Mr. Chair, I would argue that the audit done of the consolidated financial statements of the Government of Canada and the opinion thereon are significant pieces of assurance for taxpayers. I would hope that the Auditor General would agree.
I think we're understating and giving short change to the value of that document. We're really talking about replicating those efforts at a departmental level, not necessarily with the objective of assurances about the financial statements, but as a way to motivate attention to internal control. That's really the link that's important to me.
I think the financial statements, the numbers, are very well validated at the consolidated level. I'm just trying to address how we motivate internal control improvements. We're saying that we just think there's a way to do it that is different from what had been envisioned in the past.