Public Accounts committee  Yes, Mr. Chairman, I can confirm that Health Canada does a good job in reviewing its drug submissions. When Health Canada does approve a drug for use in Canada, it has a rigorous process behind it. Nevertheless, Health Canada is struggling in two areas in particular. It has se

Public Accounts committee  I confirm, Mr. Chairman, that Health Canada does a good review of the drug submissions it receives.

Public Accounts committee  The highlights and lowlights...? Well, I got married--

Public Accounts committee  No, no, that's in the former category, obviously. That clearly is in the former—

Public Accounts committee  As for the highlights, not to put too fine a point on it, Mr. Chairman, the highlights are my marriage and the births of my kids and my grandkids. In terms of my career with the office, which is what I think the member was referring to, the highlights would be, most recently, my

Public Accounts committee  In terms of advice to put forward, I think I'll come back, Mr. Chairman, to my chapter on matters of special interest and importance. As I indicated in my opening statement, I truly do believe that a great majority of the negative audit observations about which this office comes

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much for those kind words. It has indeed been an honour to serve as the Interim Auditor General and to work with this committee over the years, but in particular it has been an honour to serve as Interim Auditor General as an officer of Pa

Public Accounts committee  I have no reason to believe that internal audit will be unduly singled out for cuts. I was just trying to offer my gratuitous advice that I think it's an important management tool, and that it's important to maintain the momentum already in place. If internal audit is able to c

Public Accounts committee  If I may, Mr. Chair, can I take one minute? I think I finally understood Mr. Caron's question. There were two separate audit reports. In our report on financial management in chapter 1 of the same report, we indicated that there still remain to be significant improvements in

Public Accounts committee  Thank you for the question, Mr. Chairman. This audit didn't specifically set out to do any benchmarking or comparisons, so I will speak anecdotally. This is not something we audited, but anecdotally, my sense is that the internal audit in the Government of Canada compares favour

Public Accounts committee  As the member knows, Mr. Chairman, Canada is frequently a destination of choice for international delegations looking at accountability issues, looking at audit functions. We receive international delegations weekly that are looking to learn from Canada. I believe many of those d

Public Accounts committee  I'm not sure I fully understand the question. Is the member asking about the relationship between internal audit and the work of my office, external audit...?

Public Accounts committee  The relationship internally.... The financial management community is responsible for the state and for providing leadership within government for the state of controls and risk management in government. The internal audit community provides, independently from that community, as

Public Accounts committee  This question, Mr. Chairman, goes a little bit beyond the scope of this particular chapter. As you know, we did another status report in the spring on financial management and control, which I would be pleased to discuss with this committee should it choose to have a hearing on i

Public Accounts committee  Yes, Mr. Chairman. The improvements in internal audit have absolutely contributed to better accountability in government. I believe that deputy ministers are now well served, for the most part, where there are internal audit functions, and they are also well served by their depar