Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada Five-Year Evaluation Plan 2025-2026 to 2029-2030

2.1 Roles and Responsibilities

The role of CIRNAC's Evaluation Branch is to provide quality and timely evaluations that contribute to the Department's comprehensive and reliable base of evidence to support policy and program improvement, expenditure management, senior management and Cabinet decision-making and public reporting. The Branch's evaluators scope and plan new evaluations as per the Treasury Board Policy on Results in order to contribute to helping address questions related to the delivery of results for Canadians.

The implementation and monitoring of the Evaluation Plan falls to the Evaluation Branch of the Audit and Evaluation Sector (AES). 

2.2 Purpose of the Evaluation Plan

The purpose of the Evaluation Plan is to meet accountability requirements and to help the Deputy Minister ensure that credible, timely and neutral information on the ongoing relevance and performance of program spending is available to support evidence‑based decision-making. The Plan also:

• Provides an opportunity to align evaluations to ensure that the information needs of the Department and other evaluation users (e.g., other government departments) are being met;
• Helps ensure that evaluations supporting program redesign are planned and completed in advance of program renewal;
• Allows departmental units responsible for the development of the Departmental Plan and the Departmental Results Report, as well as other groups engaged in strategic planning and reporting activities, to identify when evaluations will be available to inform their work;
• Initiates regular communication and consensus-building on evaluation needs and priorities across the Department; and,
• Provides central agencies with advanced notice of when evaluations will be available to inform their work (e.g., in support of Memoranda to Cabinet, Treasury Board Submissions, etc.).

Moreover, the Plan serves as an important tool for the Department's Head of Evaluation and the Evaluation Branch to manage project workflow and plan the activities of its human resources.

2.3 Policy Framework and Guidance

CIRNAC is subject to the Treasury Board Policy on Results (2016) and Directive on Results (2016)^{Footnote 1}. The Policy requires departments to report on both planned program spending and ongoing programs of Grants and Contributions (Gs&Cs) evaluation coverage, but permits greater flexibility by allowing for risk-based planning for program spending evaluation coverage, and the option to defer evaluations beyond five years where average yearly expenditures are less than $5 million (over the preceding five-year period).

The Directive on Results requires evaluations to focus on relevance, effectiveness and efficiency. It clarifies many of the requirements in support of the Policy on Results, including roles and responsibilities of individuals and the Performance Measurement and Evaluation Committee (PMEC) as well as the expectations around planning departmental evaluation coverage.    

2.4 Evaluation Planning Methodology

The Evaluation Branch plans for evaluations based on the Core Responsibilities and Program Inventory established within the Departmental Results Framework (DRF) as well as the Program Inventory (PI). In 2023-24, the CIRNAC DRF was updated with the goal of being able to improve the Crown-Indigenous Relations results story and improve the understanding and measurement of Departmental Results and Departmental Results Indicators. The DRF remains unchanged for 2025-26^{Footnote 2}, however, the Department is in the midst of refreshing the DRF for the 2026-27 fiscal year. With respect to the PI, updates were completed for 2023-24 and for 2024-25 to reflect changes made to CIRNAC's programming and to allow for better financial and results reporting. The DRF and PI are attached (Appendix A).

Occasionally, an evaluation is added to the Plan because it has been identified as a departmental priority by senior management or by a central agency. However, for the 2025-26 to 2029-30 Plan, no evaluations have been added as a priority. As the Plan is updated every year, priority projects are added when identified and when resources are available to carry them out.

Section 42.1 of the Financial Administration Act requires departments to evaluate all ongoing programs of Gs&Cs every five years and evaluation planning is conducted in accordance with that requirement. During the evaluation planning process, all evaluations completed and approved in the previous fiscal year, in this case 2024-25, are then rolled into the final year of the new Plan, and scheduled for completion and approval by the end of the fifth fiscal year. 

This Evaluation Plan was also developed in consultation with the Department's Internal Audit team, and with consideration for the Risk-Based Audit Plan. Consideration has been given to timing audits and evaluations in a way that does not overburden programs.

