Public Accounts committee  I think I would like to answer that question by saying that the role of the Auditor General is critical to democracy. We bring forward impartial, objective and independent advice. We make our recommendations on the basis of facts that have been cleared and have been certified by

Public Accounts committee  Your question is built on a foundation of quality information. Take, for example, the fact that every organization in the government essentially has the ability to enter into contracts. Not all of those contracts will be known at PSPC. The big ones will be, but not all of them.

Public Accounts committee  Well, I'm not sure that removing delegation for contracting is the solution, because that will have the negative impact of gumming up all procurement business. There should be some ability for ministers and departments to operate in their spheres. What we really need is a syste

Public Accounts committee  Investigations affecting our office focused on other departments like Public Services and Procurement Canada and the Treasury Board Secretariat.

Public Accounts committee  Those cases were investigated by the Department of Public Services and Procurement. For the case involving suppliers, we conducted the investigation.

Public Accounts committee  It's like every other investigation. We start by verifying the allegations; then we track down the necessary information; and then we end by presenting our findings and recommending measures to resolve the situation.

Public Accounts committee  In our office, we have a team—

Public Accounts committee  It's human resources, or it could be our security section.

Public Accounts committee  Yes.

Public Accounts committee  They have to be independent. There could be a problem if there were conflicts of interest. In those cases, the managers in charge are not the investigators.

Public Accounts committee  Yes. Thank you. I would distinguish between employees who have come forward to disclose that they have external employment and have received proper approval for that versus the ones who haven't. The cases the Auditor General was referring to were largely ones of people not discl

Public Accounts committee  As mentioned in the report, we expected that the Public Health Agency of Canada, as the business owner, would have established the governance structure. They would have clearly outlined the roles and responsibilities expected of their officials and the CBSA. We would have expecte

Public Accounts committee  We didn't include the details in our report. All of those companies, those contractors, received less than $1 million. That was the cut-off we used for the table. As we said in the footnotes to the table, there were 21 contractors. We hadn't notified those contractors that we wo

Public Accounts committee  We do have a list of those names, and we can provide it to the committee.

Public Accounts committee  We would expect that proper books and records are kept on contracts, and on payments made under those contracts, for the full retention periods required by law. Obviously, there are times when hard copies might be misplaced. It's important to find them. We've constantly made reco