Evidence of meeting #12 for Public Accounts in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was audit.

A video is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Michael Ferguson  Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Sylvain Ricard  Assistant Auditor General, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Ronald Bergin  Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Susan Seally  Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada

10:10 a.m.

Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada

Michael Ferguson

Our audit process is a very structured way of doing audits. Yes, from time to time, we can make the adjustments. We try to do our planning out so that our auditors know what they're going to be working on, and they can start to prepare, and so the departments know that we're coming in, too.

Every now and then, we do have to adjust for something. I think probably the most visible example of that in the most recent past was when we agreed to do the audit of senators' expenses. That, of course, meant that we had to make a significant adjustment to our plans and what we were going to do.

Certainly, we prefer to have a structured plan. We want to audit things of importance. We try not to just react to what the media story of the day is. By the time we get an audit organized, and we execute that audit and report, we're probably two years out from when something became the issue of the day.

We need to understand whether that issue will still be important throughout that cycle. We have to take all of those things into consideration.

10:10 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson

Thank you very much. I think that is pretty well all the questions.

Shall vote 1 under the Auditor General, less the amount voted in interim supply, carry?

AUDITOR GENERAL

Vote 1—Program Expenditures...........$68,269,099

(Vote 1 agreed to)

Under vote 1 of the Office of the Auditor General, shall the chair report this to the House?

10:10 a.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

10:15 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson

We thank you very much again for coming. You appear very regularly before this committee, and we appreciate it. We appreciate the answers we had in your testimony today.

We're going to suspend, and then we're coming back to do committee business in camera.

[Proceedings continue in camera]