Grain Commission’s Core Responsibility by enabling organizational program delivery. During 2020-21, a key priority was to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic by focusing Internal Services resources and activities on the Canadian Grain Commission’s critical services and adapting its workplace to provide mandated services while ensuring the safety of its employees. During 2020-21, the Canadian Grain Commission also continued to deliver on two over-arching priorities that are integral in guiding the Canadian Grain Commission’s delivery of its mandate and areas of focus: Strengthening effective communication and Investing in our people and delivering on government-wide corporate commitments.

Strengthening effective communication is a priority that engages both external and internal stakeholders and cuts across all programs, areas of focus and initiatives. Communicating information and progress on the areas of focus is a priority that engages staff and supports delivery of each initiative. For example, in 2020-21, the Canadian Grain Commission organized four virtual town halls with approximately 300 attendees for each event, published over a hundred staff messages on the Canadian Grain Commission employee website, and conducted a survey to measure impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on employee wellbeing and ability to perform duties.

Strengthening external communications is aimed at raising awareness of the Canadian Grain Commission mandate, programs, and services to grain producers and the grain sector. Examples of notable external communications carried out in 2020-21 include:

• Stakeholder engagement meetings in the Fall of 2020 including 7 meetings, with participants representing 19 producer organizations;
• Three news releases and four media pitches^{Footnote 12};
• 818 Twitter posts and 269 Facebook posts on topics such as educational content on the Canadian Grain Commission’s programs and services, Grain Research Lab projects and initiatives, important news and updates, job postings, and social media takeovers from employees^{Footnote 13};
• 5 virtual trade shows attended, with participating countries including Japan, South Korea, China, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Philippines, Italy, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and others; and
• 8 videos produced (4 English and 4 French) to raise awareness in the grain sector of the Canadian Grain Commission programs and services.

Investing in its people and delivering on government-wide corporate commitments is a priority that allows the Canadian Grain Commission to continue to successfully deliver upon its mandate and strategic areas of focus. 2020-21 was a unique and challenging year as the Canadian Grain Commission navigated the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on its workforce and operations. The Canadian Grain Commission mobilized resources to successfully meet this challenge, which included addressing the government’s priority of adapting work approaches to the new context and ensuring safe and healthy workplaces.

The Canadian Grain Commission conducted its own employee COVID-19 survey in October 2020 to identify management and employee needs related to the pandemic. Additionally, the Canadian Grain Commission successfully promoted the 2020 Public Service Employee Survey with an 83 percent response rate, as another source of feedback from all levels of staff. These results validated existing wellness and business resumption efforts and led to further initiatives to support employees in adapting to workplace changes and to help protect physical and psychological health. In addition, the Canadian Grain Commission continued to promote the benefits of a diverse workforce and inclusive workplaces through promotions to all staff on Multiculturalism, Linguistic Duality, Indigenous Learning Series and Black History month as well as providing access to staff for various Canada School of Public Service and other diversity learning opportunities. In 2020-21, the Canadian Grain Commission continued to dedicate resources to support the government’s priority to address pay issues and stabilize the Phoenix pay system. This included maintaining a Pay Integration Unit to provide support to Canadian Grain Commission employees who had complex or ongoing pay issues and to contribute to the improvement and effective delivery of pay services.

The implementation of the 2019-2022 Information Management and Technology Services Strategic Plan remained a top priority for the Canadian Grain Commission in 2020-21. The goal of this plan is to provide innovative information technology management services to meet operational needs and enhance end-user experience in a secure operational environment. The plan aligns with the Canadian Grain Commission’s key areas of focus and prioritizes service, value, security, agility and innovation. During 2020-21, significant progress was made towards these objectives. As part of the Canadian Grain Commission Mobile Strategy’s goal to provide access that is any time, any place, anywhere, a strong focus was placed on the rollout of mobile computing packages. This decision has proved vital during the pandemic, allowing office employees to work safely from home. “Cloud First” practices continued at an increasing pace with the enterprise adoption of Microsoft cloud-based tools, such as Teams and Yammer. As a result of this increased need, a formal Canadian Grain Commission Cloud Strategy was adopted, providing a framework for the future adoption of cloud-based tools. Given the increased reliance on mobile computing, multi-factor authentication was adopted for all remote access. The adoption of multi-factor authentication has helped keep government data assets secure while allowing employees access to systems from alternative workplaces.

The Canadian Grain Commission has an internal audit and program evaluation services unit that focuses on government-wide priorities and major corporate initiatives. This unit provides professional, independent and objective consulting, evaluation and assurance activities designed to aid in protecting and enhancing organizational value. In addition to a number of advisory engagements and supporting the Canadian Grain Commission’s business reintegration team in 2020-21, the Audit and Evaluation Services Unit conducted an Audit of Design and Operating Effectiveness of Entity Level Controls covering the preceding fiscal year. The objective of the audit was to assess the design and test the operating effectiveness of Entity Level Controls against an established framework. The management action plan in response to this audit is currently in development. The release of the audit report is anticipated mid 2021-22.

An Evaluation of the New Variety Registration Support Program of the Grain Research Lab was also conducted in 2020-21. The focus of the evaluation was on the relevance, performance and efficiency of the support provided by the Grain Research Lab for the Prairie Recommending Committee for Wheat, Rye and Triticale. The release of this evaluation report is anticipated in 2021-22.

