Evaluation of the AgriAssurance Program — summary

About the evaluation

The Office of Audit and Evaluation of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) conducted an evaluation of the AgriAssurance Program to provide senior management with an assessment of the relevance, design, delivery, efficiency and effectiveness of the Program.

AgriAssurance Program activities were evaluated using multiple lines of evidence: a literature review; document, data, file and consultation review; interviews with AAFC staff, recipients, partners and stakeholders; and five case studies.

The evaluation focussed on AgriAssurance support to not-for-profit organizations and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) between 2016–17 and 2020–21.

AgriAssurance program summary

  • The AgriAssurance Program supports the Canadian agriculture and agri-food industry to put in place assurance systems that provide consumers and buyers with confidence in the health, safety and quality of Canadian agricultural products. Support is provided through two program components.
  • The national industry association component provides funding to not-for-profit organizations to help industry develop and adopt national systems, standards and tools to support health and safety claims about agriculture and agri-food products.
  • The pilot SME component provides targeted support to companies to implement third-party assurance certifications required to access foreign markets.

What we found

Relevance

  • The AgriAssurance Program addresses the need for public trust in food safety and quality and is responding to emerging sector priorities, such as environmental sustainability.
  • The AgriAssurance Program is aligned with government and departmental roles and priorities, particularly the Canadian Agricultural Partnership priority of securing and supporting public trust.

Design and delivery

  • The AgriAssurance Program is reaching national industry associations representing the majority of Canadian agricultural sectors. The pilot SME component supported SMEs to obtain third-party certifications, though uptake was lower than expected.
  • There are continuing challenges with the alignment of federal-only AgriAssurance investments in the development of assurance systems and the related FPT Cost-shared assurance investments in system implementation.
  • Program performance data is limited due to provincial-territorial responsibility for assurance system implementation and a lack of ongoing collection and sharing of outcome data.
  • AgriAssurance collects data on the diversity of groups applying for and benefiting from, program funding, but GBA Plus considerations are not part of funding decisions.

Efficiency

The Program is meeting its service standards, but there were delays in project and funding approvals, and the Program has consistently underspent its budget allocation.

Effectiveness

A reliance on outputs for program and performance reporting makes it difficult to assess the Program's effectiveness. Evaluation case studies and interviews provided evidence that some AgriAssurance projects have had a significant positive impact on their sectors and fulfilled the Program's objectives.

Recommendations

  • Recommendation 1: The Assistant Deputy Minister, Programs Branch, should improve the AgriAssurance performance measurements (including updating the project logic model and indicators) and progress reporting requirements.
  • Recommendation 2: The Assistant Deputy Minister, Programs Branch, should review AgriAssurance Program design elements to improve coordination with cost-shared programming and encourage alignment of supporting provincial-territorial programming.
  • Recommendation 3: The Assistant Deputy Minister, Programs Branch, should develop and implement a marketing or promotion plan to broaden awareness of the Program and encourage uptake.

Management response

Management agrees with the evaluation recommendations and has developed an action plan to address them by April 2024.