When developing the Evaluation Plan, input is sought from all sectors of the Department. The Plan is then presented to the Department's PMEC for review. Final approval is then obtained from the Deputy Minister.

3.1 Departmental Core Responsibilities

Crown‑Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada (CIRNAC) continues to renew the nation-to-nation, Inuit-Crown, and government-to-government relationship between Canada and First Nations, Inuit and Métis. The Department's activities focus on modernizing Government of Canada structures to enable Indigenous Peoples to build capacity and support their vision of self‑determination. CIRNAC also leads the government of Canada's work in the north by supporting Canada's Arctic and northern organizations, individuals, communities and governments in the pursuit of a strong, inclusive, vibrant, prosperous and self-sufficient North. 

The 2025-2026 Core Responsibilities for CIRNAC are:

• Crown-Indigenous Relations — with 9 supporting programs
• Northern Affairs—with 7 supporting programs

3.2 Program Structures

Departmental activities are largely structured by grants and contribution agreements with Indigenous partners and/or provincial or territorial governments. Most departmental programs, representing a majority of spending, are delivered through partnerships with Indigenous organizations, Indigenous governments or Indigenous communities, and through federal‑provincial or federal‑territorial agreements.

Currently, CIRNAC has 24 active grant and contribution (Gs&Cs) authorities, along with multiple initiatives and activities, which support the 16 Programs in its Program Inventory A one-to-one relationship does not exist in all cases between the authorities listed in the Main Estimates and the ongoing programs of Gs&Cs identified by the Department. A number of Programs draw on multiple Gs&Cs; and conversely, there are Gs&Cs that contribute to multiple Programs. This Plan has been developed using the Treasury Board's Interim Guide on Results, which was updated most recently in August 2018, where there is the recognition that a "program" of Gs&Cs can cut across two or more Programs in the Program Inventory and the relationship is not always one‑to-one.  

3.3 Exemptions from Section 42.1 of the Financial Administration Act

As noted, the Financial Administration Act (Section 42.1) requires government departments to review, at least once every five years, the relevance and effectiveness of each ongoing Gs&Cs program. However, as per the Policy on Results, programs with five-year average actual expenditures of less than $5 million per year can be exempted from Section 42.1 and do not need to be evaluated every five years. Guidance from Treasury Board Secretariat states the five-year average is to be calculated based on three years of actuals (Public Accounts) and two years of planned spending (Main Estimates and Supplementary Estimates). TBS provides coverage table templates (see Section 4.3), updated annually, to departments for their use in calculating these averages. Based on these parameters, the following programs are not scheduled for evaluation.

3.4 Planned Expenditures and Transfer Payments

As per the Main Estimates, total planned spending for 2025-26 is outlined in Table 2.

4.1 Status of Evaluation Completion in 2024-25

Two evaluation reports addressing CIRNAC program spending were completed and approved in 2024-25:

• Evaluation of Northern and Arctic Governance and Partnerships Program (April 2024)
• Evaluation of Northern and Arctic Environmental Sustainability Program (October 2024)

4.2 Implementing the Plan

Evaluations are used to inform decision-making and reporting (such as within the Departmental Plan and the Departmental Results Report), to assess progress made by programs in achieving expected results and to incorporate lessons learned in order to improve program design and delivery. The Department posts approved evaluation reports on its website after sharing reports with Treasury Board^{Footnote 3}.

The Evaluation Branch's evaluators work collaboratively with partners and stakeholders to tailor evaluation projects to meet the needs of decision-makers, as well as experimenting with new and innovative evaluation methodologies and approaches. The Policy on Results provides for flexibility in the various types of evaluations carried out, the identification of issues and scoping.

The Evaluation Branch is planning to use that flexibility to undertake a thematic evaluation of two Programs:  Indigenous Engagement and Capacity Supports and Indigenous-led Services. In doing so, the evaluation may include a focus on how these Programs collectively contribute to capacity-building and Indigenous-led service delivery. Further precision would be established when scoping the evaluation.  

