Yes—
Evidence of meeting #3 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was need.
A video is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #3 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was need.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Charles Sousa Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
Just to clarify, there was no review date stated. The review was completed, but there was no—
Conservative
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
It was my understanding—
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
This is the last question. It relates to the GC Strategies questions.
We had an Order Paper question come back, and there has been an expanded number of files referred to the RCMP. I think it's up to 11 now.
In a previous public accounts meeting I was at, PSPC said they weren't actually forcing repayment of some of these accounts. They were just negotiating with some of the companies that had been found to be improperly charging or defrauding the government.
It may be not the role for you to opine on this, but do you think it tells people that the government is not serious about enforcing their own rules if we're not even forcing repayment—
Conservative
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
I really can't comment on files that have been referred to the RCMP, but in the case of the elements you're talking about, where PSPC is trying to recover amounts, I believe it's not linked to GC Strategies. It was linked to a bigger, broader—
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
—investigation around a a vendor charging multiple departments for what appeared to be the same seven hours in a day or the same piece of work.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
It's widespread, but the question is, do you think the government should be forcing immediate payment and not doing a negotiation for clearly identified...?
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
Once an investigation is done and it's clear that payment was made and services were not rendered, I would expect that overpayments will always be recovered. How the government goes about that is a decision they make, but I would expect that you shouldn't pay for things you didn't receive.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
Thank you.
Now we'll get to Mr. Sousa's comment on thanking all of you. It's wonderful to see all of you. We're going to suspend very briefly so that everyone can say goodbye.
Mr. Gaheer, please stay on the same Zoom call, because we'll be back in about two minutes.
We are suspended.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
Thank you for your patience, everyone. We are back.
We have a couple of housekeeping items before we finish for the day.
On the first one, you've seen—
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
Oh, yes. I'm sorry. I'll get to you. Can I cover this stuff first? Thanks.
You've seen the budgets for the two meetings. Can I have agreement?
Again, these are not the amounts that we're spending. They are “up to” amounts.
Can I have agreement for the two budgets?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
That's wonderful. Thank you very much.
Next, you've all received a copy of the recommendations that came out of the subcommittee from last week. This is our path going forward. We are going to keep it flexible, because we're going to work around the schedules for the two ministers, which are always, as we mentioned before, a bit more difficult to work around. Are we all in agreement on the subcommittee report?