Finance Committee on May 17th, 2012

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

—rather than having the Auditor General do the verification?

[Margaret Strysio]

That's right.

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Right now, is it the case that it's a private external company that does the auditing? Or is it that we have the Auditor General doing the job, so you don't need to have someone else do the job?

[Margaret Strysio]

The Auditor General has always done an annual audit. So going forward, there would no longer be an audit of our financial statements. I don't know of the intention to have the financial statements audited on an individual basis going forward, but they do have the authority to do so if they felt there was a need. Otherwise, our financial statements would just be reviewed in the rolled-up overall public accounts done by the Auditor General.

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Do you have an idea of what the cost would be in order to have the external auditing, if any?

[Margaret Strysio]

Yes, I can give you just an estimate. Each year the Auditor General estimates how many hours it will take for them to conduct an audit. For the financial statement audit in their audit plan this year, they had estimated 2,700 hours. For the performance information review, they had estimated 1,000 hours.

So it's quite a bit of time. I can't figure out what that would be, but I guess we could do a rough estimate.

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

So if there were external auditing, we'd consider about 1,000 plus 20 hours, specifically just to replace what the Auditor General is doing in terms of hours...?

[Margaret Strysio]

About 3,700 hours.

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

It would be 3,700? Do you have any idea of how much that would cost?

[Margaret Strysio]

They do give a cost. I think that came out for them—

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

For them?

[Margaret Strysio]

They estimated $590,000.

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Do you consider that it would be more expensive to do externally?

[Margaret Strysio]

I would suppose so.

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

So in terms of cost savings, do you know how much...? So it's about 3,700 hours per year in terms of the Auditor General doing the work for an annual report...?

[Margaret Strysio]

Yes.

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you.

I want to thank our officials from Parks Canada for being here today and for giving an overview of that division. We appreciate your time with us.

Colleagues, we did divisions 10 and 11 last night, so we will be moving to division 12, on the Integrated Cross-Border Law Enforcement Operations Act.

With us we have Joe Oliver—the real Joe Oliver.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

To address this, we have Mr. Oliver from the RCMP.

Mr. Oliver, if you want to give an overview of this division, then we'll have questions from members.

[Stephen Bolton, Director, Border Law Enforcement Strategies Division, Public Safety Canada]

Actually, I'm Stephen Bolton, from the Department of Public Safety.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Okay.

[Stephen Bolton]

My colleague from the RCMP, Joe Oliver, is in security, and he's on his way up.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Welcome to the committee, Mr. Bolton.

Please give us an overview of this division.

[Stephen Bolton]

Of course.

Joe Oliver of the RCMP will be joining us momentarily, when he gets through security.

I'm here to speak to the Shiprider operation part of the BIA. Division 12 of the BIA is required to implement regular Shiprider operations between Canada and the United States. Shiprider enables specially trained and designated Canadian and U.S. law enforcement officers to conduct seamless, continuous law enforcement operations across the border on shared waters. This new and innovative cooperative policing model not only leverages law enforcement resources more efficiently, but has proven to be a more effective method of detecting and interdicting cross-border criminality.

Just to give you a sense of it, the idea is that there would be police law enforcement vessels in shared waters on the Canada-U.S. border, and they would be jointly crewed by Canadian and U.S. law enforcement. It's very important to note that all Shiprider operations will be conducted under the direction and control of law enforcement officers of the host country, so in Canada under the control and direction of Canadian law enforcement, and in Canada it would be conducted in accordance with Canadian laws, policies, and procedures, and the same on the U.S. side.

Looking at some of the key elements of this legislation, the act would define the scope of operations for Shiprider; specify the authorities being granted to designated officers; outline the role of the Canadian central authority, which would be responsible for managing the day-to-day operations; specify the appointment process, including the mandatory criteria for appointment; outline how the seizure of goods and detention of persons are to be managed in Canada; and establish a civilian oversight mechanism for the conduct of designated officers.

Legislation seeking to implement Shiprider has twice been introduced to Parliament, the latest being former Bill S-13, which died on the order paper when Parliament was dissolved in March 2011.

Regularizing Shiprider operations will permit the government to realize one of the key law enforcement commitments in the Beyond the Border action plan between Canada and the United States. Importantly, it would also allow Canada to ratify the Shiprider framework agreement signed by the public safety minister and the homeland secretary back in May 2009. With this legislation in place, it is hoped that regular Shiprider operations could be implemented this summer.

This is the mounted cavalry riding in. This is my colleague, Joe Oliver, director general, border integrity, RCMP.