Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his earlier question to the President of the Treasury Board. I would like to address his concern regarding the need and importance of scrutiny.
The government supports and promotes mandatory annual audits. The office of the auditor general is legally mandated to carry out these audits. Mandatory audits are carried out by internal audit groups in all departments across government. All in all there is an impressive level of highly effective mandatory external and internal audit activities going on at any given time throughout the whole of government.
As an external independent auditor, the auditor general is mandated to carry out audits throughout the government. The auditor general is entirely empowered to select areas, topics and departments for her audit work. She chooses what she will audit. The auditor general tables the results of a large number of audits that her office carries out in each of her quarterly reports to parliament.
Again, the auditor general reports to parliament. The hon. member was talking about scrutiny in parliament. It is the job of the auditor general to highlight areas so that we can scrutinize them.
The government works closely with the auditor general and her office. We need to take into account the government's commitment to internal auditing within departments to fully appreciate the extent of its commitment to mandatory auditing. In fact the government announced a revised internal audit policy in February.
According to policy departments must carry out internal audits. It is mandatory for all departments to have an annual internal audit plan. It is also mandatory for all departments to have a committee to review all audit reports and adopt annual audit plans. The review committee must be chaired by a representative of the senior management group of the department. These committees are chaired by the deputy head in most cases.
Departments would be required to make their completed internal audit reports fully accessible to the public and available in both official languages. This is transparency. Parliament and the public would have full access to the completed internal audit reports.
The government intends to monitor very closely the active and efficient use of mandatory audits across departments. The internal audit policy would require that all departments provide the Treasury Board Secretariat with all their completed internal audit reports. Departments must provide their annual internal audits and plans to the Treasury Board Secretariat.
We have set up a centre of excellence for internal audit to help strengthen the internal audit function and commitment across the government. The centre is responsible for setting auditing and reporting standards for internal audit activities in all departments. It sets standards for the annual plans. The centre closely monitors a department's compliance with the policy. It provides strong leadership to the internal audit community to improve its professional competency and equality of the auditing work.
I want to confirm that the government is committed to mandatory auditing both by the auditor general and the new internal audit policy.