Government Operations committee  You may want to look at the types of financial systems being run by the government. There are anywhere from three to five different financial systems. You may want to look at what that presents in terms of challenges: the reporting requirements and the type of information you're

Government Operations committee  I'm not quite sure I understood the question with this translation. I'm sorry.

Government Operations committee  I'm not sure what the departments would be. The real issue is when you displace financial officers and you don't fill those vacancies, as now, you're running the risk of a couple of things. One is you're running risks of bad choices in terms of financial decisions, and another is

Government Operations committee  May I...? What happens in those situations is that if you look at the vulnerability, the types of moneys that could be displaced or could be used inappropriately, those normally end up being significantly more than the investment of having a financial officer there. That's money

Government Operations committee  There are rules in terms of where money can be spent. You have an operating budget, capital budgets, and there are criteria around what type of expenditure can happen. But on the situation you describe as to whether managers can decide to move money from one particular area of th

Government Operations committee  No.

Government Operations committee  Yes, I would say that management can. Anybody who has authority can, if you don't have folks there to provide oversight. It does happen. Human nature being what it is, it's interesting that when you don't have oversight this sense of entitlement starts to creep in. You start to r

Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question. What I'm referring to there is that, again, in the choices that departments have to make, oversight becomes an afterthought. When a financial officer's position becomes vacant, and you have to deal with this zero budget, that's an option that I would

Government Operations committee  No, not at the moment--

Government Operations committee  Yes, absolutely. We're at the early stage in terms of how departments are going to try to manage through this. I've had 30 years of experience in the federal government. I went through the 1990s. It's certainly an interesting landscape this time around. Here we have a freeze on

Government Operations committee  I'll try to keep it brief.

Government Operations committee  Good afternoon. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today. I represent 43,000 Canadians. They are financial officers. With the exception of 20, the balance are employed in the federal government. These financial officers see themselves as more than just employees: the

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  Unfortunately, I don't have anything specific on that. I didn't come prepared with a specific case. I've spent 25 years as a financial officer for the federal government. I can tell you that what is meant by that is that it's difficult for program managers to deliver on their pr

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  I'm not sure I'm in a position to comment, because you rather framed it around an environment that is political. I would suggest to you that if the mechanism is there to bring in amendments to the legislation, then absolutely, I would have to agree with the comments you've made.

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  First I'd like to say that yes, we would appreciate the opportunity. I agree with your comments. We haven't had the opportunity to really digest this, so yes, we'd appreciate the invitation, if it's there. The $1,000 is, in our opinion, unnecessary. Our members are bound by a pr