Public Accounts committee  Currently there is no plan to do a further follow-up, but the committee might recall that at one stage we looked at the subject matter of auditing departmental financial statements, and this committee made a recommendation that we do some work. Internally, we have looked at our p

Public Accounts committee  My name is Nancy Cheng. I'm the assistant Auditor General, responsible for the public accounts. With me are Louise Bertrand, as well as Tammy Squires. They are co-principals on the public accounts audit.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, thank you for the opportunity to discuss our audit of the financial statements of the Government of Canada for the 2010 to 2011 fiscal year. As I noted, I am accompanied today by Louise Bertrand and Tammy Squires, the two principals who were responsible for the audit.

Public Accounts committee  That, indeed, as I mentioned in my opening statement, is a major accomplishment. Very few jurisdictions in the first instance have whole-of-government accounts as we do, so we stand above a lot of countries even just for having whole-of-government accounts. Then to have the accou

Public Accounts committee  The question the member posed goes beyond the scope of the audit of the public accounts. For the purpose of the audit of the public accounts, we comment on the financial reporting and the fair presentation of the statements. So from this perspective, I'm not in a position to real

Public Accounts committee  We are not commenting on how well the government has performed. What we comment on is whether presentations of revenue numbers, the expense numbers, and the resulting financial position are fair.

Public Accounts committee  Maybe this is a good opportunity for us to express what we're actually commenting on. Just now, Mr. Michaud explained the three volumes of the public accounts. We are commenting on section 2 of volume I. Section 2 deals with the financial reporting. You'll see our audit opinion,

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, I'll try to be succinct on this one, because explaining those could take up an hour and a half alone.

Public Accounts committee  One of the differences we highlighted is indeed in the format and the wording of the independent auditor's report. If I can draw members' attention to page 2.4 of the public accounts in volume II, you see there is an audit opinion signed by Mr. John Wiersema as the interim Audit

Public Accounts committee  The question relates to the use of the capital vote and the operating vote. In the first instance, some departments only have one vote, and it's called a program expenditure vote. In that case you won't actually have this scenario coming to service in the way we describe it. Wh

Public Accounts committee  Should I continue, Mr. Chair?

Public Accounts committee  Basically, Parliament gets to oversee and set a limit for each of these votes. So if you set a limit on the capital vote, then presumably that is a budget you want to oversee to make sure it isn't exceeded. If the practice is such that some expenditures can go either way, then it

Public Accounts committee  I believe that's a question for the government to answer. It's not part of section 2 in volume I, so it's not something that we actually have specifically audited. We audit the summary financial statements of the Government of Canada.

Public Accounts committee  That's along the line of the change to the Canadian auditing standards. Earlier on, a member asked about the differences. One of the differences is that we call it unmodified, because you could have other information being put into that auditor's report that does not change the o

Public Accounts committee  We give you the assurance that the accounts are fairly stated within limits of materiality; we do not give absolute assurance. Absolute assurance is impossible to strive for. Financial statements encompass a lot of significant estimates, so they cannot be exact and precise. Often