Mint having trouble with its own expenses

The Crown corporation responsible for producing Canadian coins is doing a poor job in how it documents and spends its own dollars and cents on international travel and hospitality.

Canada’s auditor general conducted a special examination report on the Royal Canadian Mint that found slipshod financial controls, including a number of problems with how its executives and other employees approved, spent and documented travel and hospitality expenses outside of Canada.

The report found travel claims with “inappropriate” expenses and “insufficient demonstration of regard for economy.”

Mint employees regularly failed to provide proper itineraries, cost estimates and itemized receipts; did not complete mandatory travel authority forms; and approved some of their own travel costs, Auditor General Michael Ferguson says in his examination, which was included in his spring report released Tuesday.

Some of the major problems he found include:

In 13 of 16 instances, cost estimates were not included on an “Authority to Travel and Travel Advances” form — which must be completed before travelling and includes cost estimates, destinations and travel dates. In the remaining cases, the estimate “was a fraction of the actual expense.”

None of the travel authority forms was accompanied by business itineraries or business objectives.

Other rules were broken related to the corporate travel and hospitality policy. The most common “deviation” was that, in 10 of 12 travel claims with hospitality expenses, itemized receipts and a description of the purpose were not provided.

The auditor general’s team found instances in which employees broke rules on financial controls and approvals.