ABSTRACT
This chapter examines performance audits of the Canadian Human Rights Commission conducted by the Office of the Auditor General of Canada (OAG) between 1985 and 1998. It begins with a brief overview of the special place that the OAG occupies as a power evaluator in Canada. The chapter looks at human rights commissions and at the evaluation of commissions in Canada. The narrative moves to the 1985 and 1988 performance audits of the Canadian Human Rights Commission and continues to the 1998 audit. Human rights commissions in Canada had been more or less over-looked by state audit institutions (SAIs) for many years, mostly because they were "under the radar screen" to coin a phrase. The chapter also examines the ripple effects of the OAG's choices a decade later, not only with respect to the Canadian Human Rights Commission itself, but also more widely across human rights commissions in Canada.
