:
I would now call this meeting to order.
Bienvenue.
This meeting, colleagues, has been called pursuant to the Standing Orders to deal with the main estimates for 2010-11 for the Office of the Auditor General, which would include vote 15 under Finance, as referred to this committee. Also, we will be dealing at the same time with the report on plans and priorities and departmental performance reports from the Office of the Auditor General.
I should point out that we have before us this morning the Auditor General, Sheila Fraser. She's accompanied by the Deputy Auditor General, John Wiersema, and the Assistant Auditor General, Lyn Sachs.
Before I call upon the Auditor General, I want to make a few preliminary comments that I think are important. I view this as a very important meeting and a meeting that is somewhat different from every other meeting that's held by the public accounts committee. In most other meetings, as everyone is aware, the committee reviews the expenditures and actions of various government departments and agencies to determine whether those departments and agencies are being managed with due regard to economy and efficiency, and whether measures are in place to measure and report on effectiveness. In other words, our job is to hold the government to account. In so doing, we rely extensively on the work of the Office of the Auditor General.
Then the question becomes, who holds the Auditor General and her office to account? The general answer, of course, is Parliament: the Office of the Auditor General is accountable to Parliament. The specific answer is the public accounts committee.
So in this meeting the committee will review the estimates document, the departmental reports on plans and priorities, and the departmental performance reports and make due inquiry as to whether or not the Office of the Auditor General is managed with due regard to efficiency, effectiveness, and economy.
I want to remind members that pursuant to the Financial Accountability Act, the Auditor General is a designated accounting officer, and she's personally accountable to Parliament for ensuring that all funds appropriated to her office are spent in accordance with all government policies and procedures, that the accounts are properly recorded and presented, and that the proper systems of internal control are in place.
At the end of the hearing, the committee will vote on vote 15, that being an appropriation of $75,103,833. According to our rules, the committee can either approve this vote, negate it, or reduce it. Of course, it cannot increase this amount.
I also want to remind members that in reviewing these reports it's incumbent upon us to ensure that the Office of the Auditor General is and remains totally independent of the executive, and secondly, that the Office of the Auditor General has sufficient resources to do the job it is mandated to do.
Having framed the nature of the hearing, I am now going to call upon Ms. Fraser for her opening comments.
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. We are pleased to be here today and would like to thank you for this opportunity to discuss our 2008-09 performance report and our 2010-11 report on plans and priorities.
As you mentioned, I am accompanied today by John Wiersema, Deputy Auditor General, and Lyn Sachs, Assistant Auditor General of corporate services and our chief financial officer.
Each year we are privileged to contribute to Parliament's oversight of government spending and performance, with the objective information, advice, and assurance that result from the performance audits, financial audits, and the special examinations we conduct. All of our audit work is conducted in accordance with the standards set by the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants. Our work is guided by a rigorous methodology and quality management system and is subject to internal practice reviews and to external reviews by peers. All of this provides assurance that you can rely on the quality of our work.
[Translation]
During the 2008-2009 fiscal year, the period covered by our most recent performance report, we used $84.4 million in parliamentary appropriations available to us. We employed the equivalent of 628 full-time employees, just under our budget of 635. Using these resources, we completed 148 audits, including 32 performance audits of various federal and territorial departments and agencies, eight special examinations of Federal Crown Corporations, and 108 financial audits.
Our 2008-2009 performance report contains a number of indicators of the impact of our work and measures of our performance. The tables containing our targets and actual performance for these indicators and measures are attached to this statement as Appendix 1.
For the 2008-2009 fiscal year, our performance report shows that almost all of our indicators of impact remained positive. It also shows that our on-time performance remained good, but our on-budget performance left some room for improvement. We have started to see improvements in our on-budget performance for financial audits, and I can now say that for 2009-2010 we will likely meet all of our targets for this indicator. As you will note we have increased these targets for 2010-2011.
[English]
Our performance report also shows that our internal practice reviews identified a number of instances when our quality management system was not applied consistently and rigorously, and where improvements should be made. As you may recall, an international peer review team is reviewing our audit practices and support services. The preliminary peer review findings are similar to those of our internal practice reviews, and we anticipate receiving their final report in June. I wish to assure the committee that we are not satisfied with these results, and I will outline shortly a major project we are undertaking that will address both this situation and the adoption of international accounting and auditing standards.
With respect to our 2010-11 report on plans and priorities, let me begin by saying that in light of the current economic situation, we plan to take the same course of action for this fiscal year as we did last year, and not request any additional funding. Our planning includes continuing our efforts to reduce our total expenses and delivering fewer performance audits—24 are planned in 2010, as compared with 30 in 2009. Appendix 2, attached to this statement, provides an updated list of our planned performance audits and special examinations for the coming years.
