I will do my best to answer all of those for you.
The government financial statements right now consolidate all government organizations that are controlled by the government. That's the standard, and the Government of Canada follows the standard. They get a clean opinion on their financial statements. At the year-end, financial statements include the whole of government, as we would call it.
I believe—and I can't tell you for certain, but I believe—that the Government of Canada also budgets on that basis, so they have a consolidated budget to a certain degree. I can't say absolutely, but I believe they have something that resembles a consolidated budget. Whether the entities for the budget and the financial statements are exactly the same, I can't say.
The foundations themselves are tested against criteria as to whether they're controlled or not. Some are in the government's reporting entity and some are out. There are very clear criteria about what you'd look at to decide whether they're in or out. I think the government has changed its relationship with some of them in the recent past, and therefore some that used to be out are now in. I know it's been a very big issue for the Auditor General, because money has gone out of government and has sat there. It seems to be out of the control of government. But if they're able to meet the criteria for them to be out, they're out.
I would say that the idea of an entity is part of accrual accounting. I think all of the entities use accrual accounting when they're put into the statements, and I think you get a better picture of the whole of government.
I'll try to paraphrase your second question, just to make sure I understand it properly. I think you're talking about some of the scandals there have been with the federal government, or maybe you were talking about the private sector ones and wondering if something similar could happen. Is it more along that idea? Yes?
The first thing I should say is it wasn't really a standards issue. It was more that they weren't being applied. The correct standards were in place in the U.S., where Enron happened, but they were not applied right, and it wasn't really caught. They were extremely complex transactions, and it just wasn't caught soon enough.
I know that one of the issues with the federal government here is not that the controls weren't in place. I think, based on what I know, it's that some of them weren't being followed. I'm not sure accrual accounting or standards will help any more than they already do. The more information you have, particularly if it's summarized and analyzed in a way that will help you make good decisions, the less likely you are to have those issues, but in the end it comes down to controls and whether people follow them.
I think the right controls were in place and just weren't followed.
With respect to the heritage assets, I don't know how to help you on that one. It's a difficult topic, coming up with a value. I suspect if you talked with different evaluators they'd come up with different values.
The property they sit on will have a very high value. The value of the assets themselves...? I don't think all of it is quantifiable, so I'm not sure you're ever going to come up with a value that's truly going to reflect its value to the particular country, whether you take into account tourism revenue or other intangibles. I can't really answer definitively.