Public Accounts committee  In the 2009 consultant report, they indicated that while it's feasible, meaning that in the long term it's actually viable, there are a number of other suggestions that they've made. Then, we indicated that we have conducted an analysis, and we do find the situation to be susta

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, I think we are all entitled to our perspectives. We fully respect the member's perspective on this.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, first, I would say that it would be quite complex to try to tease it apart as opposed to looking at a combined picture. Having said that, if you do have to tease it apart, then I think the health cost would probably be a good line item to focus on, if you do want to go

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Indeed, the Deputy Minister Committee on National Security commissioned a task force. The task force studied the issues surrounding security in contracting and filed a report, which was supported by the deputy minister committee. The proposal then went f

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, there is a standing Deputy Minister Committee on National Security. What they did was commission a task force to work on behalf of the committee to look at the questions. I just want to clarify that.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. First and foremost back in 2007, the RCMP was lacking in terms of its policies and procedures. They've done a fair bit on that. Mind you, in this particular status report they still haven't been able to move forward to produce and have approved a department

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, thank you for the opportunity to discuss our audit of the consolidated financial statements of the Government of Canada for the 2012-13 fiscal year. I am accompanied today by Louise Bertrand and Karen Hogan, co-principals responsible for the audit. We thank the commi

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. As we have mentioned in the past, this is rather rare in terms of the global situation on financial reporting at the government level. We're not aware of too many jurisdictions that actually have clean opinions on consolidated accounts, let alone having 15

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. It requires a lot of due diligence on the part of the various departments and agencies that have a role in preparing the financial information. First and foremost, the proper systems and processes to capture the data are needed; good systems of internal c

Public Accounts committee  In terms of the preparation time, that would probably be best answered by the government officials themselves. From an audit perspective, I could relate to my experience about a month and a bit ago when we were just closing off all the documentation on the current public accoun

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, I don't think there is anything more we can say, aside from having an unmodified audit opinion. I think people need to appreciate what that statement means. When we say we have 15 years of consecutive financial statements without modification or qualification—in the ol

Public Accounts committee  Basically, the reason why it was 10 years was that in about 2003 the government adopted accrual accounting. For National Defence, being such a huge department, it was a very significant exercise to be able to transition. They were having issues with respect to looking at fixed as

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, from time to time we do have international groups visiting our office. The national audit offices of other countries, the equivalent of our office, would visit to try to find out what we do here in Canada. Certainly, we would share with them what we find, our discussio

Public Accounts committee  In terms of that question, it had to do with CBSA’s reconciling its usual revenue systems with the bigger, general ledger for financial reporting purposes. What they have done in the last couple of years was to do a lot more of these reconciliations, to see how they can bring the

Public Accounts committee  At the time when we completed the audit the department did not give us a firm deadline in terms of when they thought it would be completed. Subsequent to that, and in the response that they provided to this particular committee, they indicate that they are on track. That means th