Audit finds 800 items missing from Canadian history museum, no plan to deal with it

More than 300 items weren’t stored properly, and 15,000 lacked information about where the item came from.

“There were no plans to resolve any problems uncovered in these verifications, including finding missing items,” the auditor’s report stated.

One inventory inspection of several rooms at the Canadian Museum of History in March 2022 found more than 700 issues, including almost 80 missing items — five of which were deemed to be of great historical significance.

As of August 2022, 400 of those issues were still unresolved, with no plan or timeline to address them.

The corporation had planned to create a database of 1.1 million archeological records in 2016 as a first step toward inventorying the collection, but records for 200,000 weren’t finished by the target deadline of March 2022 and no new timeline was set.

The audit also revealed the museum did not regularlyreview which staff were allowedto access to secure locations where collections are stored, even though safeguarding historical artifacts is central to the corporation’s mandate.

The last review at the history museum was done in 2005, and the war museum’s last one was in 2021. Neither museum had plans for another review.

The museum agreed to all 11 of the auditor’s recommendations to resolve some of the issues.

Despite the “significant deficiencies,” the audit found the museum maintained reasonable systems and practices to carry out its mandate.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 10, 2023.

Laura Osman, The Canadian Press

by The Canadian Press

Audit finds 800 items missing from Canadian history museum, no plan to deal with it

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