Public Accounts committee  That's a fair comment, and one that all departments need to learn. Our biggest system is our human resources system, and then the system that supports our audit working papers. Any time we touch large systems, yes, we will be very careful to try to avoid significant mistakes in their implementation.

Public Accounts committee  We spent $2 million on language training.

Public Accounts committee  It's essentially the same. It's about $2 million. We budgeted around $2 million and we spent $2 million.

Public Accounts committee  Yes.

Public Accounts committee  There will be various different things. We have to put more effort into our IT, and there are other types of costs that we have to cover, and so to work within our budget, we have to reduce a number of staff. If you're talking about the upcoming fiscal year, if that is the 550 number you're referring to, remember as well that the numbers we are presenting here are just based on the main estimates number, because that's what the committee needs to approve, the main estimates number.

Public Accounts committee  I guess I'll say that I wish it were easy to put a dollar number on every part of an audit. That's what we struggle with. For example, we did an audit a while back on Border Services, and I think we identified at the time that about 700,000 people had come into Canada without showing a passport or without the agents recording a passport or other identification for those individuals.

Public Accounts committee  When we are doing our recruiting, something like competency in both official languages might be a deciding factor. If one candidate is clearly better than the other and it is not a position that requires a level of proficiency in both official languages, then we will hire the person with the competencies.

Public Accounts committee  If it is a supervisory position, a person supervising other staff, then those staff that they supervise, by law, have the right to be supervised in the language of their choice.

Public Accounts committee  If it is a bilingual-required position and somebody does not have the requirement—

Public Accounts committee  We can get you the details of that, but again, we put a lot of effort into that language training.

Public Accounts committee  Within our department?

Public Accounts committee  I believe we do have those numbers. Over the last couple of years we have seen an increase in the number of hearings we have. In 2014-15, 42% of our reports had a hearing with the public accounts committee. In 2015-16, it was 47%. Then last year, the number of reports we presented and the number of reports Public Accounts heard was 100%.

Public Accounts committee  I think there are a couple of things. Trying to understand how we can add more value is something that we are very much focused on. I think Monsieur Deltell rightly pointed out the cost of each of our audits. The way I keep putting it to people is that if departments had to pay for our audits, and if I went to a deputy minister in a department and said, “Here's your invoice for $1.4 million”, how many deputy ministers would say, “Wait a minute, I'll get my cheque book”?

Public Accounts committee  That would be done internally. I mentioned in my opening statement that we did some work on our IT and IT security. The people responsible for our IT environment hired somebody to help them do a self-assessment of whether we were complying with Treasury Board policies on IT security, whether we were doing everything we were supposed to be doing on IT security.

Public Accounts committee  The issue is strictly related to workload. Like several other departments, we have a lot of work to do, of course. Employees must respond to various requirements from our administrative service, for instance. We also did a compliance assessment for all of our standards, regulations and policies.