Mr. Chair, thank you for that question.
I'd like to make two points with respect to that. First of all, lest anyone get the impression that what we are talking about is not requiring these departmental audits and providing nothing in exchange for that, I haven't yet been able to get to the point, which is our policy on internal control.
So instead of merely having an audit that infers some attention to control but doesn't explicitly make any comments about control, what our policy on internal control is going to require is a very explicit statement by management, in the statement of management responsibility, about the state of internal control. It's also going to require public disclosures about the state of internal control, including where those control deficiencies have been noted--they will be noted publicly as well--and the action plans to correct any of those deficiencies will be publicly noted and will be susceptible to being tracked.
So in the absence of something that is inferred, we're going to have something that's very explicit. There will be documents in the public domain about control, about actions being taken, and we'll be able to track the progress.
The fact of the matter is that the audit of the consolidated government entity involves the Auditor General going to individual departments, and in particular, big departments, and I think the Auditor General would confirm that even in the context of that consolidated financial statement audit, they are still interested in performing controls-based procedures. So even under the umbrella of the consolidated financial statement work, they still do pay some attention to controls, particularly in the big departments and where large amounts of dollars are at stake. So the salutary effect of their audit presence, I believe, is felt in the context of the consolidated financial statements.
So what we're really talking about here is the marginal benefit, since we do have departmental financial statements that are produced, albeit unaudited. They are nevertheless produced and they are produced according to a high standard. We have the consolidated financial statements, which are audited, and we're going to have a very visible ability to track the state of internal control in large departments, so the package is a pretty complete one.