Finance committee  Just to clarify, the Office of the Auditor General was not included in the formal part of the—

Finance committee  It was voluntary. The letter the minister wrote was to all heads of departments and agencies that were not included in the review, asking them to conduct an internal evaluation of their expenses and costs. The responses to those letters varied considerably. So it's unclear to w

Finance committee  I can't speak on behalf of the government, but I can say that other organizations did respond in that manner.

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  That is correct.

Finance committee  Yes. Well, the Auditor General had put forward these proposals to eliminate these particular financial audits for these particular organizations in order to be in line with current government directives that financial audits are not undertaken for individual departments and depar

Finance committee  That is his interpretation. That's correct.

Finance committee  I do know that a letter was submitted to the standing committee, as you said. I'm not aware of any response from the committee.

Finance committee  That was not to my knowledge the case, but I'm unaware of what communication may have occurred.

Finance committee  I can't say. Clearly organizations such as his do internal reassessments all the time. It's unclear whether these particular reforms would have happened or not.

Finance committee  Again, this would probably be better answered by the Auditor General himself. There is a combination of the annual audit of public accounts, which is quite comprehensive, as well as internal reporting that these organizations continue to do, as well as performance audits. I thi

Finance committee  The Canada Revenue Agency, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and the Parks Canada agency all had this particular requirement in their legislation when they were set up to have the AG assess their internal performance reporting. It was felt at the time that as they were new age

Finance committee  I'm not familiar with what those reports over the past have revealed. That might be a question better suited for the Auditor General himself. These were process reports on matters such as whether the agencies have been tabling their reports on time and whether the reports were

Finance committee  It is.

Finance committee  These organizations have requirements to issue these performance reports. Those requirements are not affected by this. They also will still be examined by the Auditor General as part of the performance reporting exercise that will happen on a regular basis. If they were to, for