Results

Note: Planned spending is net of respendable revenues. The Canadian Grain Commission reports all revenues collected under its Grain Regulation core responsibility; however, these revenues also support the costs of internal services. Details on the overall organization’s expenditure distribution can be found in the 2020-21 Budgetary actual gross spending summary (dollars) table.

Note: The difference between Actual and Planned FTEs for Internal Services is primarily due to the increase of resources to support investment in technology and innovation initiatives.

Departmental spending trend graph

• Departmental Spending Trend, text version

  Departmental Spending Trend (dollars)

  	2018-19	2019-20	2020-21	2021-22	2022-23	2023-24
  Statutory	-2,992	-2,318	-17,982	1,533	1,549	686
  Voted	5,145	5,023	6,136	5,237	5,249	5,249
  Total	2,153	2,705	-11,846	6,770	6,798	5,900

Note: Statutory amounts are net of respendable revenues and contain employee benefits plan funding.

Note: Planned spending is net of respendable revenues. For planning, revenue forecasts are allocated to both Grain Regulation and Internal Services as required. The Canadian Grain Commission reports all revenues collected under its Grain Regulation core responsibility; however, these revenues also support the costs of internal services. Details on the overall organization’s expenditure distribution can be found in the 2020-21 Budgetary actual gross spending summary (dollars) table below..

Planned spending has remained consistent from year to year, however, slight increases in expenditures are primarily the result of projects related to the Investment Framework. As part of the Investment Framework, the Canadian Grain Commission allocated $4 million to fund enhancements to the Harvest Sample Program for five years. In addition to these ongoing Harvest Sample Program enhancements, in 2020-21, the Canadian Grain Commission invested in a pulse testing program. Going forward, the Canadian Grain Commission will consider investment initiatives within the broader context of the Canada Grain Act Review outcomes.

Actual spending for 2020-21 has remained relatively consistent. However, due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, the Canadian Grain Commission invoked its Business Continuity Plan. Departmental resources were reallocated and focused on the critical areas of inspection and licensing, and producer protection. New approaches were implemented to provide critical mandated services while ensuring the safety of Canadian Grain Commission employees. All employees were initially required to work remotely except for those engaged in critical program delivery whose duties could not be performed remotely. Cost savings realized from COVID-19 restrictions, including decreased travel and in-person training, were reinvested to support employees to work remotely.

Grain volumes officially inspected from licensed terminal elevators are the basis upon which the Canadian Grain Commission establishes its fees. The baseline for existing service and licence fees was established in 2017-18 for the five-year period ending March 2023 and was based on a $62.5 million budget and an annual average official inspection and weighing volume of 34.4 million metric tonnes (MMT). The Canadian Grain Commission monitors costs on an on-going basis and allocates resources within its annual operating and capital budgets to meet both ongoing and emerging requirements. The expenditures for inspection services can vary from year to year according to the quality and volume of the crop. Since fees were implemented in 2017-18, costs have remained relatively stable, but the Canadian Grain Commission has consistently inspected and weighed higher-than-forecast grain volumes, which has resulted in increased revenue and subsequently additional surplus accumulation.

Although the 2017-18 fee and grain volume model updates significantly reduced the accumulation of surplus, in-year surplus growth has continued due to increased grain volumes. In fiscal years 2017-18, 2018-19, and 2019-20 official inspection and official weighing grain volumes were 36.96 MMT, 39.54 MMT, and 38.65 MMT respectively, which generated in-year surpluses of $8.89 million, $3.66 million, and $2.96 million. For fiscal year 2020-21, the Canadian Grain Commission had an in-year surplus of $18.64 million based on official inspection and official weighing of 50.28 MMT. This is in addition to the approximately $15.51 million in surplus accumulated from fiscal years 2017-18 to 2019-20.

The 2017-18 grain volumes model did not anticipate several factors that contributed to the continued accumulation of surplus including: unprecedented increases in grain production and export grain volumes; major private sector infrastructure investments in the grain handling system; and relatively stable Canadian Grain Commission operating costs. To address this, the Canadian Grain Commission updated its model for forecasting the volume of grain that it expects to officially inspect and weigh upon discharge from terminal elevators and is projecting a level of approximately 48.1 MMT annually for the next three fiscal years (2021-22 to 2023-24). In addition to updating the forecasting model based on increased grain production and export, an additional factor was included for recent major infrastructure investments that have the potential to increase the overall export capacity of the grain handling system going forward.

To quickly respond and limit the accumulation of additional in-year surplus and surplus growth moving forward, the Canadian Grain Commission proposed a targeted realignment of four fees for official inspection and official weighing services with the adjusted grain volume forecast. These fee amendments are effective August 1, 2021.

Note: The Canadian Grain Commission does not have any specified purpose accounts to report against. Funding structure is based on budgetary authorities that are comprised of both voted and statutory authorities. The statutory authorities include employee benefit plan authority for appropriation-funded personnel costs and Canadian Grain Commission revolving fund authority, which allows the Canadian Grain Commission to re-spend fees that it has collected. The organization’s revenue is based on fees for services as per the Service Fees Act.

Financial statements

The Canadian Grain Commission’s financial statements (unaudited) for the year ended March 31, 2021, are available on the departmental website.

Financial statements highlights

Raison d’être, mandate and role: who we are and what we do

“Raison d’être, mandate and role: who we are and what we do” is available on the Canadian Grain Commission’s website.

For more information on the department’s organizational mandate letter commitments, see the Minister’s mandate letter.

Operating context

Information on the operating context is available on the Canadian Grain Commission’s website.