Evidence of meeting #2 for Public Accounts in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was audit.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB
I have a quick question about special examinations. You say that you do it about every five years or so. Do you think that timeframe works for you?
12:50 p.m.
Auditor General, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
That is required by the Financial Administration Act, so it is the law that requires special exams to be done every five years.
We have suggested to government that this timeframe could be extended. We would actually suggest that it be perhaps eight years, but with the discretion to do it earlier, because some—I would say most—of the crown corporations are very well managed, and we should be doing these more on a bit of a risk basis. So for the ones where we have noted problems or deficiencies, we should perhaps be going in every four or five years. For others where there are no deficiencies and we see that the management is working well, we could extend the timeline.
We suggested that, actually, when government was trying to find ways of having economies. We said one way for us to actually do less work would be to extend that time period out. So that was a suggestion we made, I think two years or so ago.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
Thank you very much, Mr. Lake.
Members, I have one quick question of the Auditor General, and I have a motion and a piece of information.
First for the question. Madam Auditor, one of the major concerns this committee's had over the last number of years, and it's a major concern of yours, was the transfer by the government to foundations at the end of the fiscal year, which did two things: it distorted the actual financial condition of the public statements, and it actually put funds outside the arm of Parliament. I noticed in the recent transfer that there were transfers to trust accounts at the end of this fiscal year, March 31, 2006. That of course does not put the money outside the arm of Parliament, but it does, in my view anyway, distort the actual financial conditions being published in published statements of government.
Do you have any comment on that actual transfer?
12:50 p.m.
Auditor General, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
We will obviously be auditing that as part of the public accounts audit this summer, but those trust accounts were created under the budget bill, Bill C-48, which was voted on and passed, obviously, by Parliament, whereby if there were a surplus at the end of the year, the moneys could be used for certain specified activities. I think housing was in there, and medical, and aboriginal issues. Our understanding is that the trust funds have been set up, some at least, for the benefit of provinces, and the moneys will be moved into these trust funds once the final figures are known for the year.
We have looked at this, at least preliminarily, and if there is a transfer from the federal government to the provincial government and it meets certain conditions, it will be recorded as an expense as at March 2006.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
12:50 p.m.
Auditor General, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Yes.
Chair--my deputy was just mentioning--as you know, we were given access to the foundations, but there is also a new accounting rule that came into effect this past year, whereby it defined which entities should be in the government's summary financial statements. And we have had, I would say, vigorous discussions with the government on this, and four of the foundations will now be included in the financial statements of the federal government.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
Just before we put the motion to the assembly, colleagues, I had a meeting yesterday morning with the Auditor General, and we have proposed having a dinner with the new members of the committee, with the total committee, and her. We were going to suggest Monday, May 29, or Tuesday, May 30, if that's fine--
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
--in the Parliamentary Restaurant, in one of the side rooms.
What date would be preferable to the committee? Tuesday? Tuesday is better than Monday?
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
Okay, we may not get everyone, but we'll send out a notice. If you want to put that tentatively in your agenda, colleagues--Monday, May 29. That's the first Monday after the break week.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
John Williams Conservative Edmonton—St. Albert, AB
I do note, Mr. Chairman, that on Tuesday the Canadian Vintners Association is having a reception.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
We do not want to compete with the vintners.
The last items, colleagues, to come before this meeting are the two motions at the very end of the agenda, which are of course dealing with the formal estimates.
First, shall vote 20 under Finance carry? The chair will entertain a motion for that particular motion.
Mr. Christopherson.
FINANCE Auditor General Vote 20--Program expenditures........$64,920,000
(Vote 20 agreed to)
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
The last motion, which is procedural only, is shall the chair report vote 20 under Finance, less the amount voted in interim supply, to the House? The chair will entertain a motion to that effect.
Mr. Lévesque.
(Motion agreed to)
12:55 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
One item, and I acknowledge that I'm trying to slip something in that I couldn't during my time, is the issue of the number of reports.
You were looking at a round table to talk about the recommendations vis-à-vis boosting the resources of the committee and our workload. That might be a good place to put that item, because one of the reasons we even considered doing fewer reports was simply that we couldn't do justice to the ones we had. If there's an increase in the resources available, we may not need to do that. In fact, we might be able to do more.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal