2 Evaluation Methodology

2.1 Overview

The following methods were used to address the evaluation questions:

Table 1: Methodologies

Methodology Description
Document Review The document review covered all reports provided by participating provinces and municipalities, along with publicly available information on the Contraventions Act, and other enforcement mechanisms.
Administrative Data Review The data provided by participating provinces and municipalities was reviewed. This included data on the number of contravention tickets issued under the various federal legislation and regulations, along with financial data on activities undertaken in relation to official languages.
Key Informant Interviews A total of 27 key Informant Interviews were conducted involving a total of 40 individuals. This included key informants from Justice Canada (program representatives and counsel in Legal Services Units), other federal departments and agencies using the contraventions regime, participating provinces and municipalities, court managers, enforcement officers, and academics.

Evaluation questions can be found in Appendix A.

An Evaluation Working Group (EWG) composed of Justice Canada representatives from the Policy Sector’s Programs Branch provided advice during the design and implementation of the evaluation. The EWG coordinated access to documents and data, and provided feedback on evaluation products (i.e., the evaluation plan, preliminary findings and the draft evaluation report).

2.2 Consideration of GBA Plus and Diversity and Inclusion

The Program is about the implementation of a ticketing system to better support a fair and efficient enforcement of federal regulatory offences. It was determined that Gender‑based analysis (GBA) Plus considerations were not relevant to the evaluation process.

2.3 Constraints, Limitations and Mitigation

The following table describes the constraints and limitations faced by the evaluation, along with the mitigation strategies that were applied.

Table 2: Constraints, limitations and mitigation strategies

Constraints/limitations Mitigation strategy
There were gaps in performance information provided by participating provinces and municipalities. These gaps are further discussed in sub‑section 4.2.4. The evaluation used qualitative information to provide insights on the performance of the program and the gaps in performance information has been specifically explored as part of this evaluation.
Only limited insights could be gathered from the provinces that do not participate in the contraventions regime. Some of the enforcement officers and their managers operate in both provinces where the contraventions regime is operational and in provinces where it is not operational. During their interviews, they addressed the challenges related to this uneven application of the Contraventions Act.
There were challenges in identifying and engaging individuals from some categories of key informants, notably the enforcement officers. A snowball approach was used, which allowed key informants to help identify other key informants who could offer valuable insights for the evaluation.