Museum flagged by audit
Lack of federal attention threatened to curtain exhibits; officials say issues resolved
By: Dylan Robertson | Posted: 05/30/2018 6:50 PM
OTTAWA — The federal government was neglecting the Canadian Museum for Human Rights just as financial pressures threatened to scale back its exhibits last year, according to an audit tabled in Parliament.
Auditors were concerned by the lack of federal attention to the museum, which reached a critical point during the audit period, spanning August, 2016, to May, 2017. At the time, the museum was "facing funding uncertainties that might necessitate a reduction of the museum’s offerings to the public," auditors wrote, "and therefore its ability to meet its mandate."
Ottawa has since boosted its funding, and the museum’s programming vice-president, Angela Cassie, stresses that departmental officials are regularly in touch with the museum.
The finding was one among a series of concerns documented in the audit tabled on Tuesday. Others included displaying inaccurate information, giving employees "unsustainable amounts of work," and lacking detailed plans to prevent cyber-attacks.
Dusan Duvnjak, the principal investigator for the audit, found the museum struggled to do long-term planning since it opened in September 2014, leaving staff working overtime.
"As a new Crown corporation, there’s a certain amount of learning to be had in the first few years," Duvnjak said.
CMHR officials said on Wednesday the Winnipeg museum is now much more stable, and they used the audit to rectify a slew of problems in the museum’s management and operation.
WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS </p><p>Among problems the audit found were mislabelled pieces to certain exhibits.</p>
WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
Among problems the audit found were mislabelled pieces to certain exhibits.
Cassie said exhibits are now being planned three to five years in the future, and they’re working on temporary exhibits they can put up in the top and bottom floors for a year.
"Being the sole human rights museum in the world, there’s not a stockpile of human-rights exhibitions we could just pull from," she said.
And when they did, they had problems — auditors found inaccurate information displayed to the public.
CMHR Chief Financial Officer Susanne Robertson said that occurred during the exhibit "1867: Rebellion & Confederation," which was on loan to Winnipeg until May 2017 from the Canadian Museum of History, which sits within walking distance of Ottawa. "There was a mislabel provided to us" by that museum, Robertson said.
"It was caught immediately after opening and was corrected. It was a text label that was actually put in the wrong place."
Cassie said, in another case, a timeline that included the philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas did not properly show him in an illustration. Cassie couldn’t recall the specifics but it involved the cropping of a picture that included another person.
Both came up during "a robust remediation" in which staff and experts try to fact-check every piece of information, as well as curatorial details such as scuffed paint, projection angles and accents on words. At its opening, CMHR spotted 1,000 issues to resolve, 75 which remained at the time of the audit period.
"We received some great suggestions through this special examination, and through our own lessons learned, so that will just strengthen our process moving forward."
Funding has been restored after issues were flagged in the audit, official said.
MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
Funding has been restored after issues were flagged in the audit, official said.
The audit also chided Ottawa for allowing CMHR’s board of directors to atrophy from 11 trustees to four, though it was bolstered by others who offered to serve beyond their terms, which is permitted under federal laws.
"Vacancies make it more difficult for the board to include all the skills and experience it needs to fulfill its responsibilities; furthermore, staggered terms of office help to foster continuity as new trustees adapt to their roles," auditors wrote.
On Friday, four new directors will join the board, putting it at 10 of 11 positions, with just one trustee, Wilton Littlechild, serving past their term. The vacant position is for the vice-chair, which became vacant when Pauline Rafferty was named chair last December.
The museum had filed annual corporate plans to Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly, but the only one Ottawa had ever ratified was under her predecessor in 2014, leaving the board without guidance on how to navigate risks and challenges.
Cassie insists it wasn’t a case of Ottawa bureaucrats ignoring a faraway museum.
"There is a uniqueness in being outside the national capital region," she admits, but says federal conferences, multi-party support and ministers’ visits "demonstrate that there is a commitment, and a level of engagement and awareness of the museum."
