Thank you, Mr. Chair.
First, several departments are entirely capable of recovering a debt or controlling their receivables.
Second, three quarters of the $4 billion in debts written off each year are Canada Revenue Agency receivables, an agency that collects a tremendous amount of money.
From an accounting perspective, we recognize that we need to assess our assets as effectively as possible to give an accurate picture. Accounting standards require us to review our accounts receivable every year, assess our ability to collect those amounts, and report on the debts that we will be unable to recover.
As to Chrysler's debt, Mr. Ferguson explained earlier the process by which the government decides in the years following the report of a bad debt to ultimately write that debt off. If that process is followed, we do write it off.
Certain departments get better results than others. There are some for which debt collection is not a core activity, so to speak, and whose monitoring framework is perhaps not as well developed. I can assure you, however, that most departments have debt write-off committees. In other words, the final decision whether or not to write off a debt is not made until various committees and senior officials have reviewed the file. Moreover, several departments do not have the authority to write off those debts themselves and have to follow another process instead, such as referring them to the President of the Treasury Board.