Mr. Speaker, I just want to comment on some of the statements by the member opposite. We have had this discussion in question period the last few days about this fine point between an audit and a forensic accounting review.
To the average citizen I suppose it does not make a lot of sense. The fact is I am a chartered accountant and I know how these audits and these reviews work. In the accounting world we have an audit, an accounting review, a statement without audit. There is a range of types of reviews.
I checked in the Oxford English Dictionary and it defines “forensic” as “relating to or denoting the application of scientific methods to the investigation of crime”.
When someone does a forensic accounting review, in many respects he or she is going beyond the methodology of a normal audit, because an audit does not presume that there is something wrong or that some wrongful act has been committed. An audit presumes that in normal circumstances the accounting records would reflect the economic reality. A forensic accounting review starts with the premise that there has been something untoward or something criminal.
Instead of trying to dance on the point of a needle on the difference between an audit and a forensic accounting review, I would argue, and I have some experience with this, that a forensic accounting review actually looks in more depth at the kind of issues that this government was interested in looking at.
I would ask the member to do his homework before he speaks in this House without any knowledge.