Thank you very much for the question.
There is a real sense among all deputy ministers that a crucial part of our role is to ensure financial integrity for the department.
I'm pleased to tell the committee that Health Canada has a strong financial management control framework in place. We have a strong internal control division that monitors the effectiveness of our internal controls. As other departments do, we have a departmental audit committee with outside members who are very helpful in advising the deputy on the strength and the completeness of our internal controls.
The Treasury Board Secretariat has a management accountability framework, and they assess every department on the strength of their financial accountability. They've given Health Canada good marks for our financial stewardship and financial management. Very much, there are other Treasury Board policy recommendations, and when we compare ours against those policy requirements, we do well.
We have a strong internal audit function. It's obviously very helpful when external auditors come and look at our programs, but we want to have a strong internal audit function as well, and that is functioning well, as I said, with a number of regular, scheduled audits looking at the highest-risk areas coming through our audit committee. When we do find areas where we think we can improve and where improvement is called for, we take strong action there.
I would note that the Office of the Auditor General, in their audit procedures on our transactions in the latest fiscal year, 2009-10, found no significant new issues for the department; therefore, there was nothing that warranted the issuance of a management letter. That is an important milestone, certainly, for me as the chief accounting officer, but committee members would also find this to be a real vote of confidence in the control mechanisms.
I wouldn't want to leave the committee with the sense that we are resting on our laurels. This is such a critical area for public trust that we want to always continue to push forward and make sure we are continuing to improve our practices, but I feel we have good practices at the moment and we will work to make them even better.