Thank you, Mr. Chair.
We are very pleased to be here. I would like to thank you for giving us the opportunity to discuss our 2007-08 report on plans and priorities.
As you mentioned, I am accompanied today by John Wiersema, deputy auditor general; Rick Smith, assistant auditor general, strategic planning and professional practices; and Jean Landry, our acting comptroller.
As the legislative auditor, we provide objective information, advice, and assurance that can be used by parliamentarians to scrutinize government spending and performance.
Our financial audits provide assurance that the financial statements are presented fairly and in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles or other relevant standards.
Our special examinations assess the management systems and practices of crown corporations and provide an opinion on whether there is reasonable assurance that there are no significant deficiencies in the systems.
Using established criteria, our performance audits examine whether government programs are being managed with due regard for economy, efficiency, and environmental impact and whether measures are in place to determine their effectiveness. Our recommendations address the most serious deficiencies identified.
All our audit work is conducted in accordance with the standards set by the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants. It is guided by a rigorous methodology and quality management framework and is subjected to internal practice reviews and external reviews by peers. All of this provides assurance that you can rely on the quality of our work.
The Auditor General Act gives the office discretion to determine what areas of government to examine when doing performance audits.
We conduct risk assessments of federal departments in a number of management areas, such as human resources and information technology, in order to identify the most significant topics for audit. The 2004 international peer review of our performance audit practice lauded this as a good practice that adds robustness to our performance audits.
For 2007-08, we have $80.6 million in appropriations available to us through the main estimates and the equivalent of 625 full-time employees. With these resources, we plan to produce 28 performance audits of federal departments and agencies, as listed in attachment 1, including reports by the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development.
The commissioner's reports will monitor the implementation of departments' sustainable development strategies and ministerial responses to environmental petitions. There will also be three performance audits of territorial governments.
We will also produce some 130 financial audits and other insurance engagements; 11 special examinations of crown corporations, which are also listed in attachment 1; and finally, our assessments of the performance reports of three federal government agencies.
Our Report on Plans and Priorities identified four priorities for 2007-2008. First, integrating changes to professional standards is a crucial aspect of ensuring the quality of the work in our office. As the standards become more complex, and as Canada moves to adopt international standards, we have identified a number of activities to address this priority to be accompanied by additional investment in methodology and training.
Our second priority is to put into effect the recent changes that Parliament has made to our mandate. With the additional ongoing funding recommended in December 2006 by the Parliamentary Advisory Panel on the Funding and Oversight of Officers of Parliament, we are confident that we will be able to carry out our mandate.
Several of our audits in the past few years have noted the growing weight of controls and reporting requirements associated with the delivery of federal government programs. This theme was echoed in the recent report of the Blue Ribbon Panel on grant and contribution programs. Our third priority is to identify options for how we can contribute to simplifying the administration of these programs while strengthening accountability for the spending of public funds.
Lastly, in 2007-2008 and beyond, in response to our growing needs and the increased competition for scarce professional audit personnel, we must strengthen our recruitment and retention efforts. Our multi-year recruitment and retention strategy is designed to respond to this priority.
Our 2007-2009 sustainable development strategy reconfirms our efforts to integrate environmental and sustainable development issues into our audits. In 1995, our act was amended to create the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development. During this 10th year of implementation of these amendments, we have begun a review of our environment and sustainable development practice. An independent panel will determine if there are opportunities to strengthen our implementation of this mandate to better serve Parliament.
You may recall that we have been reviewing the timing and frequency of our reports to Parliament. The goal of our review is to identify a reporting schedule that more closely follows the parliamentary calendar.
With this in mind, we will present our next report to Parliament in late October, rather than in late November, as we have done in recent years. This will give committees about four more weeks to consider our report before the Christmas recess.
The October report will include the results of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development's monitoring of environmental petitions and sustainable development strategies. It will be followed in February 2008 by a more comprehensive commissioner's report, devoted to follow-up audits of previous work.
Finally, we will continue to implement our international strategy. As we noted in our report on plans and priorities, with the support of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada we recently submitted a bid to become the auditor of the International Labour Organization starting in 2008, and I am very pleased to inform you that our bid was successful.
Over the last couple of years we have been working to improve how we measure and report on our performance to Parliament. This has led us to identify a number of new measures and indicators for our performance and to focus our presentation of this material around six key headings: the value of our work to parliamentarians and other key users of our reports; the value of our work for the organizations we audit; how key users of our reports are engaged in the audit process; how key users of our reports and the organizations we audit respond to our findings; how our quality management framework is operating; and how our work is produced on time and on budget.
Our Report on Plans and Priorities presents a table summarizing our indicators and measures our recent performance and our targets for the coming year. These are included as attachment 2. Our upcoming performance report will give our first results against this improved framework.
As a way to assess our performance, it is our intent to survey members of this committee, and certain other committees of the House and Senate this year, with a short questionnaire concerning the value of our work. You may have already received the questionnaire. We thank you in advance for taking the time to provide us with your feedback so that we may provide you with the maximum possible value.
Finally, my staff and I very much appreciate the continuing support that we have received from this committee. We look forward to serving parliamentarians in the future through our expanded mandate.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My colleagues and I would be pleased to answer your questions.
