Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon to you and to all the members of the committee.
Thank you for this invitation to appear before you this morning to talk about the public accounts of Canada for the year ended March 31, 2015.
I am really pleased to be here in my role as Comptroller General of Canada. With me today is Diane Peressini, executive director, Government Accounting Policy and Reporting, and Nicholas Leswick from the Department of Finance.
Public accounts include the audited consolidated financial statements of the Government of Canada, as Mr. Ferguson has just mentioned, for the 2014-15 year in addition to other unaudited financial information.
These are part of a series of reports to Parliament and the Canadian public providing information on the state of the government's finances.
Every year the government presents the consolidated financial statements to the Auditor General of Canada who audits them to provide an independent opinion to the House of Commons.
Mr. Chair, Canadians can be confident in the accuracy of the public accounts.
For the 17th consecutive year, the Auditor General has provided an unmodified or clean opinion on the government's financial statements. This testifies to the high standards and quality of the government's financial statements and reporting, and is an achievement of which all Canadians can be proud.
I would like to thank the members of the government's financial community for all of their work in helping prepare these consolidated financial statements. This is truly a piece of work that goes across the government.
In addition, I would also like to thank the Auditor General and his staff for the continued professional working relationship that we have enjoyed.
Mr. Chair, I am aware this will be the first time that some members of this committee will have been exposed to the public accounts. For that reason, we have tabled with the committee a short presentation to provide members with a quick overview—but I do understand there was an information session already provided.
If it does please the chair, I would be happy to spend a few minutes to walk through the presentation, or the alternative is simply to leave it tabled with members and they can use it to ask questions as they wish.
I would like to make two other points before I close.
If members are asking questions that are specific to a certain page number in the public accounts, if you could be kind enough to provide us with that page number, then we can also find the equivalent page number
in the French or English version,
as applicable.
I have one final plea. I did mention that these are a series of financial reports provided to the House of Commons and the Canadian public at large. If Diane and I had brought all of the relevant copies of reports for today's appearance, you would not be able to see us. We would literally be hiding behind a wall of reports.
Every year we ask that if there's information we're providing in the public accounts that members do not find useful, please tell us. Volume 3 of the public accounts contains information that you will not see published by any company in Canada. This is unique to the public sector. We are reluctant to propose reductions in information, in the interests of maintaining openness and transparency, but if there are things the committee sees, whether it's a threshold that seems too low, or information you truly don't find useful, please let us know when you do your study.
Thank you very much.