Ms. Carol Bellringer (President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Audit and Accountability Foundation) at the Public Accounts Committee

I'll start. We worked our presentation to 10 minutes, but we'll go fast.

Thanks so much.

Thank you for inviting us to today's meeting. We're very pleased to help guide this important parliamentary committee, which is somewhat different from other parliamentary committees.

For 40 years, our foundation has had a relationship with the Office of the Auditor General of Canada and with your committee. We encourage best practices and base all our products and services on well‑documented evidence.

We won't be following the slides closely, but I'll turn to a few in particular.

To start, the slide on the system of accountability just indicates the relationship of Parliament, through this committee, with audit—your Auditor General—and through government, the public service delivering all the services.

The feature of an effective PAC that we like to speak to is “Public money has no party”, so the public accounts committee operates slightly differently than all the other parliamentary committees.

Lesley.