Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for the question from the member. The scope of the audit relates to assessment of the administration of the three main pension plans we've outlined. It does not include an element of benchmarking. So as a result of the audit, we have not gone o

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, the exercise we undertook was to see whether there has been an assessment of the sustainability of the public sector pension plans, including all three plans: the public sector, the RCMP, and the DND. What was shown to us was the result of what came out from the anal

Public Accounts committee  I have no real comments to add.

Public Accounts committee  Go ahead.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, perhaps I could add our perspective. As the member pointed out, access to information is essential and crucial to the nature of our work. We would not be able to accept a representation by management and government and then conclude that work is acceptable without seei

Public Accounts committee  I'll be very brief, just to address and clarify the observation we're raising. The reason we raised the issues of sustainability and there being no systematic regular assessment is that they weren't legislated in any way. In our conversations with the various stakeholders around

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Paragraph 142 referred to the situation where we asked the secretariat to share with us whether they had done certain analyses relating to sustainability. As Mr. Watson pointed out, there was due diligence on their part to decide what they were and weren't

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. The audit relates to and describes the period under examination. The period that we did examine has to do with April 1, 2011 up to March 2013. That is the period under examination. It wasn't so much that it was an actual problem in terms of the current-da

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. The issue about the Supreme Court decision really has to do with an account that is called the “public sector superannuation account”. That account indeed is just a tracking account. It is not funded by assets, and the decision was made by the Supreme Court

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. It would be useful to confirm the scope of the audit. As the member has pointed out, we have not audited the plans and concluded that the plans are not sustainable. The concern and the issue we raised was that there weren't any systematic and regular assess

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for this opportunity to meet with your committee today to discuss the chapter on public sector pension plans from our 2014 Spring Report. Joining me at the table is Richard Domingue, Principal, who was responsible for this audit. Public sector pe

Public Accounts committee  That would not be something that is within the scope of the audit of the public accounts.

Public Accounts committee  It would be very difficult to table a process as such. In the auditor's report, we clearly indicate that we follow Canadian auditing standards so, essentially, we'd be tabling the standards.

Public Accounts committee  I don't think it's a practical way to help the committee.

Public Accounts committee  This would be when we conduct the inventory observation at year end—or close to year end—at DND. We notice that there are quantification differences and there are pricing differences. So when we actually accumulate those kinds of findings, they amount to fairly significant differ