With respect to the Auditor General's opinion on the government summary financial statements, in my opinion it would be correct to characterize it as a clean audit. It is an audit without qualification, and therefore it is properly characterized as a clean audit.
As with any audit, there are things that are noted during the audit. The auditors are always able to find something. Those issues that we think might be of interest and relevance to Parliament, we've included in our observations, which are included in the public accounts.
I believe the member is referring to the observation on tax revenue on page 2.35 of volume 1 of the Public Accounts. This is an issue on which we've had discussions with Mr. Ralston, in his present and former capacity, for a number of years. The biggest management estimate that appears on the government's financial statements is tax revenues. Some of that is hard cash and some of it is estimated under accrual accounting. We continue to encourage the government to test those estimates with actual data to make sure that their previous assumptions and estimates are the best possible. The government has been doing that. CRA in particular has been doing it.
In 2010, it wasn't able to complete all of the “back testing” that it had planned to do. Some of this revealed differences between what they had estimated and the actual numbers of between 20% and 30% of what was recorded. We've encouraged the government to refine those estimates, to continue to back-test, to validate the underlying data, and to update its methodology. It's an ongoing discussion that we have with the CRA and with the Comptroller General. It is not so significant as to affect that clean opinion. We are still comfortable with the amount of tax revenue reported on the summary financial statements.