Both Robertson and Duvnjak noted that the federal Liberals changed the appointment process for various boards and tribunals, a move that others have attributed to court delays and slow-moving bureaucracy.
In this spring’s budget, the federal Liberals put up $35 million for the museum, effectively replenishing funding that was supposed to start declining over six years starting this spring.
WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS</p><p>The audit also noted a lack of policies and procedures to prevent cyberhacking.</p>
WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
The audit also noted a lack of policies and procedures to prevent cyberhacking.
"That's the best way to support the long-term operations of the museum," Joly told the Free Press. "Now that they have that money, they'll be able to work on a long-term strategy."
Robertson said the museum should be on its own feet shortly, with the help of its fundraising group, Friends of the CMHR. Until 2022, that group expects to still be collecting part of the $150 million in pledges it secured for construction of the actual building, at which point it will be able to help support the museum’s daily operations.
Sen. Patricia Bovey has spent decades in the museology sector, and has assisted with federal audits of museums. To her, CMHR’s first audit is a baseline to compare its progress in five years, and it’s encouraging that auditors found no major management issues.
"They've had to evolve from an institution that was in pre-mode, opening mode, start-up mode, to a mature institution that has established policies, principles, procedures, review and risk-management," she said.
Bovey said the former Conservative government’s heritage minister, St. Boniface MP Shelly Glover, had exerted too much influence on the museum, for example by refusing the board’s request to extend the contract of former CEO Stuart Murray.
"They started up in a tough shoe," Bovey said. "If the minster gets too involved, it is inappropriate."
Sen. Marilou McPhedran, who teaches the UniverCity course each August at the museum, raised a similar concern about the past government.
"My sense is that this government is really playing catch-up, and that the auditor general's report says there really needs to be an acceleration."
dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca
WHAT AUDITORS FOUND
The auditors identified a number of troubling issues in the Canadian Museum for Human Rights probe, which wrapped up in May 2017. Since then, museum officials say they’ve rectified virtually all the problems cited.
THE FINDING
The board had failed to monitor whether new employees were told about the museum's ethics policy, and whether staff had submitted the required annual acknowledgement of that code.
THE RESPONSE
“While employees had to sign them, we did not have an annual review, to ensure that staff revisited, reread and reaffirmed their commitment. That is a process that is now in place,” said Angela Cassie, the CMHR programming vice-president.
THE FINDING
In 2013, the museum has a security assessment studying the risk of being hacked, “which was particularly important, given the extent of the museum’s digital-based exhibits." But auditors found the plans and prevention measures were “too general to communicate their extent.”
THE RESPONSE
“Those recommendations had been implemented; what we have done is just improve the documentation on the implementation,” CMHR chief financial officer Susanne Robertson said, adding staff get regular training and all digital work is backed up, including in an off-site archive.
Further, the museum uses multiple layers of security that hackers would have to permeate before accessing the museum’s systems, “and the equipment will not go down.”
THE FINDING
The museum “did not plan exhibits and programs far enough in advance, or consider the human resources needed to carry out its projects” which at times meant “some employees had put in unsustainable amounts of work.”
THE RESPONSE
Cassie said the museum is now engaged in planning exhibits up to five years into the future, and that they have temporary spaces to plug in exhibits for a year or two, to provide more time if needed. Robertson said there has been a human-resources review as well, to ensure their “dedicated” staff have appropriate workloads.
THE FINDING
CMHR “lacked policies and procedures for developing exhibit content to ensure factual accuracy and balance,” auditors said — and when they did, “it was not clear that the reviews verified facts against authoritative sources.”
THE RESPONSE
“We are equally concerned about ensuring that we're accurate, balanced and reliable; that’s extremely important to us,” said Cassie, explaining that the review of 1,000 issues to resolve have been “whittled down” to 75, with almost all the factual ones fixed early on.
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