The number of reports to Ottawa’s Fraud and Waste Hotline has more than doubled over the last year, according to the auditor general.

In a meeting of the audit committee on Tuesday, Ottawa’s auditor general, Nathalie Gougeon, presented the 2021 report on the Fraud and Waste Hotline. The hotline is a service which allows residents and city employees to report violations of city policy.

Gougeon indicated that the number of fraud and waste reports processed by the city had increased from 204 in 2020 to 575 in 2021—or a 182 per cent increase from the previous year. Of those, 302 cases were closed by the city, 121 of which were investigated. The remaining 274 cases have yet to be investigated.

Gougeon says it’s unclear whether the increase has anything to do with COVID-19.

“I'd be speculating if I really stated anything,” says Gougeon. “My assumption is that the pandemic likely is having an impact. But in order to determine a trend or a pattern of some sort, we usually need a good three years to determine that.”

Gougeon told councillors that the nature of allegations differed slightly from previous years, and included cases of falsifying vaccine status and failing to comply with mask mandates.

In one case, the report indicated that an employee was terminated for submitting falsified vaccination documents. In other cases, city employees breached masking policies while operating city-owned vehicles, and one city employee visited restaurants and shopping facilities while working from home due to medical reasons.

The report indicated that 13 other city staff were placed on suspension, and three more resigned in relation to the investigations.

City Manager Steve Kanellakos told councillors that all city employees in management or supervisory roles have been trained on COVID-19 policies, including the amended work-from-home policy.

“There's always going to be a few that slipped through and might try to take advantage of it,” says Kanellakos. “But that has not been our experience overall.”

Kanellakos indicated that of the 3,000-4,000 city employees working from home, he wasn’t aware of many cases of breached policy.

A quarter of the 121 reports that were investigated were found to be substantiated, while nearly 50 per cent didn’t constitute fraud or waste and another quarter were inaccurate. 

“And that's part of why we are looking forward to doing an awareness campaign this year,” says Gougeon. “Which is to try and inform employees and the public of various means that they can report different types of issues and what is meant to come through the Fraud and Waste Hotline.”

Gougeon told councillors that the city is planning on launching the awareness campaign to help educate the public about when it’s necessary to report activity. She says this may help to reduce the number of overall calls, as nearly half the reports over the past year were based on misinformation.

“Sometimes if it's a member of the public that’s seeing something, they may only understand part of the situation that's ongoing,” says Gougeon. “If somebody's taking their vehicle home, that might be a permission that's been provided, for example.”

Reports to the Fraud and Waste Hotline are anonymous, but the report indicates that two thirds of calls were made by city staff, while the remaining third were from members of the public.

Gougeon says the 274 reports which have yet to be investigated, which are recorded as “reports similar in nature,” would be investigated as one issue.

“I don't want to elaborate too much because of the fact that the investigation hadn't been concluded at the end of 2021,” says Gougeon. “But they are for [the] exact same types of situations, which is why we've classified them as such, because they have been lumped together into one investigation.”

Gougeon added that due to the anonymity of the reports, she can’t disclose any more information about the ongoing investigation until it has been concluded. 

To find out more about the Fraud and Waste Hotline and when to make a report, visit the auditor general’s webpage here.

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