Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I would like to thank everyone for being here this morning.
I will continue along the same lines as my colleagues Mr. Christopherson and Ms. Shanahan.
When we attend these meetings, sometimes outside Canada, we say how proud we are of the public service and of the professionals in it. We are of course fortunate to have their support, and 19 years of solid audits by the government illustrate their competency. It is not really the politicians, but rather the public service that should receive the credit.
That being said, Mr. Ferguson, at the beginning of your remarks, you talked about the three issues you had addressed in the past year: pay administration, discount rates, and National Defence's management of its inventory. We have already talked about discount rates and National Defence's management of its stocks with my colleague Mr. Christopherson, but we have not talked about pay administration. This is something that you have studied closely. You also noted that, this year, your employees spent over 60,000 hours on the annual audit of the consolidated financial statements.
Mr. Ferguson, in paragraph 13 you stated: “Even though the accumulated error was not significant, the extent of the errors that affected individuals and the time it takes to correct errors in pay are unacceptable.”
Your performance audit will be released in November, so I do not want to compromise that work. I would ask you, however, to talk about the efforts you have had to make regarding the pay system. Is this a unique situation that has never happened before? I would like to know how you arrived at that, why you did it, and what your findings are. Moreover, how can we be sure, as regards the public accounts, that we will henceforth be aware of the next steps to be taken?