Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Having 16 years of unmodified and clean audit opinion is indeed an exceptional accomplishment. I did get my staff to take a quick look at other G-8 countries to see what the situation might be with respect to their financial reporting and the status of audit results. Some of them don't even have what we call whole-of-government accounts, where all ministry information is brought together, so that you have a portrait of the country as a whole. For example, Germany and Italy don't have whole-of-government accounts.
Once you get past that, you look at the nature of the audit results and whether the countries get a clean opinion. We have a denial of opinion in the United States from as far back as 2007 up to the current state. They have many exceptions, qualifications, and modifications in saying what might not be fairly presented with respect to the whole set of financial statements, for example.
What we saw was that Australia and New Zealand, for example, are the ones that have a clean opinion. We went as far back as 2007, and they seemed to have consecutive years, but I wouldn't know whether they have a record like Canada's with 16 years of clean opinions. Indeed, this is an exceptional accomplishment on the part of Canada, and we do have high-quality financial statements.
I just have one point of clarification, Mr. Chair. The member referred to page 1.3, section 1. Section 1 is financial analysis that is prepared by the Government of Canada through Finance Canada. Those are not audit comments, and if members have questions or wish to have further deliberation about that, this should come from the Department of Finance.
Thank you.