Public Accounts committee  That's on page 216. Is the unauthorized $2 million withdrawal from one CRA credit card what you're referring to?

Public Accounts committee  I cannot give you a definite answer on this. I'll get back to you on what happened in those cases.

Public Accounts committee  The $13 billion is the year's surplus, and this is applied against the accumulated deficit. The actual debt to the Government of Canada, if I'm getting it right, went down by about $6 billion. The other $6 billion was used for other items, to finance new receivables. I believe that's how our accounts....

Public Accounts committee  Of course, and this is in line with the stated government policy of bringing down the deficit to close to 25%—

Public Accounts committee  I would refer these questions to my colleague, the Deputy Minister of Justice, who might come and answer that question.

Public Accounts committee  I could not answer this question, but I'll get back to you.

Public Accounts committee  Well, we do it; it's at the consolidated level. It really depends on the strategy that was adopted in the prior years. Different countries will do it starting by department, and then they go to the consolidated level. The strategy of governments was to do it at the consolidated level and get the audited opinion at that point in time.

Public Accounts committee  The level of the materiality is one difference. When the Auditor General does her audit of the public accounts, she does it at the consolidated level. So some of the departments are audited in very much detail because they're important, and some others will be reviewed.

Public Accounts committee  I'm not happy to see any amount of money that is not recovered by the Government of Canada, but they are doing appropriate action, you see, to recover what they can.

Public Accounts committee  Maybe I could ask my colleague from the Department of Finance to answer that question.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you very much for the question. The plan is that by 2009 the 22 or 23 largest departments will be subject to an annual audit, and we're making progress in having some of those departments go through this process. Many of them are going to an audit readiness process. One of the departments, the National Research Council, obtained a clean audit opinion this year, and there's a lesson learned on how to go about it, so work is under way to bring it up.

Public Accounts committee  This is the information that is reported by CRA when they do their analysis of all their recovery; it's the assessment. That represents $200 million of the money that is being assessed--

Public Accounts committee  I appreciate that, and our friends at CRA are diligent in recovering the moneys they can. They are disclosing their best estimate of what these amounts are.

Public Accounts committee  Just to complete Ms. Fraser's explanation, I would add that a number of these foundations--probably the majority of them--do in fact publish their financial statements on the Web for the information of their own members, and are also required to file their financial statements with the Government under the contribution agreements they have signed.

Public Accounts committee  The different bases of accounting for authorization for the appropriation and for financial reporting are always a bit difficult to deal with. We're trying to resolve this situation to make sure there are no surprises for anybody. We had instituted a new cut-off routine this year for the public accounts.