Public Accounts committee  Yes, we believe that our procedures are sound. Our departmental security officer has made a couple of recommendations that we will be putting into place coming out of this incident. But as I said earlier, our main concern is around the physical security of the actual report--the document itself.

Public Accounts committee  To my knowledge that has never occurred. I think I would have been informed if that had ever occurred. I would remind members that there are serious inaccuracies in the information in that story that is purported to represent the report. If it was a question of a physical copy of the report being available, one would presume that it might have been more accurate.

Public Accounts committee  Each of these leaks was investigated by staff in my Office. In the majority of cases, reports were not leaked by someone who had received an actual paper copy. Rather, we believe the information was leaked by a journalist who obtained verbal information from a particular source.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chairman, it's difficult to be 100 per cent certain as to who is responsible for leaking the information. Therefore, it's impossible to impose any kind of sanction.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chairman, I don't wish to speculate about what may have happened or about the identity of the guilty party or parties. I prefer to stick to the facts. The information we have does not confirm the source of the leaks and I would rather not speculate any further.

Public Accounts committee  The policy respecting the disclosure of information and confidentiality is quite clear. Again, I don't think we need to adopt more rules. However, we need to ensure compliance with the rules already in place. The various departments have a responsibility to adopt the necessary measures to ensure confidentiality and to see to it that their staff comply with departmental policies.

Public Accounts committee  To my knowledge, there were more than six reports provided to the department and various people within the department. There were also several drafts during the process. I'm not sure how many drafts there actually were, but there were a number of drafts throughout the process that were shared with the department.

Public Accounts committee  Yes. I received a draft report from our departmental security officer, who essentially looked at our internal procedures to make sure there was no breach within our own office and within our procedures.

Public Accounts committee  This is a standard practice that's been conducted in the office for many years, to my knowledge, where before the tabling of a report--a couple of weeks, perhaps two to three weeks before--the people who are responsible for the various audits meet with senior officials of the Treasury Board Secretariat and the Privy Council Office who have previously received drafts of reports, either through the departments or through us if the audit concerns them.

Public Accounts committee  And it's also part of our standard practice to brief any minister whose department or agency is contained in the audit report. Those briefings generally occur certainly no sooner than the week before tabling and often a day or two before tabling.

Public Accounts committee  I have a draft report now. I would expect that he will be completing that over the next few days.

Public Accounts committee  I'm not sure that those suspicions could ever be confirmed, quite frankly, unless the person who spoke puts up his hand or the journalist reveals their source, both of which I expect are very unlikely to happen. The departmental security officer essentially looked at our procedures and went through all the different procedures that the teams should have followed.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, that probably would be feasible, but I hope you recognize that many, many people have either had a draft of the report or have seen parts of the report. Even for third parties outside government who are mentioned in the report, it is part of our process to share with them the text that concerns them.

Public Accounts committee  With difficulty.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. With me today is Assistant Auditor General Jean Ste-Marie. We thank you for this opportunity to discuss a newspaper article that claims to contain information from a report scheduled to be tabled in the House of Commons tomorrow. I would like to begin by saying that I take my relationship with Parliament very seriously and that my office takes every reasonable step to ensure that our reports are not disclosed publicly until tabled in the House of Commons.