Thank you very much for the question, Mr. Chairman. In the interest of time, I won't go through the audit process in total, but there are a couple of really important steps in the process.
At the start of every audit of a department, we prepare and send to the department what we call an audit plan summary. It is a very high-level plan of what we intend to do. It also includes the criteria we intend to use in those audits, the standards against which we assess the department's management performance. We say, “We're going to audit this and assess you against these standards, but can you please tell us if you agree that these standards are reasonable expectations for you?” We ask for the department's confirmation that the standards against which we will assess their management performance are reasonable.
At the end of the audit a lot of discussion takes place between the auditors and the department on the audit findings. We discuss the facts, what we saw and what it means. We talk to the department about the types of actions that might be necessary to deal with the problems, and we ask for the department's input on those actions. In the very final step the audit team sends the final draft of the report to the deputy minister of the department explicitly asking the deputy minister to confirm the accuracy of the facts reported.
We take responsibility for the opinions and conclusions we reach, but we ask the department to confirm explicitly to us that the facts upon which we have based our opinions and conclusions are accurate. We get that confirmation in the vast majority of cases. We want to make sure that the facts are right. The opinions that are expressed based on those facts are our responsibility. We have our own internal processes to ensure that we're forming proper opinions.
There are many other aspects to ensuring the quality of our work, because, ultimately, parliamentarians need to have confidence in the Auditor General's conclusions in order to act on them. Those are two important steps in the process of interaction with the departments.