Public Accounts Committee on April 23rd, 2009

[Sheila Fraser]

It has. We have worked very hard with the Treasury Board Secretariat staff. I am very appreciative that they have recognized that this is an issue for us and for all agents of Parliament. They are going before the board to have us exempted from those specific conditions that we find problematic.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Ms. Crombie.

Mr. Young, five minutes.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Welcome to everyone. Again, it's great to see you here. Thank you.

I do want to comment on your report card, too, on the timeliness and the quality management framework. I wish I had a report card like this in grade 11. I'd be much farther ahead now.

I noticed that four years later a total of 84% of your recommendations are implemented in full or partially in the organizations that you audit. Since it isn't 100%, why isn't it 100%? Is it the changing conditions, or what is it?

[Sheila Fraser]

I would say it's probably in large part a question of priorities within departments. There can, of course, at times be recommendations that they say they agree with and they don't really agree with, so they really have no intention of implementing them.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

So they choose not to.

[Sheila Fraser]

Those are not the majority. It's really a question of changing priorities. Most of the recommendations will require additional resources. Circumstances change and this may become less a priority to the department.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

I realize it's a broad array of organizations you audit, but do any of them have any internal penalties or anything for not implementing the recommendations?

[Sheila Fraser]

Not to my knowledge.

I do know that some departments are fairly rigorous in following up on recommendations and what the progress is. As I mentioned, I'm very hopeful that the departmental audit committees will also bring more scrutiny and oversight to this, which is one of their responsibilities.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

You say in your report that your training efforts, your expertise, is provided on a cost-recovery basis to the provinces. It's really a sharing of resources. I'm just interested, did you ever offer it to industry or to foreign governments?

[Sheila Fraser]

We haven't offered it to industry.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

I can think of a couple of car companies. Had you been there five years ago, we'd be in a lot better shape.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Sheila Fraser]

No comment.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Have you offered it to other countries then?

[Sheila Fraser]

Yes, we have offered it to other countries. We work on certain projects, largely those funded by CIDA.

For example, we were doing a fair bit of training in French sub-Saharan Africa on auditing. We are helping the Auditor General of Mali establish an office. We have a number of auditors general and their people who will come through for short one- or two-day sessions with us on how we work. We've done a lot of work in environmental auditing. In fact, the Commissioner of the Environment and his group are really leaders on all of this.

We have developed guides and tools that other auditors can use, and have been very successful, actually, at using.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

It is my understanding that you enjoy an outstanding reputation internationally. Is that right?

[Sheila Fraser]

Yes, I think the office is very well recognized and has always been very well recognized. One of the programs I'll mention is the fellows program. I believe the committee has actually met some of the fellows, or they've attended in the past. Under this program, we bring in anywhere from five to seven fellows each year from developing countries, and they spend nine months with us.

The program has been in existence for about 25 years. There have been over 200 fellows who have gone through the office, and some are now actually the auditor general in their country.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

When I was in the private sector--and I've worked in a lot of different businesses--and the auditors would come, I would notice the stress level going up. People would start whispering for no reason.

How does it work? How do you decide to audit? Is it strictly your decision, Madam Fraser? What happens then? Do you arrive at the door with briefcases and just knock, or do you give them a couple of weeks' notice?

[Sheila Fraser]

We decide what to audit. Obviously we take into consideration requests from parliamentary committees, and we try to accommodate those. We go through quite a rigorous planning exercise to determine the greatest risks for a department in achieving its objectives. That is done with a great deal of consultation with departmental management outside stakeholders, and then we prepare a plan of audit for three to five years.

That plan is shared with the department, so they know what is coming, and in fact sometimes they start to do their own internal audits before we actually come, which is not bad. Then there's a whole process that we go through. But they are aware quite a long time in advance that we're coming in. We will indicate to them what the scope of the audit is. We agree on what we call the criteria, the expectations of performance that we would expect to see. They have to agree that these are reasonable, and then we conduct our audit. Obviously there's a lot of discussion about whether there are gaps or not.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Mr. Young.

Thank you, Ms. Fraser.

That, colleagues, concludes the second round. Of course, I'm at the direction of the committee, but I would propose that before we call upon the Auditor General for her closing remarks, we put the matter to a vote. The way the committee works is that we're dealing with the estimates, and we have to vote on them.

I have the motion in front of me. I'll read it, and we have three choices. We cannot increase it, of course. We can approve it as presented. We can decrease it, or we can negate it, eliminate it altogether. That would be one way to get in the Globe and Mail tomorrow morning, but I'm sure we don't want to do that.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

If that procedure is okay with the committee, I will read the motion and ask for a mover.

FINANCE

Auditor General

Vote 15--Program expenditures..........$72,631,942

Shall vote 15 in the amount of $72,631,942 less the amount of $18,157,985.50 granted in interim supply carry?

So moved by Mr. Saxton.

(Vote 15 agreed to)

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

The second motion, which is part of it, is rudimentary.

Shall I report the main estimates to the House?

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Yes, you should.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

It is moved by Ms. Ratansi.

(Motion agreed to)

On behalf of all members of the committee, I want to thank you, Ms. Fraser, at this point in time, for everything over the last year and for your excellent work. It's not only you, but the members of your staff who assist you, and who assist Parliament and, through Parliament, all Canadians greatly in the job we do.

Having said that, I invite you to make any closing remarks that you have at this point in time.