Public Accounts committee  That's fine.

Public Accounts committee  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.

Public Accounts committee  It depends. We try to do these things fairly expeditiously, but at times if we see a situation that is really serious, we will in fact often refer the file to the RCMP. So depending on all of those procedures, and how long it takes to interview people concerned, it could take the normal time of our performance audits—a year to a year and a half.

Public Accounts committee  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.

Public Accounts committee  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.

Public Accounts committee  We go through an analysis of the risks of the department. It's an exercise that we conduct probably about every four or five years in the departments, presuming that there aren't major changes, obviously, in their mandates and their organization. It is a very extensive exercise, where we interview people within the department, but also stakeholders outside as well, to try to assess what are the major risks to them to achieving their objectives.

Public Accounts committee  Yes. Occasionally we do get letters—the famous brown envelopes—from people within departments but also at times from the public or other people. I wouldn't say we get an enormous amount of them, but we do get them. We have a group of forensic auditors. It is not large; probably there are five to ten people who work in forensic audit.

Public Accounts committee  The concept of materiality is one that is used largely for financial statement audits, and it assists an auditor in making a judgment when an auditor has to give the opinion on the financial statements, as I'm sure the member will know. For example, when we do the audit of the financial statements of the Government of Canada, our materiality is $1 billion, which means that if there is an error in the financial statement of $1 million, we will not qualify the opinion.

Public Accounts committee  All I can say, Chair, is that it has been very common practice in the past that even.... I guess I should start by saying that all of our reports are automatically referred to the public accounts committee, so this committee is the committee that we view as being the one we work with primarily.

Public Accounts committee  We have not received any indication that other committees will be reviewing reports instead of public accounts.

Public Accounts committee  Perhaps I could provide part of an answer. For example, in the current year, because of the election, we had planned to table a report in February and then another in April. We have obviously readjusted our schedule because we thought that for you to arrive and have two reports would be a bit much.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Chair. Obviously I'll have to go back and talk to my people, because we'll have to look at what the contracts were. I'm not sure we would have access, quite frankly, to go beyond that. Let me look at it, and I will once again send you a letter saying what we can or cannot do.

Public Accounts committee  I only have the authority to make recommendations and to report on the progress made on the implementation front. Sometimes, the mere fact of reporting little progress can spur departments into action. Often, when we arrive to start our audit, we get the feeling that departments want to receive a good report card when the process is over.

Public Accounts committee  The first of the five priorities was accountability to Parliament, a fundamental consideration for an Auditor General. Our Office has conducted a number of audits and studies and intends to continue doing so. Another priority of ours was ensuring an efficient Public Service. We look into such issues as human resources management and technologies management.

Public Accounts committee  Yes. We bill the UN agencies for the services we provide. I suspect that's probably, in part.... I'll ask my comptroller to provide the response.