Public Accounts committee  That is an interesting question. We are the auditors of CATSA, so we audit the annual financial statements, and there is a special exam currently under way that we will be completing by the end of the summer. So the special examination is under way as we speak.

Public Accounts committee  Yes. Essentially special examinations are like a broad-scope performance audit of the whole crown corporation, and we actually have to give an opinion on whether there are any significant deficiencies in its management. So we will be looking at all the significant management areas of CATSA in that special exam.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you, Mr. Lévesque, for your kind words. It's very encouraging when parliamentarians appreciate the work we do. WIth respect to recommendations, each year we do a follow up with departments and agencies. We do a status report on the implementation of the recommendations put forward four years earlier.

Public Accounts committee  The previous government indicated they were going to require all special examination reports to be made public. That would have been about a year and a half ago. Before that, they were not required to be made public. Many did voluntarily, and I think the practice now is that most, if not all, are posting them on their websites.

Public Accounts committee  No, those are absolute numbers. They are expensive, because in many cases we need to bring in experts to assist us, depending on the area we're looking at. They are very extensive reviews of the program or the activity concerned. There is also a lot of time spent in the whole reporting phase on discussions of findings with departments, going back and forth.

Public Accounts committee  Obviously there are printers. The report went to print probably a month or more ago--three to four weeks ago--but again, I would be very surprised, given the comments that were in the report; I do not believe a printer or a contractor would have leaked that.

Public Accounts committee  I'm not sure. I would--

Public Accounts committee  I believe we have done a preliminary estimate of the costs--which I think Mr. Wiersema is trying to find right now--for the additional crown corporations and the special exams. We estimate that over the whole cycle, it could be $1.7 million. This is obviously not enormous in the scale of our whole budget, and that's why we said we would be able to conduct the work during the current year.

Public Accounts committee  We can absorb it in the current year. That was the agreement we had with government, that we could absorb it in the current year, and once we'd gone through the first year we would have a better understanding of how much effort it actually involves, and then we might come back with a request for funding.

Public Accounts committee  No, we are able to do that. As I mentioned, we have--presuming, of course, that it will be approved--a carry-forward amount of $3 million. We are in a sense using that carry forward for that additional work. We want to test our estimates this year, and if we see it is going to cost significantly more, then obviously we'll have to adjust our estimates.

Public Accounts committee  It's hard to make an overall estimate of financial audits because it depends very much on the organization being audited. For example, the cost of auditing the financial statements of a museum is going to be very different from auditing the financial statements of Canada Post, for example, or the Government of Canada, which is a cost of $4 million to $5 million.

Public Accounts committee  Our report on plans and priorities is done; it is complete. It is the government's decision that they will table them all together in the fall. I would suspect that maybe there are some departments that have to change their plans and priorities, but ours is done and has been for some time now.

Public Accounts committee  As you know, our mandate was expanded last summer to include additional crown corporations. In that bill, there was also a requirement that all crown corporations have special examinations, which means there are a number of special examinations that we will have to do. That addition to our mandate might require us to come back with a request for additional funding.

Public Accounts committee  We have not as yet begun auditing departmental financial statements. This is a statement of intention by the government. Some departments have started to do assessments. We have encouraged them to do what we call readiness assessments to see if they would actually be able to produce auditable financial statements, because this has never been done before.

Public Accounts committee  Currently, I would say almost all funding agreements do have provisions whereby the department or agency can conduct an audit. It is part of current practice in most of the organizations that give grants and contributions to audit recipients to ensure they are respecting the terms and conditions of the agreements.