Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chairman, no, I do not feel we have to go back and reopen the audit or change our opinion. I stand behind that report as we published and tabled it on June 9, wherein we indicated there is no documentation available within the federal government to determine how the 32 projec

Public Accounts committee  Correct.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you for the question, Mr. Chairman. The internal audit function in the government, I believe, perhaps as a result of the program review exercise in the 1990s, really had been significantly weakened. We so indicated in the report we issued in early 2000. We thought that in

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chairman, the short answer to that is yes. I think the government could have been transparent in its request to Parliament for funding to clearly indicate the funds were intended for the legacy fund. That is not complex or difficult to sort out. And I believe it would have b

Public Accounts committee  Clearly, Mr. Chairman, the projects that were funded here had very little, if anything, to do with border infrastructure.

Public Accounts committee  The funding request was submitted for border infrastructure; it was used for the G-8 legacy fund.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chairman, I don't think this is a situation that requires more rules. I believe the rules are there. This office has taken the position in the past, and I absolutely support that position, that we don't need more rules. What we need is consistent application of the existing r

Public Accounts committee  Thank you for the question, Mr. Chairman. As the member has indicated, I need to state up front that the committee clearly determines for itself how it wishes to operate and which reports it wishes to study. It has been the practice of this committee in the past, when there is

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chairman, I believe the member is quoting from chapter 1 of our report, which deals with the overall G-8 and G-20 summits, the funding requests, and the planning for this project. The key issue the member is alluding to that we included in our report has to do with how those

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chairman, it would be very hard for me to respond definitively on that question. Was it ever asked inside or outside the House of Commons? I follow Hansard, but I wouldn't be able to say I follow it closely enough to say definitively the question was or was not asked.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chairman, I indicated when we released the report on June 9 that no, in fact, this is not something I have previously seen in my time in the Office of the Auditor General. In particular, the situation of public servants being totally excluded from the process of selecting the

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chairman, as I understand it, most of the documentation that has been made public subsequent to the tabling of our report has its origins in the records of municipal governments. Therefore, no, we did not look at work that was happening in the municipal governments. And much

Public Accounts committee  I don't know how the documents were subsequently made public, but many of the documents that the member refers to were not available to us during the audit. They have their origins in municipal governments. I have another brief comment, if I may, Mr. Chairman. As we indicated in

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chairman, the member is quite correct in distinguishing grants from contributions. At the risk of oversimplifying it, a grant is moneys disbursed by the government with basically no terms or conditions and no strings attached. A contribution program involves terms and conditi

Public Accounts committee  Yes. Thank you. I recall. The decision as to whether to use a grant mechanism or a contribution mechanism is a decision that's correctly left with government. It's not really a decision the Auditor General should weigh in on—should it have been a grant or should it have been a c