Public Accounts committee  Thank you. The commissioner role was established in the Auditor General Act in 1995. Since that time, I would say that we have regularly presented reports to Parliament on environmental and sustainable development matters. In the early years, the reports were largely about envir

Public Accounts committee  We don't have a requirement to audit against them. However, our office has been a leader with the international supreme audit institutions in building capacity to audit against the sustainable development goals. Our former commissioner, Julie Gelfand, led some work internationa

Public Accounts committee  There was what we would consider to be a significant change in the last Parliament. There were amendments made to the Federal Sustainable Development Act that expanded the requirement of departments and agencies to prepare sustainable development strategies in support of the fede

Public Accounts committee  It's not from the environment angle. I can answer it quickly, and then maybe Mr. Ricard will want to add something. We have requested $10.8 million over the last couple of years in the budget process. The predecessor of this committee wrote a letter last year to recommend that w

Public Accounts committee  Thank you. Indeed, we've made the request in response to the call that departments get for funding requests. We made the request in January. I will mention that one reason why an independent funding mechanism is important to us is that it is awkward to work our funding through

Public Accounts committee  Yes, we did.

Public Accounts committee  I'll just maybe add one point. The difference in our request this year was that we did submit, along with our request, the letter that the public accounts committee wrote to support our request last year. We haven't increased our request from the year before, but the support of

Public Accounts committee  In past Parliaments, we actually haven't had to make funding requests as we do right now. If we rewind the clock further—and I'm going to be ballparking here—there was a discussion about an independent funding mechanism in the mid-2000s. There was a blue ribbon panel struck at th

Public Accounts committee  We are completing our audit work right now and working with the departments. I can tell you that within the scope of our audit work, it is the Department of Transport and also the Canada Energy Regulator. We are looking at transportation of dangerous goods by all manners, includi

Public Accounts committee  Our recommendations will be focused on the actions of the departments and agencies. It will not make policy recommendations on what should or could happen.

Public Accounts committee  When the audit comes out, you'll see that we were talking about the role of the Canada Energy Regulator from start to finish in the process vis-à-vis the rigour and due diligence that they carry out throughout the process. We reviewed files, and once we have settled the audit fin

Public Accounts committee  Go ahead.

Public Accounts committee  I can answer that. There are other jurisdictions, commonwealth jurisdictions and provincial jurisdictions, in which the Auditor General does have a measure of independent funding mechanism. It can involve the participation of a parliamentary committee, such as this one, or there

Public Accounts committee  I can answer that. I want to preface it by saying that my comments are not critical of any committee. The public accounts committee has been studying the Auditor General's reports regularly. The reports of the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development go to the

Public Accounts committee  What Mr. Ricard is talking about would be along the lines of treating special exams like performance audit mandates. Currently it's not exactly set up that way. We have defined criteria in the Financial Administration Act that we have to address in a special exam. If we had a bit