Evidence of meeting #149 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was program.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
Are there departments that aren't doing audits like this at all? Are all departments doing this kind of work, or are there places where it's just not being looked at?
Director General, Chief Audit and Evaluation Executive, Department of the Environment
I believe each department has their chief audit executive, and they would be doing their individual risk-based audit plans. It would be up to the risks they identify in their departments to determine what they would look at.
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
All right. Thank you.
Can I ask as well about some of these internal processes?
October 29th, 2024 / 11:55 a.m.
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
Okay. I'll just jump to this, then. Of contributions that are paid out, how many are repayable, and how are we doing at actually getting back contributions that are supposed to be repayable?
Director General, Chief Audit and Evaluation Executive, Department of the Environment
I don't have an answer for that. We did not include that in the scope of our internal audit work. What we looked at was the governance risk and the controls that supported program delivery, but we didn't get to that level of detail in this report.
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
Did you not get to it because you didn't have the resources or because you didn't think it was important? What was the reason that you didn't include that in your work?
Director General, Chief Audit and Evaluation Executive, Department of the Environment
It was just not a step that was in our process. We had enough resources to do the work. We took enough time to do this work properly, but this is not an issue that came up in the internal audit.
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
Maybe it's something to think about for the future.
Director General, Chief Audit and Evaluation Executive, Department of the Environment
Yes. Thank you.
Conservative
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
That's your time.
We'll go to Mr. Sousa, and then we will have a bit more time, so we're going to go back to Mrs. Block and Mr. Jowhari, and then to the Bloc and the NDP for two and a half minutes each.
Go ahead, Mr. Sousa.
Liberal
Charles Sousa Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, Mr. MacDonald, for being here and enlightening us further in terms of the good work that's been done by you and the department to try to regroup, to the extent that's necessary, to improve our processes.
Let me ask this question first, though. Don't Canadian universities receive grants and funds from other institutions in the United States as well? Is that not part of the research engagement?
Director General, Chief Audit and Evaluation Executive, Department of the Environment
I'm not sure. It's not my area of expertise, but I am happy to get back to you on that.
Liberal
Charles Sousa Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
Well, they do. Canadian universities and many schools are engaged in global initiatives around research and development that are funded by other countries. Did you not just mention that we are part of global engagement on these matters?
Director General, Chief Audit and Evaluation Executive, Department of the Environment
Director General, Chief Audit and Evaluation Executive, Department of the Environment
Multiple countries are funding the international climate financing objectives, based on meetings they have at global fora, yes.
Liberal
Charles Sousa Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
It's not unique that Canada participates in support of other research developments in other parts of the world. Is that correct?
Director General, Chief Audit and Evaluation Executive, Department of the Environment
Liberal
Charles Sousa Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
We made clear that there have been growing pains here. Obviously there has been a lot of demand and growth, and a lot of initiatives have bee put forward. The budget has been increased somewhat as a consequence of that. This all came after the ECCC was gutted previously and a lot of things faltered. A lot of work was missed in terms of opportunities to improve on our—
Liberal
Charles Sousa Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
—environmental capacity and engagement. Notwithstanding the heckling that you're hearing from the other side, it's true, and we need to make certain that we can do better. As a result, how many agreements are now under way? Do you have a sense?
Director General, Chief Audit and Evaluation Executive, Department of the Environment
In the audit that we did in 2022-23, there were 1,808 agreements in place.
Liberal
Charles Sousa Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
The recommendations you made around governance and standardizations were important. Did the department agree to that? Did it adopt the recommendations?
