Public Accounts committee  Again, the objective of strategic review is to identify and review 20% to 25% of direct program spending on an annual basis. We are now just in the process of identifying what areas of spending we'll be covering off. There will need to be discussions with the Treasury Board on th

Public Accounts committee  I would just like to thank all the members for allowing us to have this broader discussion. Often we're here on a specific issue. We find it very helpful and very useful to outline some of the overall issues of public sector management that we're trying to address. Hopefully we a

Public Accounts committee  Again, if you look at the various budget items, under each budget item there's a department responsible for that particular program. It's that department's responsibility to bring forward the detailed eligibility criteria to the Treasury Board for approval. We then do the due dil

Public Accounts committee  Again, I can't give you a definition of what an appropriate level of risk in risk management would be. I think what we all recognize is that the level of risk will go up when you go from the level of spending and increase it by $20 billion. A very important part of this exercis

Public Accounts committee  As we move forward with the spending, I'll try to explain the steps that we're taking. The first step is to ensure that you have a well-defined program under which projects are approved. For example, your recreational infrastructure programming will fund the upgrade of arenas a

Public Accounts committee  I'm not certain if there is a specific policy in this area. This committee has been very clear on its position. It has been an important discussion, because my sense is that the government and the Clerk of the Privy Council, who makes recommendations to the Prime Minister on the

Public Accounts committee  Yes, every budget item, except those that were not in the Budget Implementation Act. The Budget Implementation Act itself was approved by Parliament. Now, the terms and conditions of those programs in the Budget Implementation Act, and all other budget items, had to come to the b

Public Accounts committee  The management accountability framework is simply that. It is a framework that has been adopted now by all departments and agencies in the Government of Canada to manage their organization. It has 10 areas of management, and we at the board undertake on an annual basis an assessm

Public Accounts committee  We're undertaking a five-year review right now of MAF, and part of that review was for our consultants to look at other models. The British have a model that is somewhat similar. The Americans do as well. We like to think that ours is more advanced, but maybe I'm biased. Ours has

Public Accounts committee  They are doing that. We have a lot of people from a lot of countries coming to look at our model, and a number of countries have in fact adopted our model.

Public Accounts committee  I had to do this personally in my own department with our new internal audit committee, with three external members. We put a very comprehensive report together, looking at both the recommendations from the Auditor General and the recommendations for the internal audit. I must sa

Public Accounts committee  Since Alister has been answering a lot of questions on the economic stimulus package at various committees over the last number of weeks, I'm sure he has probably responded to this, so I'll turn to him. That has been part and parcel of the work we've done through the secretariat

Public Accounts committee  I'm sorry, I can't comment on that specific case. I think what we do as part of our overall risk assessment when departments come forward with these proposals to the board...and not all of them come to the board for approval. Some of them are within the department's own authori

Public Accounts committee  Thank you for your question. On what we normally require at the border through the secretariat if you're looking at outsourcing the management of a specific project or private-public partnership, we've adopted best practices that other governments have put in place in the privat

Public Accounts committee  The set of programs that are potentially eligible for vote 35 are specified in chapter 3 of the budget. What the board has been doing now is going through the various submissions by departments who are making an argument—or may make an argument—that given this program, we need to