Mr. Chair, I heard what Ms. McLeod suggested earlier. Yes, the Auditor General's office proposed those changes voluntarily and sent a letter to that effect. It even told the Standing Committee on Public Accounts in advance that it was going to voluntarily review those programs or audits. I was a member of that committee at the time.
But what is being left out of the story and what Ms. McLeod did not mention is that the Minister of Finance has himself sent a letter to the Auditor General or to his office asking him to comply as much as possible with the spirit of fiscal restraint, meaning the direction that the government was going to take. Therein lies the rub. We have reason to believe that the Auditor General would not have provided the list of programs or government agencies whose financial statements he would no longer audit, if the Minister of Finance's letter had instead suggested he carry on with the audits in the same way as before.
Clearly, if a letter from the Minister of Finance asks you to make changes—voluntarily, of course—and to conduct fewer audits, that is one thing. But getting a letter from the Minister of Finance asking you to conduct the audits as if the office were independent will have the opposite effect. The auditor is doing it independently, but at the suggestion of the Minister of Finance. We think that is problematic because parliamentary oversight organizations should be excluded from any government austerity measures. But that was not the case here.