Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Williams, for your kind words about the CCAF. Mr. Chairman, just to get back to your question about some of the concrete suggestions that were enclosed, I want to draw you back to the householder idea. That was one of them, and the other was an idea—and it's not m

Public Accounts committee  That's very kind of you.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Fitzpatrick, for your comments. As I recollect from my university days, when it comes to a comparison between the private sector and the public sector in terms of accountability, people say that in the private sector you can make 10% mistakes but turn a

Public Accounts committee  I was just browsing through the best practices research we did. It's about four pages long, so there's not a whole lot there. I'm not seeing anything in the area of follow-up. We have something on exercising leadership, building and sustaining capacity, and achieving and demonstr

Public Accounts committee  Over the course of my presentation, I tried to very subtly...although probably it would have been useful if I'd had a list of them. I mentioned the survey, which didn't go over too well; that's okay. I'd have to go back over my notes. In my presentation I tried to drop in a few

Public Accounts committee  I'd be delighted to. I appreciate the question because we have a project right now at CCAF. As I mentioned, we put out this report recently, called Users and Uses, which concluded in essence that the intended users of performance reports, namely the media, the members of Parliame

Public Accounts committee  It's interesting, because in some of the meetings I've had where we've talked about departmental performance reports and getting members to read them, often the response has been that in fact it's the staff who need the reports to be readable. They have to break down the reports

Public Accounts committee  For your first time on the committee, that's a zinger of a question.

Public Accounts committee  I want to make a couple of observations before I weigh in on that question. Obviously I understand that as part of the Federal Accountability Act there is a parliamentary budget office, and I think it's still under discussion as to what role that office will play in supporting th

Public Accounts committee  Can I respond?

Public Accounts committee  I do have some comments.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you very much for your comments, Mr. Williams. There are a couple of issues I want to address. You mentioned non-partisanship, and Mr. Laforest mentioned the same issue, which is that it can never be divorced from a parliamentary system. I tried to make the same point. T

Public Accounts committee  I'm not sure I understand your question.

Public Accounts committee  Once again, that's a very interesting question. On pages 14 through 18 of the guide I alluded to earlier, a small study was done of other countries. I believe Australia and Great Britain were the target countries. In both cases, no answer was found, but this is something we coul

Public Accounts committee  That's also a very interesting suggestion. It ties in with what we were discussing. Witnesses are part of the solution, not part of the problem. Earlier, I mentioned the survey conducted by the Senate of witnesses who had appeared before a Senate committee. If the committee were