Public Accounts committee  No, no, I'll try to address them succinctly.

Public Accounts committee  Sorry, Mr. Chair, I thought the questions were....

Public Accounts committee  Fine. Thank you. I'd like to get back briefly to the cost issue. We could estimate how much it would cost departments to conduct audits, but I think that is also something the Auditor General's office could do. If you like, Mr. Chair, I can also tell you what the cost will be to the Auditor General's office, because there are two types of audit costs: those costs incurred by the departments, and those incurred by the Auditor General's office.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. As you mentioned, I'm here with James Ralston, the Comptroller General of Canada, and Bill Matthews, the Assistant Comptroller General. We are here to talk about departmental financial statements and the financial management policies of the Government of Canada, in the context of your line of inquiry on departmental audited financial statements.

Public Accounts committee  The numbers on the number of individuals in the public service are available. The number of individuals retiring on a regular basis is also available and it was in the report of the Clerk of the Privy Council to the Prime Minister, which was made public. All that information is available and is contained in the documents, on the websites, and is easily accessible.

Public Accounts committee  With respect to the November report, that is the annual report on people management. This is not a new report, the format is already well known. It will be tabled in Parliament by the President of the Treasury Board under the usual official tabling process. The structure of this report is not a new one.

Public Accounts committee  No, it has not been changed. The normal procedure will be followed. You will receive the reports in accordance with the usual tabling procedure. You asked a question about the number of individuals affected by the changes. The whole of the public service was affected by these changes so it is—

Public Accounts committee  I would like to point out that the Auditor General recently submitted a report on obsolete information systems technology, which I believe was discussed within the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates a few months ago. On the whole, I would say that people are reasonably equipped.

Public Accounts committee  I would like to echo Ms. Fraser's sentiment and thank you for your consideration of these issues that are not always necessarily a priority. They are for us, but they are not always the focus of parliamentary debates. Thank you.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you. I think I mentioned earlier that many of the issues that used to be rules-based and rules-bound dealing with either workplace or management issues were fairly rules-focused, as opposed to dealing with the issues themselves. Concerning informal conflict resolution, discussion—having the managers and the employees deal with the issues up front, as opposed to filing papers—was really critical.

Public Accounts committee  Yes, the labour agreements. We have been able, especially on the essential services side, to negotiate and continue to process these. I think we have reached five or six agreements on essential services, and we are continuing the discussions with a number of key bargaining agents to conclude those.

Public Accounts committee  The only other one is with respect to human resources. By law we have to table it as early as possible, when it is ready.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chairman, I am sorry but that is what is written in the legislation. Obviously we try to do it as quickly as possible.

Public Accounts committee  We have acknowledged the time periods and we have admitted that we clearly have to improve in that regard. Because we have made the commitment to do this I can only repeat our commitment to that effect. As I explained, we have experienced several organizational changes. Those changes have affected, for example, the group responsible for these reports.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. In terms of the development, one of the key areas we started with, and again it may sound very basic, was to make sure that every employee had a learning and development plan. It was something that I would say was not practised on a regular basis and that is currently the case, in that every employee is to have a learning and development plan.