Public Accounts committee  Yes. It's actually a dual role: Deputy Minister of Finance and secretary to the Board of Management. It is to be responsible for a number of things, from establishing the province's budget, both capital and operating budgets, to also being responsible for the comptroller's office

Public Accounts committee  I think as I said before, Mr. Chair, the main aspect of it preparing me for the role of Auditor General.... Well, I suppose there are two. One is that, first of all, I am now responsible for a larger organization. The auditor general's office in New Brunswick has about 23 people,

Public Accounts committee  I don't think my views have changed. In terms of what it brings to me as an auditor, it tells me that when one is auditing a government, there are always places in which a government can improve and always processes that can be improved. As an auditor, you need to make sure you'r

Public Accounts committee  That's certainly not something I've given a lot of thought to at this point; I would have to take it under advisement. My understanding of the legislation—and I believe it's very similar to the legislation in New Brunswick—is that in situations in which the Auditor General does

Public Accounts committee  Do you mean, to make internal auditing easier? Did I understand that correctly? Internal auditing is a process very similar to external auditing. Really, the only difference is the audience. I'm not sure that I can tell you anything in particular, off the top of my mind, that wo

Public Accounts committee  Those were recommendations of the Auditor General. Certainly, if they were recommendations of the Auditor General, they would be followed up in accordance with the normal process of the Auditor General's office. I know they have a process for follow-up—they decide which items to

Public Accounts committee  I believe that the Auditor General of Canada has very much established a leadership position over the last number of years under Ms. Fraser's leadership in terms of its reputation across the world for excellence in performance audits and excellence in financial audits. I think Ca

Public Accounts committee  I have personally been involved in work with Tanzania, in Africa, through the federal Auditor General's office, whereby we went over and did an assessment of the Tanzanian National Audit Office and its capabilities, particularly in such things as performance audits. We went throu

Public Accounts committee  I really don't have any comment, Mr. Chair.

Public Accounts committee  I really don't have any comment, Mr. Chair.

Public Accounts committee  Again, Mr. Chair, there's not much I can say on that. We'll have to wait and see what the vote is.

Public Accounts committee  The office of the Auditor General will have the capacity to make sure that every person in the office can continue to work in their language of choice. I will be absolutely committed to making sure that every person can continue to work in their language of choice; I fully respec

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, the first thing we will have to determine is which language each and every senior level person selects to work in. For anyone who selects French, we will make sure that there are mechanisms in place to fully protect that right. That will be absolutely protected.

Public Accounts committee  I always had a good working relationship with the public accounts committee in New Brunswick. I tended to release my reports to a combined meeting of the public accounts committee and the crown corporations committee. I always had a good working relationship with those committees

Public Accounts committee  As I said earlier, I think the audit process is a rigorous process. It's a process that is designed around identifying what areas the audit team should be looking at, perhaps doing some scoping work at first to figure out whether it looks like that area really is one where there