Evidence of meeting #36 for Public Accounts in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was funding.
A video is available from Parliament.
3:45 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
No, you've had your time.
I'm going to turn now to Ms. Bradford. You have the floor for six minutes, please.
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Liberal
Valerie Bradford Liberal Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our witnesses today.
Continuing along that line of questioning for the Auditor General, your office is one of the most highly regarded by Canadians. You are one of the most trusted institutions. How have you been able to do that within the current framework?
3:45 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
Our organization follows very rigorous processes and standards to ensure independence and objectivity when we carry out audits, when we interact with departments. All that the lack of funding has done was cause us to reduce some of our work in the past, which we're now slowly ramping up.
As I mentioned in responses to the previous questions, it is about the perception of independence, but also the need to not turn to organizations that we audit in order to request funding. I think there should be objectivity in establishing funding levels, and that's where I see Parliament—this committee, perhaps, or another committee—playing a real and active role in that.
3:45 p.m.
Liberal
Valerie Bradford Liberal Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON
Thank you for that answer.
You confirmed in your opening statement that on December 13 of last year you received the $25 million you asked for. Your office only had a 1% increase from 2006 to 2015. Did that affect the ability of your office to achieve its mandate over that decade?
3:45 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
Absolutely. It impacted our ability to deliver the volume of work that Parliament expected from us. We prioritized work included in legislation—the work we do on the Public Accounts of Canada, on the public accounts of the territories, and all the financial audits that are legislated in acts. We ensured that we carried those out. We were then able to deliver approximately 14 performance audits, which included one to each of the territories, and then the rest were to the federal government.
It reduced the volume of work, but it still allowed us to maintain that independence and deliver high-quality work that Canadians and Parliament can rely on.
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Liberal
Valerie Bradford Liberal Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON
According to the public accounts, you've now had over a 40% increase in funding since 2015. How has this helped your office achieve its mandate?
3:45 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
With that funding of the past few years, we've been able to hire additional employees. We are at about 800 now. Throughout the pandemic, we hired about 150 with the additional funding.
As I mentioned in my opening remarks, we are gradually increasing all the performance audit work we do. I think we expect a little over 20 reports this year, and even more in the coming year as we finish some of our onboarding and get started on some of the additional work we plan to do.
I think Parliament will see an increase in that work. It will level off somewhere around 25 audits or so. However, I caution looking at the numbers, because a performance audit isn't one size fits all. Some can be really small and some can be much larger. If we just count the numbers, it's probably not a true representation of the level of work we're providing to Parliament.
3:50 p.m.
Liberal
Valerie Bradford Liberal Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON
You independently decide what audits you're going to perform. Is that correct?
3:50 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
Again, that's a cornerstone. I think of our independence. We get to decide where we go, when we go and whom we audit. We consider requests from committees and motions in the House, but it rests with me to decide, in the end, where we will audit.
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Liberal
Valerie Bradford Liberal Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON
Is that important because of your independence?
3:50 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
Absolutely. It's an important element of our independence, in order to ensure the government doesn't influence what we audit and when we audit things.
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Liberal
Valerie Bradford Liberal Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON
Thanks for clarifying that.
The Office of the Auditor General is a separate agency under schedule V of the Financial Administration Act, so it conducts its own negotiations with unionized employees and determines compensation levels for non-unionized employees. Can you please explain how that works?
3:50 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
In our case, it's unique. The Auditor General Act sets out that I can set the terms and conditions for all employees who work for my office, except when they are represented by a bargaining agent. Then, we receive our mandate from the President of the Treasury Board. That mandate is similar to the mandate any other department would receive. It sets what I'll call the fence around what we can negotiate in either monetary or non-monetary elements of compensation.
As I mentioned in my opening remarks, I can't use my funding to make that a larger fence. I have to work within the same parameters as every other department in the government.
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Liberal
Valerie Bradford Liberal Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON
What is the relationship between the OAG and the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development?
3:50 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
The commissioner of the environment and sustainable development is a senior member of my executive team. I'm required to appoint him. I appointed him for a period of seven years. Jerry DeMarco started in 2021. He is Assistant Auditor General within my office and helps support me in carrying out my mandate, but with a focus on environmental and sustainable development aspects. He also has certain legislative requirements in other acts, in addition to the work he has to do to support me under the Auditor General Act.
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Liberal
3:50 p.m.
Liberal
Valerie Bradford Liberal Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON
I have 10 seconds. I guess I'm done.
Thank you.
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Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
Thank you very much.
Ms. Sinclair‑Desgagné, you have the floor for six minutes.
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Bloc
Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné Bloc Terrebonne, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Ms. Hogan, your opening remarks were very interesting. I believe it's very important to have these kinds of meetings because, from time to time, the Standing Committee on Public Accounts wants to know how things are going at the Office of the Auditor General of Canada.
We're living in an era of higher-than-usual government spending. We've just gone through a pandemic, and it's not over yet. However, we're seeing more and more irregular spending. To say the least, we also live in an era of eroding trust in public institutions. The combination of those two factors means that the Office of the Auditor General's work critical for the future of Canadian democracy.
Today, members of the House are debating a motion introduced by the Conservative Party. The motion calls on the Auditor General to conduct a performance audit, including contracts, of all aspects of the ArriveCAN application, and to make this audit a priority.
The Auditor General could be asked to do several things. This example was chosen for sometimes dodgy reasons, but the Auditor General is being asked to do a job that really needs to be done right now, for the reasons I just gave.
We keep citing Roxham Road as an example, since contracts were awarded in a somewhat questionable manner there too. So the independence of the Office of the Auditor General is especially important.
I'd like to acknowledge your contribution to maintaining people's trust in public institutions. Your work is paramount. You also make departments accountable, which is crucial. I chose to say “departments” because a huge portion of what comes out of the federal government unfortunately goes through Crown corporations.
People have noticed that the government often uses Crown corporations to invest in projects that suit it. In other words, the projects don't necessarily go through the department and the government doesn't have the same level of accountability.
My team and I just reviewed reports from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), including one on best practices in accountability.
Some countries have more advanced models, and I'll give some examples. Some people will be very happy because I'm going to read an excerpt from the the OECD report in English.
State-owned enterprises should be as transparent towards the general public as a publicly listed corporation is expected to be towards its shareholders.
This is my first question...
Madam Auditor General, what additional resources do you need to analyze the expenditures of the Crown corporations in the same way that you do for departments?
3:55 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
My office does the audits for most of the parent Crown corporations. For a few, we're not the ones doing the audits.
We audit these corporations' annual financial statements. However, we don't conduct performance audits in the same way as we do for departments. We're required by law to conduct special examinations once every 10 years, but they have more to do with processes related to the management of the Crown corporation.
We ensure that Crown corporations provide good accountability based on accounting standards, not all the data in the Public Accounts of Canada.
To ensure better accountability, we would need changes to the legislation related to our special examination mandate. That would perhaps give us a little more flexibility with respect to smaller Crown corporations.
A museum is currently undergoing exactly the same special examination as the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. The latter is a large organization compared to a museum, which has 100 or fewer employees. It would help if we had a little more flexibility.
The government must decide whether it wants Crown corporations to provide more information to the public. Whatever the case may be, Crown corporations currently use the appropriate accounting standards.
3:55 p.m.
Bloc
Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné Bloc Terrebonne, QC
Since I only have seven seconds left, I will yield to the next speaker.
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Conservative