Finance committee  Do you mean the three reports that will be tabled in July?

Finance committee  Supplying the Canadian Armed Forces, immigration removals, and student financial assistance are the three reports that are expected to be tabled in July. As well, just for information, because they have already been made public, we will be tabling three special examinations: the Canadian Commercial Corporation, the Standards Council of Canada and the National Gallery of Canada.

Finance committee  What COVID has taught all of us is that both parties need to be willing to move into the digital age and to be able to work across a medium that's very different from just sitting in a boardroom together and exchanging paper, so it isn't just about the auditors. It's also about the department and the Crowns and the corporations that we audit having the same goal and wanting to be on the same path when it comes to moving in that direction.

Finance committee  I will ask Andrew to pipe up here if I misspeak or if I miss something. We do not rely on the access to information legislation to obtain our information. We obtain our information through the Auditor General Act. When we run into issues, we work very hard with the departments to work those out.

Finance committee  As I mentioned, we have a great deal of criteria when we choose a topic in order to examine it. The CERB is one that is a large monetary drain on the government. It has an impact on so many Canadians across the country and is one that unfortunately, as we're all aware, might have some activities that are fraudulent.

Finance committee  Absolutely. As you noted, it is from two fronts that we need it to be independent, not just for stability. There is an added complexity when you must turn to a department that you audit on a regular basis, both financially and through performance audits, and ask them for money. Obviously, there's a need to have it just be in a better realm, where there is no potential perceived or real conflict.

Finance committee  Absolutely. I think we need to be able to have the flexibility to plan right now in the short term. We do have a medium- and long-term plan. It's a little bit in flux, because the pandemic might evolve as we move forward, so I don't have a number or a target. Our intention is to look at what we think will add the most value and is the most important.

Finance committee  When you say “regularly”, do you mean with respect to performance audits? I guess I don't really see it much differently other than it came from an order in the House. It might be somewhat different in that some programs that we focus on are really within one department. This has a much more horizontal impact across many departments which might have a role in either establishing a program or rolling it out.

Finance committee  We have been engaged with our fellow supreme audit institutions across the world and within the country. I believe we have had several great conversations, and continuing ones, with the Australian National Audit Office, as well as the provincial auditor general offices. We do this regularly, and much more regularly now in the context of COVID, so we can benefit from best practices.

Finance committee  The audits you're referring to for Interpol and UNESCO are done on a cost recovery basis. They are the annual financial audits for those organizations, which we undertook after consultation with Global Affairs Canada many years ago. It is part of a strategy to ensure the Auditor General of Canada has a presence in standards setting, as well as in the international accounting community.

Finance committee  That operating system was one of our operating systems. It functioned very much like DOS and used F key functions to navigate across the screen. I'm very happy to tell you that a couple of weeks ago we transitioned off that system. It makes many of us happy that we don't have to keep our cheat sheet about what F2, F8 and F6 mean.

Finance committee  I did raise it, I guess, in order to provide a little bit of clarity to that. To go back to the motion, it did say all programs within COVID and all the audits that we were intending on doing. As an independent audit office, it's very important to be able to have the choice to audit what you want, when you want and to the extent that you want.

Finance committee  We're going to look at risk and at where we'll have the best impact and value, so yes, that is our intention. We just wanted to highlight that we can't look at what the motion said, which was all programs.

Finance committee  That's correct. It's my understanding right now that there have been no special warrants issued, but should there be, yes, there would be an audit there.

Finance committee  As a little clarification on that front, and an opportunity for me to let you all know, we did have a few audits ready to be tabled just before the pandemic struck. I wrote to the Clerk saying that on July 8 we will table those three reports that were sitting there. Then we had some audits that were ongoing, so they were expected to be tabled in the House in the fall of 2020.