Evidence of meeting #11 for Public Accounts in the 41st Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was general.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Nominee for the position of Auditor General of Canada, As an Individual
I'm sorry, I am going to have to use interpretation on that.
Liberal
Mauril Bélanger Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
Fine. I just heard you say that you did not apply for this position, that it was a search firm who encouraged you to submit your application. Is that correct?
Nominee for the position of Auditor General of Canada, As an Individual
I was contacted by a search firm, yes.
Liberal
Mauril Bélanger Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
So can I deduce that you relied on the search firm to verify whether you met all the requirements of the position and that you, who wanted to be auditor, did not check yourself? Is that the case?
Nominee for the position of Auditor General of Canada, As an Individual
I was asked to submit my resumé to the search firm, and then it was their job to determine whether I had the skills to take my name forward.
Liberal
Mauril Bélanger Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
Did you think you met all the requirements of the position when you submitted your application?
Nominee for the position of Auditor General of Canada, As an Individual
I am certainly satisfied that I went through what I would describe as a very thorough process and that the selection committee looked at my skill set and have brought my name forward to you. I guess that's really all I can say about that. They looked at all of my skills and decided that mine was a name that should come forward.
Liberal
Mauril Bélanger Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
Do you acknowledge that one of the essential criteria was, and still is, proficiency in Canada's two official languages? Do you acknowledge that?
Nominee for the position of Auditor General of Canada, As an Individual
Again, I can't really answer that. If you have a copy of the ad and if you're reading from a copy of it, then I'm not going to dispute it. All I'm going to say is that I never did see the official ad.
Liberal
Mauril Bélanger Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
Mr. Ferguson, I've been a parliamentarian for some time. Each time I've spoken with officers of Parliament, I've been able to do so in the official language of my choice, which is French.
Should I conclude that, until you learn French, if we need to speak to each other, we won't be able to do it in French and we'll need an interpreter? Is that what I'm to conclude from our discussion today?
Nominee for the position of Auditor General of Canada, As an Individual
I am not in a position yet to conduct a conversation in French.
Liberal
Liberal
Mauril Bélanger Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
Mr. Ferguson, in 30 seconds, I'd like to know who assessed your language skills? When was it done? Are these results available?
Nominee for the position of Auditor General of Canada, As an Individual
I had two assessments done. One was by phone. I don't remember the name of the company that did that assessment. The other was through the federal government language school.
NDP
Liberal
Mauril Bélanger Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'll come back to it if there's another round.
NDP
The Chair NDP David Christopherson
You'll be back up again in a few more turns, yes.
We go on now to Mr. Aspin.
You, sir, now have the floor.
Conservative
Jay Aspin Conservative Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Welcome, Mr. Ferguson. Congratulations on your nomination.
We all have your curriculum vitae, your resumé. I'm really impressed with your CV and your answers today. It's clear to me that you've had a long and impressive history in auditing government finances. I'm particularly impressed with your professional activities, particularly in terms of the public sector accounting. It's clear that you have a passion for this.
Could you outline for the committee what your current role is as Deputy Minister of Finance?
Nominee for the position of Auditor General of Canada, As an Individual
Yes. It's actually a dual role: Deputy Minister of Finance and secretary to the Board of Management. It is to be responsible for a number of things, from establishing the province's budget, both capital and operating budgets, to also being responsible for the comptroller's office—so responsible for all of that type of work I talked about before in terms of preparing financial statements—responsible for raising the province's debt, and responsible for tax policy.
I also serve on the board of the Atlantic Lottery Corporation, the board of the New Brunswick Investment Management Corporation, and the board of the New Brunswick Credit Union Deposit Insurance Corporation. So I am on the boards of a number of corporations in New Brunswick that are responsible for large sums of money.
Then there is the role of secretary of the Board of Management, which is responsible for all of the Treasury Board type of activity that comes through the province.
Conservative
Jay Aspin Conservative Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON
Thank you, sir.
Could you outline how this has prepared you for the role of Auditor General?
Nominee for the position of Auditor General of Canada, As an Individual
I think as I said before, Mr. Chair, the main aspect of it preparing me for the role of Auditor General.... Well, I suppose there are two. One is that, first of all, I am now responsible for a larger organization. The auditor general's office in New Brunswick has about 23 people, so it was a small organization. The provincial Department of Finance has about 210 people but also looks after, in total, about 600 people, including staff of other, smaller departments. That is one thing.
The other thing, in terms of preparing me, is that I am now responsible to try to implement some of the things I recommended as auditor general. Perhaps a third thing is that when I took on the role of Deputy Minister of Finance and came back inside government, I recognized that there were a number of places—I'm not quite sure how to put this—that I wished I had looked at when I was auditor general; let's put it that way.
Conservative
Jay Aspin Conservative Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON
Have your views on auditing changed as a result of being a deputy minister for the Province of New Brunswick?
Nominee for the position of Auditor General of Canada, As an Individual
I don't think my views have changed. In terms of what it brings to me as an auditor, it tells me that when one is auditing a government, there are always places in which a government can improve and always processes that can be improved. As an auditor, you need to make sure you're looking deeply enough to find those opportunities and those things that need to be improved.
In fact, I think that is really what it has brought to me: the recognition that as an auditor you have to dig a little deeper.