Auditor general: Ottawa quietly stopped work on its thermal coal export ban in November 2024 — and exports rose
Politics · The Canadian Chronicle
Published Friday, October 30, 2026 · 4 min read
Auditor General Karen Hogan tabled nine performance audit reports in the House of Commons on Thursday, October 29. The findings cover greenhouse gas reporting, thermal coal exports, pesticide monitoring, financial intelligence, the federal drug stockpile, a call-centre procurement, the dental care plan, the border agency's importer system, and National Defence ammunition.
The coal ban that stopped
The government committed in 2021 to ban thermal coal exports by 2030. The audit found that work on the ban stopped altogether in November 2024, after coal-industry lobbying, with no public notice. In the auditor general's words: "The department did not produce evidence of an official direction to discontinue work on the ban in 2024," and there were "no clear records to show that the department had provided the minister with an assessment of the implications of stopping all work." The stop was formalized only in August 2025, as a cost-saving measure. Thermal coal exports were higher in 2025 than in 2021, and 61 per cent of the thermal coal shipped from Canadian ports in 2025 came from the United States. Environment and Climate Change Canada never informed Global Affairs Canada, even though Canada co-chairs an international coal-transition alliance.
The emissions gap
The Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development found that, with a growing emissions gap, Environment and Climate Change Canada did not report on how Canada will meet its 2030 target. Emissions were 685 megatonnes in 2024 and 687 megatonnes in 2023. The 2030 target is 458 to 420 megatonnes, 40 to 45 per cent below 2005 levels. The Low-carbon Fuel Procurement Program ended four years earlier than planned.
Money and systems
The Canadian Dental Care Plan's anticipated payments from 2026-27 to 2031-32 are expected to exceed the funding currently available, and the government cannot state whether oral health improved. A Shared Services Canada call-centre procurement cost $52 million, three times its budget, after a known costing error on data storage was never corrected before the contract was awarded. The Public Health Agency of Canada lost more than $20 million in pharmaceuticals in 2024 after a freezer door was left ajar, and took nine months to produce an action plan. FINTRAC took an average of about four months to get financial intelligence to law enforcement, and half of it arrived too late to be useful. The Canada Border Services Agency's CARM system works but inefficiently, with a funding shortfall of tens of millions of dollars, a backlog of 4,000 assistance requests, and at least 92,000 hours a year of staff time spent on workarounds. National Defence did not manage its ammunition to meet its regular-use and strategic stockpile needs and holds no reliable inventory information.
One program that worked
The pesticide audit was largely positive: Health Canada established and implemented the Canadian Water Monitoring Program for Pesticides in 2024 as intended, and laboratory results were used in re-evaluations, including for clothianidin. The gap the audit found is that draft action criteria exist only for aquatic life; the department has not yet established criteria for action when pesticide concentrations may pose a risk to human health.
Sources
Office of the Auditor General of Canada, fall 2026 performance audit reports, tabled October 29, 2026; The Canadian Press, October 29, 2026.