[Translation]
In budget 2010, the government stated that departmental operating budgets are frozen at 2010-2011 levels for the next three years and that departments are expected to absorb the economic increase of 1.5% in salaries. We estimate that the impact of this latter decision will require us to find a further $860,000 in savings for 2010-2011.
Given this requirement, we have reviewed and prioritized the work carried out by my office to identify any assignments or areas that could be reduced or eliminated. As a result of this review, we have recently communicated to the Comptroller General that we will not audit departmental-level financial statements. In addition to the issue of funding, we reached this decision after considering the delays in the readiness of the largest government departments to have their financial statements audited, as well as a lack of a formal government policy on audited departmental financial statements.
The adoption of international standards in 2010 and 2011 will lead to significant changes in accounting and auditing in Canada. And as I mentioned a moment ago, we also need to make improvements to our Quality Management System and its application in our audits. In response, we have launched a major project—a renewal of audit methodology—that will continue until December 2011. This project involves the development or updating a four audit manuals—one on matters common to all of our audits and three that are specific to our product lines. The project also includes developing or updating all our supporting tools, templates, checklists, and audit procedures. In addition, it includes the necessary change management activities, including revamping the training of our audit staff to ensure that our methodology is put into practice and implementing procedures to ensure that it is kept up to date.
[English]
The project involves about $3 million of out-of-pocket costs, largely for translation, and a significant amount of staff time over the next two years. Staff time includes the time spent to develop the material, take the training, and provide project management.
As we have said many times, our people are very important to our success. While we have been recognized as one of Canada's top 100 employers for the past three years and one of Canada's top 20 family-friendly employers for a second consecutive year, we foresee continuing challenges. In recent years the market for auditors and accountants has seen both increased demand and limited supply, affecting both the private and public sectors. We expect this competitive market to continue and to result in significant pressure on compensation.
Finally, we would like to inform the committee that we have recently had difficulties with access to information when conducting our audits. Officials have refused information that we requested, have redacted it, or have provided it very late. Some members will recall a similar situation in 2006. An order in council was prepared then that was supposed to resolve this type of conflict; however, it has been interpreted very narrowly by officials.
Senior government officials have recently agreed that there has been a problem with the interpretation of the order in council and that steps must be taken to resolve this matter immediately. As a result, the Secretary of the Treasury Board will be providing this week instructions to deputy ministers and to departmental legal counsel in order to provide clarity on our rights of access. I am pleased with the attention that senior officials have paid to this issue and believe it will resolve the matter.
In conclusion, Mr. Chair, my staff and I appreciate your ongoing interest and support for our work. My colleagues and I look forward to continuing to support you in holding the government to account for its management of public funds.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. We would now be pleased to answer any questions that committee members may have.
Well, I thought we were going to have a happy meeting here this morning and join in our efforts to reach the utopian state of homeostatic balance and good accounting and good performance. But there are at least a half a dozen items in your report, Ms. Fraser, that I think colleagues are going to want to deal with, and I'm going to jump right in.
I have been disturbed by a number of things, and you've reflected one of them in your report. It has been styled as the Conservative government's culture of deceit. I don't expect you to answer that, and this committee's usually pretty non-partisan, but this is a message that things are going to change.
I hear grumbling from the other side: “Oh, my God!“ But not only is there a culture of deceit; there is also a process of retribution undertaken by the government to deal with politics out on the street. It has to do with selection of program spending; it has to do with dealing with employees. So I'd like you to keep your eye open. I know you will.
I'm concerned in your paragraph19 by your stating that notwithstanding the sterling record of all of our Auditors General over all of the years, “Officials have refused information that we requested, have redacted it, or have provided it very late.” Are you in any way aware of why it would be that they would try to circumvent or block or deceive the Auditor General in the work that you do?
:
Chair, the issue revolves around access to cabinet documents that are considered cabinet confidences. Some members will remember that in 2006 we had a number of issues in two audits that we were doing at the time, having to do with access to documents that demonstrated that Treasury Board Secretariat had challenged an analysis function. We were able to resolve that going forward by a new order in council. I was very appreciative that government actually worked well with us on that and resolved it, to what we thought was our satisfaction at the time.
What has happened since is that legal counsel in certain central agencies have interpreted that order in council very, very narrowly. The order says, for example, that we have analysis related to the Treasury Board submission. Counsel have interpreted that to mean only the final submission and not draft submissions. That is one example. Or we have access to records of decision, and in one case that record of decision referred to an annex. In just reading the record of decision, you couldn't actually know what the decision was, and we were refused access to the annex. So there has been a very strict, very legalistic interpretation of the order in council.
We have been to-ing and fro-ing with government for many weeks on this, and when senior officials finally got engaged, I am pleased to say, they agreed with our interpretation of the order in council. They agreed that the interpretation had been far too strict, and guidance is going out, as I said, this week to deputy heads and to legal counsel that I believe will clarify our right of access and resolve the issue going forward.
