IQALUIT - The Auditor General of Canada, Sheila Fraser, was in Iqaluit June 13 and 14 to explain her recent audit of the territory's Financial Assistance for Nunavut Students (FANS) program to a legislative committee.

Auditor General of Canada Sheila Fraser spoke before the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Accountability in Nunavut June 13. Fraser reviewed her report on the mismanagement of the FANS program, which administers financial aid to Nunavut students attending post-secondary education. - Guy Quenneville/NNSL photo

The audit found that the program - which provides some $6.1 million a year in grants and loans to Nunavut's full-time post-secondary students - was mismanaged and not meeting the goals for which it was originally intended.

In some cases, money was distributed to students who were enrolled in courses that needed no high-school diploma (and therefore were not post-secondary in nature.)

Fraser also raised her chief concern that the program had not been administered according to the Student Financial Assistance Act, the main set of rules outlining proper measure to distribute education funding.

"The danger is that the FANS program managers then have to apply their own judgment as to how they should interpret the act and the regulations," said Fraser. "You can get inconsistent decisions and it can be viewed as being unfair by applicants and people in the program.

"It really shouldn't be up to an individual program manager to make those decisions. There should be very clear guidelines to them as to how to interpret the acts and regulations that govern the program."

Fraser said the territory's Department of Education has agreed to all of her recommendations and has been easy to work with.

Kathy Okpik, deputy minister of Education, said program staff have already gone to work on some of the Auditor General's recommendations.

"In the immediate term, we're currently redoing our filing system," she said. "Previously, all the files were in separate bin ders. You had several binders where all the forms were contained.

"We're going to a reversal where all that information will be contained in the students' files. The students' files will be organized alphabetically and colour-coded to ensure we can quickly find the files."

Cambridge Bay MLA and committee member Keith Peterson said he was happy with Fraser's findings.

"Because I've got two sons," he said. "One went through the FANS system and another one is currently using it. I know there's hard-working people in the FANS program, but something like this shows me...that they need guidelines."

Peterson was concerned with the audit's finding that the program did not adequately track how many FANS students actually completed their education programs.

"We know there's lots of money going into the program, lots of students applying. But we don't know what the results are. We just can't keep throwing money at a program unless we know that it's achieving what we want it to achieve."