Public Accounts committee  Yes, absolutely. As my colleagues have mentioned, you can have a very old building that actually has very limited heritage value, or a younger building that has very high heritage value. It's really important to ensure that what we're assessing is the actual heritage value of the

Public Accounts committee  I share Jody's enthusiasm for working with audit committees. They too are highly focused on every OAG audit and every audit undertaken internally by the agency. Also, on the broad program of restoration work that I've mentioned in my previous remarks, the $2.5 billion program,

Public Accounts committee  The National Trust model in the U.K. is basically a separate operating agency that has the capacity to fundraise. We have not looked at it in a significant way, to my knowledge. I haven't been informed of that kind of consideration by TBS to date. Parks Canada has looked at our c

Public Accounts committee  That suite of policies, the real property directive, is actually being updated now and we're working with the Treasury Board Secretariat on the exact question you have raised. To clarify, the designation is not automatic. What is automatic is a referral to this committee, this FH

Public Accounts committee  My colleague Joëlle and I will answer it collectively. Let me start by providing a preface that Parks Canada is now working with other federal departments to review the approach for designation, considering some of what you've observed here. That includes the ability to maintain

Public Accounts committee  Absolutely. In fact, in the management of all of Parks Canada's assets, public safety and the safety of our staff are our priority. As I mentioned, that can mean that we sometimes prioritize investments in what would normally be classified as non-heritage assets that are fundamen

Public Accounts committee  I'd have to come back with a number.

Public Accounts committee  Very few visitor-facing sites would be in that category. It would be more historic buildings used for things like storage or the like.

Public Accounts committee  It might be part of a complex of buildings that have historic sites, but it would be not a building frequented by visitors. That would be a very rare circumstance. We have one that is fairly well known locally. We encountered some challenges in the restoration of Sir John A. Macd

Public Accounts committee  Just as a question of clarification., when you say “Heritage Canada”, do you mean the Department of Canadian Heritage?

Public Accounts committee  Parks Canada at one time was part of that portfolio. They were shifted to the Environment portfolio.

Public Accounts committee  The agency had a complete list across 33 business units located across the country. Compiling that list didn't meet the speed requirements of the audit. We're rectifying this. We'll have the national database up to date by the fall of 2019. I can't speculate on a machinery chan

Public Accounts committee  Why don't I start? My colleagues can chime in. Let me start with the past audits and also a series of analyses done by Parks Canada using third party help to review our whole asset portfolio. You're absolutely right and the Auditor General was absolutely right: we had insufficie

Public Accounts committee  Parks Canada has an A-base capital budget of $160 million a year. We have 17,000 assets valued at $24 billion. The capital budget was insufficient to maintain that scale of assets. That's being rectified now through a restoration program and, in the long term, we're working with

Public Accounts committee  Parks Canada's 33 business units across the country had up-to-date information on the state of their heritage buildings. The gap was in amassing that data on a sufficiently quick basis to serve the needs of the Auditor General's analysis.