Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will be brief because I can't make any comment on that. It wasn't part of our audit.

Public Accounts committee  Again, in the process the important thing for us to identify was where there were weaknesses and where there were problems. We concluded that National Defence did not apply sufficient due diligence and that Public Works didn't provide the necessary oversight. I think the conclu

Public Accounts committee  With regard to the recommendation we made on the costing, we identified that there were components of the financial information that should have been included in National Defence's costing. We would expect National Defence to come forward with a costing based on everything they k

Public Accounts committee  When we tested to see whether the controls on commercial imports were working at the border, we found we were not able to rely on the actual monitoring of the organizations themselves. That meant we had to go in and do the testing of the controls ourselves to gather the informati

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, if I could, I'll ask Wendy to answer that question.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you and good morning, Mr. Chair. I am pleased to be here to discuss chapter 2 of our spring report. I am accompanied by Assistant Auditor General Jerome Berthelette; and John Reed, principal. These two were responsible for this audit. This audit dealt with two aspects of

Public Accounts committee  The audit was of the process up to the date stated in the chapter. Certainly, as of the time of the audit, no jets had been purchased.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you. This was an audit that looked at the process up to this point in time. The decision was made on the basis that enough of the process had happened that an audit was able to be done. This was an important type of purchase, a significant amount of money, and therefore, t

Public Accounts committee  Probably the primary concern, the main thing, that we had to deal with was that because this was a unique approach to purchasing the aircraft, we recognized that the normal rules would not necessarily apply. That's why what the audit was about was to determine whether the organiz

Public Accounts committee  I'm not sure that actually complicated the audit very much at all. The complication there was more in the fact that there were two pieces to the audit. One was that we were looking at Canada's participation in the U.S.-led joint strike fighter program. The other was that we were

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, for the record, the recommendation is contained in paragraph 2.77. I could read it for the record, or the members could refer to it, whatever you wish.

Public Accounts committee  No.

Public Accounts committee  We identified in the chapter that the budgets for the costing information were approved. That would have gone through the normal process. I don't have the information to tell you who, exactly, was at the table when that was done, but certainly that costing information did go thro

Public Accounts committee  Again, really, all I can respond to that question is that those budgets were approved. They went through the normal process, but I certainly don't have with me. I don't think I would even have access to information about who saw what when, other than to say that it went through n