Public Accounts committee  Not at all: my only point is that it's important to understand what their opinions mean and what they don't mean. My concern is that it may be misunderstood as to what is covered by an opinion and what is not covered by an opinion. They are vital, needed, and of great value for the things that their opinions cover, but for the things that their opinions don't cover, it's fair game to look for other alternatives to provide those assurances.

Public Accounts committee  I worked for many years as an external auditor. External auditors provide great value. My only point is that—

Public Accounts committee  May I respond?

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, I would argue that the audit done of the consolidated financial statements of the Government of Canada and the opinion thereon are significant pieces of assurance for taxpayers. I would hope that the Auditor General would agree. I think we're understating and giving short change to the value of that document.

Public Accounts committee  Yes. We direct efforts toward all aspects of our mandate. It's a bit like gardening, though, we have to do it constantly.

Public Accounts committee  We're in the process of evaluating that policy, which was first set out in 2006. We want an internal audit to improve even further, but we believe there's a demonstrable improvement that has been noted. In particular, I want to acknowledge the excellent work done by audit committees and the external members on those audit committees.

Public Accounts committee  We're very much concerned in promoting an effective internal audit practice within the federal government. Internal audit reports are made public. The follow-up of the recommendations is done. We have departmental audit committees with external members that are meant to follow up on those sorts of things.

Public Accounts committee  Is that question for me? Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to make reference to another policy. On the signing of the accounts, a couple of things are literally signed. In some departments, the balance sheet will be signed by the deputy head. There's also a signing of the statement of management responsibility.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, I'd like to—

Public Accounts committee  Yes. Again, we have to put things into the perspective of time. When we first undertook this effort with the 22 large departments to do this controls readiness assessment, it was in advance of the policy announcement that I've just referred to. So indeed, part of the cost that is being referred to is the cost of improving controls.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, the goal before, in 2004, and the goal today, at both times, has not changed: better financial statements, better financial management, and better controls. The question is, how do you cause the system to deliver that?

Public Accounts committee  It's not correct to imply that there has been no work being done by departments and that there has been no improvement. The efforts we've referred to, in terms of the efforts of the 22 largest departments, have gone on, continue to go on, and will continue to be monitored through the mechanism that I now describe, which is this statement of internal control.

Public Accounts committee  Is there work under way? Yes.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, thank you for that question. I'd like to make two points with respect to that. First of all, lest anyone get the impression that what we are talking about is not requiring these departmental audits and providing nothing in exchange for that, I haven't yet been able to get to the point, which is our policy on internal control.

Public Accounts committee  Indeed, it's exactly that point that I'm leading up to. The alternative is what I want to get to. So as I was saying, the auditor's report gives no assurances on internal control. In fact, the Auditor General will issue cautions to management regarding the limitations of its work.