Public Accounts Committee on Nov. 28th, 2011

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

Thank you very much.

If I might, I would like to do a quick follow-up to Mr. Allen's questions regarding page 14, exhibit 1.4, where it speaks to the status of departments' assessments of financial reporting controls as of September 30, 2010. In a question from Mr. Allen, you stated, Mr. Ralston, that the Department of Finance and the Department of Veterans Affairs have met their deadlines. I'm certainly not at all questioning your word, but my dad always taught me to trust everybody but always cut the cards.

Madame Cheng, can you confirm that completion has indeed taken place?

[Nancy Cheng]

Mr. Chair, we're not in a position to confirm that. The audit we did at the time was to look at the plans. We have not actually audited against those plans to see if they are in fact supported.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

What would you recommend in terms of how we could satisfy ourselves that it is indeed done--just a direct ask of them? Would you do it? Mr. Ralston, what would you suggest?

[Nancy Cheng]

I have a couple of thoughts. You can certainly ask the departments directly to explain what work they have actually done. Another way of looking at it might be to leverage off some of the audit work that the Comptroller General's office intends to undertake.

Remember, when we talk about monitoring, they talk about the fact that they're going to analyze some of this information. But they were also going to do some specific audits.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

I do recognize that your snapshot was September 30, 2010.

[Nancy Cheng]

Yes.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

That leads me to my next question, the last one, which is again to focus on the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. That's the worst report here on the chart. They are supposed to be in place by 2012–13. They got the poorest grade on the testing, and of course haven't tested the design, haven't tested effectiveness. Are you satisfied that the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade is going to indeed meet their deadline?

[Nancy Cheng]

According to the chart, it looks somewhat ambitious to meet 2012–13, but we have not specifically studied that, so we're not in a position to say that they cannot meet it. But on the surface, it does look ambitious.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

You're being very diplomatic.

Is it fair for us to assume that there will be a further follow-up by the Auditor General within a reasonable period of time, so that we'd know whether they met their deadline, and if not, why not?

[Nancy Cheng]

Currently there is no plan to do a further follow-up, but the committee might recall that at one stage we looked at the subject matter of auditing departmental financial statements, and this committee made a recommendation that we do some work. Internally, we have looked at our plans to see how we can do more work on assessing controls, and we may wish to conduct a separate performance audit, not in the nature of a follow-up, but to look at the progress in a number of departments and come back and report to this committee.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

Very good. I'm sure the committee will take your comments under advisement as we're writing our report.

Many thanks to our witnesses. We appreciate your being here and answering the questions today, as always.

Colleagues, if you're in support, the chair will see the clock as 5:15.

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

The witnesses are excused. There's no need for you to sit and watch us do what we're about to do.

Thanks so much. We appreciate the work you do.

We have now completed our hearing and are now into our next order of business.

The main thing we need to do right now, folks, is we don't have Wednesday covered off. If we don't get a plan now, if we wait until the steering committee, which won't be set until the end of this meeting, we're going to miss Wednesday's workday. So the goal is to establish right now what we want to do on Wednesday.

With that in mind, I will turn to Mr. Kramp.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

Mr. Chair, as usual, I would expect that we would go into in camera, as it is committee business.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

That's fair. No, that's fine, not fair.

I have a motion to go in camera.

(Motion agreed to)

[Proceedings continue in camera]