Thank you.
When I looked at the committee and realized just how much experience there was in the room, I was very impressed. There's a lot of experience on committees. I'm very glad that you have invited us to speak to you, even if you might wonder, “I've done this so many times. What am I going to learn?” I do want to let you know that the public accounts committee is different in how it operates. The key difference is that you are not looking at the merits of any policies; you are looking at how those policies have been implemented.
It's really reassuring to see such a strong team here on this committee, because the oversight of public money is more important now than ever before. I hope that the information we're able to share with you today helps make the transition to this role a little easier for you. Seasoned politicians, even the good ones, often don't know what the public accounts committee is, what the mandate is, or what the purpose is. If you hadn't heard of it before you were assigned to it, don't worry. You're not alone, and you're also not alone in trying to achieve this mandate.
Because you're looking at how policies have been implemented, you're inherently looking backward. That doesn't mean you're stuck in the past, but you're learning from the past and you're making changes in the present so that the future can be better.
We're very lucky to be speaking with the federal committee. All of your pieces are in place. You have the processes in place—and they're quite enshrined—to be a very effective committee. Sometimes when we're talking to committees, even other committees in provinces in Canada, they don't have those good practices in place.
You are a respected committee not only across the country, but internationally. You have excellent support staff, and in fact one of your support staff helps to literally write a guide to support other committees in Canada and internationally, so we thank the Library of Parliament for that.
Your work on this committee helps you focus on the effective management of the public sector, so you have the opportunity here to root out any waste that is found. The work you do on this committee will have a lasting impact on the programs and everything that follows them.
It may sound like a tough job, but you're really not on your own. You have reliable, evidence-based, independent research from the Auditor General that's designed to identify any issues. These investigations take hundreds of hours of audit work and around $117 million annually, and the evidence that is collected through this audit work provides you with the insight you need to make any positive impact.
You may ask yourself how you measure whether you're having an impact. The key for you on this committee is working with management to ensure that any deficiencies that are identified in audit reports are corrected. You might say, well, how do we go about doing that? We hope to provide a little bit more insight on that today.
A lot of people ask, if the auditors general know about all these problems, why don't they do something about it? Auditors do not have the authority to do anything about it. They can identify it, but they can't touch it. You, because you are elected officials, have that authority. It's part of your responsibility as an elected leader and as a member of the public accounts committee.
Carol, do you want to touch on the type of information that audit reports will give them?