Government Operations committee  I'm sorry to keep sounding like an accountant, but I am one, after all. I think fundamentally the starting point has to be an agreement, as I said earlier, on how you define the entity—so what the government is—and then how you account for things. On those two things there are r

Government Operations committee  I think I can mention some of the things that I felt were good practices in New Brunswick, and that should at least be considered at the federal level. I'm not sure whether they could actually be adopted. Despite the fact that the budget was broken down into many different type

Government Operations committee  There were those challenges, even in a smaller province. For example, at the provincial level the hospitals in New Brunswick were fully consolidated in the province's financial statements. In the main estimates document, there would have been one line for grants to hospitals, whi

Government Operations committee  I'm sorry, were you referring to a recommendation we made? Yes? Okay. Which recommendation?

Government Operations committee  In....

Government Operations committee  Oh, okay. Again, we stand behind that recommendation—

Government Operations committee  No, we haven't followed up on it at this point, simply because it's too soon in terms of when we actually issued that recommendation. But we will be following up on it.

Government Operations committee  Certainly I think we're on record as recommending that parliamentary committees should review documents such as the reports on plans and priorities and the performance reports of departments and organizations. We certainly believe that the committees should be using those documen

Government Operations committee  At the risk of offending provinces—I won't name any specifically—certainly my belief is that some have very good budgeting practices that are very consistent with their accounting practices. I think there are others that still need some improvement, perhaps, in some of their budg

Government Operations committee  I'll hazard a guess--or not a guess, but I'll take a chance on it. I would suggest probably looking at Alberta and British Columbia in particular probably as potential good areas. That doesn't mean I'm saying all the rest are bad; I'm just picking those two out as two that come t

Government Operations committee  Again, it is before my time. I believe that it was a time of rising surpluses, and that probably contributed. It's my understanding that contributed to the ability to have supplementary estimates.

Government Operations committee  Without having reviewed it, I wouldn't be able to give you an itemized list, but certainly in making that type of change, there would have to be a transition. We made the recommendation to government that we feel that an accrual basis would be appropriate for the main estimates,

Government Operations committee  Yes, it was on an accrual basis.

Government Operations committee  Without really understanding what he was seeing as the difference, and what exactly he was envisaging there, it's not something I could comment on.

Government Operations committee  It's not something we currently have in our audit plan. Certainly it's something we can consider as we're doing future plans, but it's not something we have yet agreed to do.