Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes. I think this bill is calling for some similar types of information. I think Mr. Berthelette mentioned a couple of things. One, you don't tend to see them in with the financial statements. For example, here in the federal government, it's public knowledge, available to the

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  That's correct.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I don't know how this bill will affect the burden of reporting. If the requirements that are in place are to adjust what's currently done in terms of reporting.... Each first nation gets audited every year by an accounting firm and posts the results. If it'

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll take that question, if I may. No, we conducted the audit and tabled it in 2011. We noted there that the reporting burden, as something we reported several years ago, still remained a significant issue. That was in 2011. We've not gone back and audited

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I didn't have a short answer in mind, but I'll try. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think all first nations are already audited. Without my venturing into commenting on the bill, as I think I understand it, the bill introduces some requirements in relation to the audits that have alread

Public Accounts committee  Yes, we'd wait and see. I think we have a lot of other things we need to turn our attention to. I'm not diminishing this in any way, but we've done two audits. Quite honestly, the big mistakes in a program or an initiative like this would have been made in the design at the begin

Public Accounts committee  Thank you. I'll just point out that there have been three things the Office of the Auditor General has done to date on this. One was laying out our expectations and our criteria to the government in advance of the audit. The second was undertaking the first audit of the economic

Public Accounts committee  Thank you. I'm glad you mentioned sustainability, because I think it would be a mistake to believe that all government programs and initiatives could be managed in this way. I think we mentioned in testimony when we did the first audit that a lot of that was unsustainable and a

Public Accounts committee  Thank you. The government was certainly successful, I think, in meeting its objective of getting the money into the projects on a timely basis. They were also successful in ensuring that the projects within the economic action plan met the stated eligibility requirements. The b

Public Accounts committee  Certainly. In our first audit we raised a concern about “construction-ready”, about the fact that the government quite understandably was relying on other parties to state that projects were ready to go. We raised the risk that some weren't, and there could be delays. So the go

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, I'm going to ask Mr. Affleck if he could please answer that one.

Public Accounts committee  If I have understood correctly, Mr. Chair, I think the comment on the community adjustment fund is in relation to the inability to gather information on that program to determine whether that program made its objective. We think that's a concern. You're talking about billions o

Public Accounts committee  I think the only thing I missed there was a date.

Public Accounts committee  I didn't hear the government say on what date or approximately what date they intended to table the report that assessed the impact of the economic action plan.

Public Accounts committee  We began to undertake a series of audits. In March 2009 the Auditor General wrote to the Secretary of Treasury Board outlining what we thought were the key issues public servants had to be concerned about, and they were the key issues we audited. So we started that process at tha