Management response and action plan

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Evaluation Report Title: Evaluation of Federal Support for Family Justice: Canadian Family Justice Fund
Approval Date of Evaluation by Deputy Minister (03/2023):

Recommendation 1

Work with provincial and territorial partners to identify gaps and needs relating to family justice services.

Rationale for Recommendation: The current CFJF budget levels raise challenges for its effectiveness going forward. The evidence suggests that the CFJF budget limits the impact it can have, given that the funding has not increased since 2002-03. When inflation is considered, it means that in real dollars, the amount of funding has decreased over the years. This situation created challenges for some jurisdictions to address identified gaps. This suggests that there is an opportunity to work with partners to identify gaps and needs relating to family justice services.

Management Response: Programs Branch – Innovation, Analysis and Integration Directorate agrees with the above recommendation to identify gaps and needs relating to family justice services.

Recommendation 2

In collaboration with partners, build on recent improvements to performance reporting by finding opportunities to further standardize and refine performance reporting mechanisms and information. The utility of performance data for program management should be a key consideration.

Rationale for Recommendation: CFJF reporting mechanisms and performance data have improved compared to the last cycle. However, the evaluation still identified gaps with respect to the CFJF program performance data. Gaps remained in terms of the consistency and completeness of annually reported data by PTs and projects. The data is not always captured in a standardized manner to facilitate fulsome monitoring and reporting on outcomes. This poses challenges in using performance data to manage how funding is prioritized and approved. Justice Canada should explore new approaches to refine performance reporting and monitoring to improve the utility of performance data in program reporting and program management. A refinement of performance reporting and monitoring processes should balance internal strategic needs for such data and the burden for partners to provide it.

Management Response: Programs Branch – Innovation, Analysis and Integration Directorate agrees with the above recommendation to improve reporting templates and tools to allow for more consistency and completeness of annually reported data in relation to Canadian Family Justice Fund projects.