Public Accounts committee  Certainly all of those dollars are reflected in the financial statements of the Government of Canada. We would be able to compare them to any agreements that were in place with the recipients, and then we would be able to go through those to determine whether the recipients met t

Public Accounts committee  I'll start, and then I'll ask Mr. Martire to fill in some of the details. I think the deputy explained, as well, that it was funding provided to the educational institutions to provide this type of preparatory program. Our concern was that only 8%—

Public Accounts committee  But the preparatory program itself was delivered by the university.

Public Accounts committee  Okay. What we identified was that only 8% of the students who entered into those preparatory programs completed them. It would be a whole different question of how many of those 8% who were able to complete them went on and completed post-secondary education. Only 8% of the stud

Public Accounts committee  Obviously, the issue of data and needing the right data is important. I guess what I want to do is bring this back up to.... We used education as an example, but what we are talking about here is data to be able to analyze the socio-economic gap between indigenous people and non-

Public Accounts committee  I think that is a significant complexity. Let's remember that at least with the provinces, while they receive significant money from the federal government, most of them also have revenue-generating capacity, whereas for the first nations, how much revenue-generating capacity the

Public Accounts committee  In that case, there may need to be more reporting back to the federal government in terms of, “Okay, here's the money you provided. Here's what you were supposed to do. Have you done it?” I think it's going to be different. I think, to me, what's fundamental in that question is t

Public Accounts committee  Again, it would depend on what the legislation or the agreement says. We'd have to go back and look at that. Again, I'm taking it to an extreme. We don't look at what the provinces accomplish from equalization funding, fiscal formula funding or anything like that. That's money th

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, thank you for this opportunity to discuss our report on employment training for indigenous people. The work on this audit was completed in December 2017, and we have not audited actions taken by Employment and Social Development Canada since then. Many indigenous peo

Public Accounts committee  I'll ask Mr. Wheeler to respond to that.

Public Accounts committee  This obviously is a very important program that the department runs. What we focused on was that the objective of this program was to help indigenous people find sustainable and meaningful employment. We feel that if a program has an objective like that—“sustainable and meaningfu

Public Accounts committee  I think what you've just heard is that it is extremely difficult to get accurate information at the micro level about jobs, where jobs are available and what types of skills are needed. They have consulted with the statistical experts in the country in Statistics Canada about h

Public Accounts committee  I can't tell you. I'm not quite sure of the last time we did an audit on this type of program, which says to me that maybe it's time for us to go back and look at some of the others. That would be something to come. I don't have the answer right now.

Public Accounts committee  I wouldn't put it that way. The way I would put it is that it's a common problem that we have seen in many government programs. Sometimes the way performance is measured is based on the information that is easy to capture and easy to report, rather than putting together a perfo

Public Accounts committee  I think that's part of the fundamental question we were looking at when we decided to undertake this audit. Again, as you said, among the indigenous population there are higher unemployment rates and lower participation in the workforce. There are all of those indications that