Public Accounts committee  There's a reason I became an auditor: so I didn't have to grade individuals. It's hard to say. If you look at some of the areas where we identified some weaknesses, we saw late deliveries, poor stock management and inefficient processing, but we also saw, in one of the case studies that we put in the chapter in exhibit 3.3, that the department finds ways to find solutions.

Public Accounts committee  Madam Chair, thank you for this opportunity to discuss our audit report on supplying the Canadian Armed Forces. Joining me is Nicholas Swales, who was the principal responsible for the audit. The Canadian Armed Forces consist of 68,000 regular force members and 30,000 reserve force members.

Environment committee  We do have a lot of environmental expertise within our office. We have individuals like Ms. Leach, who is here and has been with the office and working in the environment for most of her career—for decades. We have a lot of incredible individuals who have tons of years of experience.

Environment committee  Absolutely, we need experts in all fields that we plan on auditing. If we can't find them, we will get them through contracts.

Environment committee  I'm always very interested in meeting with stakeholders who are interested in our work, and I would love to see increased community engagement—

Environment committee  No one has asked specifically to meet with me about the process, but I have received letters from them, inquiring when I would start the process. I did write back to them to let them know that we started that on October 23.

Environment committee  You mean the submission of our reports. All our reports go to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts; that is how we are set up. Any parliamentary committee could invite us to appear and we would be very happy to talk about our work.

Environment committee  Thank you. I don't think we reallocated our people, really. We just sat down and took a much more global view to our audit practices and ensured that we have the right people in the right place. That's a decision everyone should be looking at when they run an organization, but it's one that's forced upon you when you have some constraints related to your staffing.

Environment committee  You are referring to some of the things that perhaps guide how we select our mandates or choose the subjects of our audits. We're always happy to hear what interests parliamentarians. It gives us another point of reference for choosing what we are going to audit.

Environment committee  As Mr. Hayes mentioned earlier, I know the Standing Committee on Public Accounts requires an action plan after each of our reports. We encourage all departments to act on recommendations we make in our reports and develop an action plan. If the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development wants to consider the reports issued by the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, I would encourage you to also invite the departments to consider the reports at the same time and to ask them in advance—

Environment committee  I have received communication from them. If I don't find a good calibre candidate in the current search that I'm doing, I am committed to expand that to use, perhaps, the services of a headhunter if I need to. I do invite them to reach out to our office if they would like to make some recommendations for us as we do this very important search for a new commissioner.

Environment committee  One of the sustainable development goals—I believe it's sustainable development goal 16 that talks about good accountable institutions—gives us an opportunity to take a bit of that expertise and make sure it's everywhere. Every audit that we do, whether it be a financial audit or special examination or a performance audit, should be able to identify which sustainable development goal our work is touching and then be able to comment on whether or not the organization is helping to move that yardstick to improve the country.

Environment committee  The government is definitely moving in a direction where there is a lot of cross-organizational push for programs to be delivered in such a fashion. I think the challenge from an audit perspective is that this just adds some complexities, as you can likely appreciate, to an audit.

Environment committee  As we've mentioned, it's always a good recommendation to make sure that, when you launch a program, you've thought about how you're going to measure its successes. When we see that missing in a program design, we take the opportunity to recommend that. You achieve what you measure, so every good plan should have some good performance indicators and good measurements to make sure that you know when you're achieving your intended result.

Environment committee  I just want to make sure I understand your question. You are asking what we are going to do to enable us to audit a greater number of agencies. Is that right?