Public Accounts committee  No, we did not look at that specifically. So I can't confirm or refute that.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to thank you for having the hearing on the CAIS program. I don't want to commit my colleague, who's now responsible in the Department of Agriculture, to going back and doing the follow-up, but we will be doing that work in due course.

Public Accounts committee  Yes, I do believe there were, but I'll refer that to my colleague Mr. Kunze, who can elaborate exactly on the people we interviewed.

Public Accounts committee  While our main focus in our report was on processing of returns, we did not ourselves reprocess returns; we didn't take a sample and run through them to reprocess to see what should have been. We did look at the efficiency aspect with respect to the processing, and we mention in

Public Accounts committee  It's just mainly dealing with the timeline to get a program year that is complete. In order to focus on a program year that was complete, we had to focus on the 2004 program year.

Public Accounts committee  Yes.

Public Accounts committee  Yes, we did look to see what other auditors general had done in this particular case. I'll ask my colleague, but I'm pretty sure there was no recent audit work done by AGs at that point in time.

Public Accounts committee  As we state in paragraph 4.9, indeed we found that between 70% and 80% of the applications were completed through assistants such as accountants. So you're right, a large number of farmers and producers do use other people to help them in the preparation. In terms of what was m

Public Accounts committee  We're not aware of the exact amount that was being charged. The department may be, but we are not.

Public Accounts committee  Through our interviews with producers, we certainly heard that there was an expense, a fair amount of expense, with respect to that preparation. Given the fact that in some cases they may not get a payment, that would be an out-of-pocket cost just in the preparation. But in terms

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will make two comparisons here. Our end date for our field work finished October 2006, but it mainly focused on the 2004 program year of the CAIS program. In fact, that is one of our observations, dealing with the timeliness issue. It takes a while for t

Public Accounts committee  I'll start again in paragraph 6. The CAIS program was designed to provide income support to agriculture producers when their farm income dropped due to circumstances beyond their control. At the time of our audit, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada was receiving about 55,000 appli

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, thank you for the opportunity to meet with your committee today to discuss the audit of the Canadian agriculture income stabilization program, otherwise known as CAIS, which we reported on in chapter 4 of our May 2007 report. With me today is