The Department continues to build capacity in collaboration with Indigenous partners to improve the design and implementation of programming. In support of that objective, the Evaluation Branch emphasizes the composition of Evaluation Working Groups (EWGs) to help ensure that EWGs are representative of the entity being evaluated and that Indigenous partners can participate in the governance of the evaluation. EWG members provide advice and guidance that helps with planning evaluations, interpreting evaluation findings, and developing recommendations.

The evaluation team is strongly committed to being culturally responsive and, in addition to personal practices of reconciliation, is guided by the departmental mandate to renew nation-to-nation relationships and support self-determination. As such, there have been events in recent years, such as the discovery of unmarked graves, that have necessitated placing some evaluations on pause to demonstrate respect and care for the impact on key stakeholders and partners involved in the evaluations. Overall, in undertaking evaluations, CIRNAC is focused on advancing new relationships with Indigenous Peoples. At times, this means that evaluations will take more time than planned and that, to be respectful and inclusive, delays may be experienced.

In planning evaluations, the Evaluation Branch scopes each project to avoid overlap. For example, the Northern Contaminated Sites Program receives some of its funding from the Federal Contaminated Sites Action Plan (FCSAP) — a horizontal initiative that spans multiple departments, led by Environment and Climate Change Canada. FCSAP conducts the evaluation of the horizontal initiative as per its own requirements. On that basis, the Evaluation Branch would scope its own evaluation to look at areas or activities not evaluated by the horizontal initiative.

Additional planning for individual evaluations includes the application of Gender-based Analysis Plus (GBA Plus), which is central throughout all phases of CIRNAC evaluations. From inception through to report-writing, GBA Plus is a key consideration built into all phases, including in development of the key evaluation questions and the evaluation matrix. For example, in early discussions with the program, the evaluation teams ask for information on how the program intersects with GBA Plus issues and whether there are any data collected.

4.3 Planned Evaluation Coverage

The Policy on Results requires departmental evaluation plans to present planned evaluation coverage of the Department's ongoing programs of Gs&Cs, as listed in the Program Inventory, as well as for the total planned departmental spending^{Footnote 4}. The Evaluation Plan demonstrates the extent of the Department's plans to evaluate departmental and Program spending, and provides rationales for the departmental and program spending that is not being evaluated during the five-year planning cycle. There are two ‘coverage tables' annexed to this Plan, the templates (spreadsheets) of which are produced by Treasury Board Secretariat. These templates are used in the planning process to calculate coverage, which means the level (in dollars) and percentage of spending that planned evaluations are expected to address. The results of the calculations produced by the coverage tables are used to analyze the extent to which the Department is meeting its evaluation obligations. 

Table 3, Planned Evaluation Coverage of Departmental Gs&Cs Spending, summarizes the results of that analysis and lists the number of planned evaluations that will cover 100 per cent of CIRNAC's voted Gs&Cs amounts. The Northern Regulatory and Legislative Frameworks program that is not being evaluated uses $1,246,000 in voted Gs&Cs, less than 0.02% and rounds to zero.  

Table 4, Planned Evaluation Coverage of Departmental Planned Spending, summarizes the results of the coverage table analysis and lists the number of CIRNAC's planned evaluations, by fiscal year, showing that coverage is at 70% of planned departmental spending. These spending figures include grants and contribution funding as well as salaries, operations, maintenance, statutory payments, capital and the cost of employee benefits plans.

Areas not subject to evaluation activities include: Internal Services^{Footnote 5} ($142,853,842 – 1.1%); and programs and other spending that are not funded through grants and contributions. The bulk of the non-Gs&Cs planned spending is for the Other Claims Program ($3,743,991,661– 28.7%).

In summary, there are 18 evaluations planned for the next five years. Thirteen are core program evaluations^{Footnote 6} for the department and five are horizontal evaluations where CIRNAC is a partner department.

4.4 Evaluation Branch’s Other Activities

In addition to conducting evaluations, the Evaluation Branch undertakes activities to support and strengthen evaluation and performance measurement work, increasing transparency and accountability. These activities include providing advice and support on performance measurement, corporate planning and reporting at the departmental level, supporting capacity building and outreach activities, and developing research and special studies on evaluation issues. Some of these activities are described below.

4.5 Challenges