We'd be happy to provide that guidance to the committee, if the committee wishes
:
I'd say it's in large part due to budgetary pressures. Obviously, our budget is frozen for three years, and we have to make up the increased costs of salaries. But we've also received increases in other mandates. For example, there were certain financial audits where we were joint auditors and we have now been asked to become sole auditors. So there have been other pressures that have arisen that require us to reduce the number of performance audits.
I think the level we are at is still appropriate. I would obviously like to get indications from the committee if you believe that is the case. I would also indicate that in this era of minority Parliaments and Parliaments that are often disrupted by elections, prorogations, or whatever, we noted that the committee was having difficulty dealing with a volume of 30 reports a year. So we think as well that 24 might be a more manageable number.
When we review reports very late, it makes it difficult for everyone, for the departments, the committee, and us, especially when we are looking at things when the audit is over a year old. Hopefully, with fewer in number, we can be more current with the committee reviews.
:
We think we will be able to manage this year. Obviously, we have reduced the number of performance audits that we are doing. We are looking to try to reduce any sort of discretionary spending in all of the areas that we can. Unfortunately, it comes into areas such as language training and outside training, areas where a reduction is not sustainable over the long term. We can do a temporary reduction, but it is important that our people continue to get the training and the knowledge they need, so this is not sustainable over a long term.
Other than that, we are obviously looking at all of the areas that I think all government departments are looking at, travel and things like that, but people do have to travel to do these audits. I think we will be all right for the next year. Obviously, as this goes forward in the three years, these reductions compound. If it becomes very problematic, we will obviously have to come back to the committee.
The other area that I think will be challenging for us is, as I mentioned, the market for financial accountants. This is a very competitive market, and with the salary caps that we have, I am concerned that we are going to be quickly non-competitive in that market and have difficulty getting experienced people. For the moment we are managing the situation. We have the staff that we need, but we will have to pay close attention to this going forward.
:
I would hope, Chair, that we would pass a motion asking for an update on that, since getting information these days is a focal point of all of Parliament.
I for one would like to know that they haven't just managed to pacify you for the short term. I'd like to hear back, and I'm disappointed to hear it's happening at all. We still have the response of the government to one of our audits that we've got to bring up once we get this other matter cleared up. I won't use some of the rhetoric of Mr. Lee, but he is certainly correct in terms of the difficulty and the whole issue around information. There's nothing on the government side to be proud of in terms of their approach to all of this.
Going forward, I noticed on your appendix, towards the bottom of the chart, “Percentage of performance audit recommendations substantially or fully implemented four years after their publication”, as reported by departments, and we were at an 84% accuracy in 2007-08, at 90% in 2008-09, and then you reduced it to a target of 75%. Let's see, your target in 2008-09 and then your actual was 90%, if I'm reading this correctly, but your target for 2010-11 drops to 75%.
Help me understand.
:
Some members will know that Canada, for the private sector, has moved to international financial reporting standards, and that affects many of the large crown corporations, particularly corporations that are not appropriation-dependent.
Other crown corporations have a choice to adopt IFRS, or to use the standards that government uses, the public sector standards. So almost of all of the crown corporations are changing their basis of accounting this year. IFRS is quite a significant change. We have been working very closely with the crown corporations to ensure that they have put in place a plan, that they have analyzed what the changes will be, what the impacts are, and that they get their systems ready to do this changeover.
As for our staff, we have done extensive training. We have at least two series of training that we have gone through already. There will also be more specialized training for some of our staff who are, for example, the ones who are tasked with looking after financial instruments. They require more extensive training. And we have a strategic alliance as well with one of the major accounting firms, so we can consult with them on issues. We're also working with our provincial colleagues to provide them training on all of this. So it is a very significant effort and a very significant change.
I want to tell the committee that I'm very pleased with the progress the crown corporations are making. I think they've taken this seriously, and we don't at this point foresee any major problems in the transition to IFRS.
As we talked earlier, the first one is about the adoption of international standards and the training that we need to do for that, and we've actually now combined that with our whole issue of what we call our QMS--quality management system. We have actually combined those two projects together, to a large extent, integrating the changes to professional standards and updating and modernizing and strengthening our quality management system.
Finally, the other one is our resource allocation and project management. We have made progress, I believe, over the last couple of years. We now have a scheduling system that has been in place for about three years, where we know exactly what everyone is working on, what the availabilities of the staff are month by month, which projects are not fully staffed, and we have a team that is dedicated to managing that. Then, of course, there is the individual project management where we have given more training and more tools to staff to better assess budgets.
It is particularly challenging in this period in which we're going through a lot of changes, both to auditing standards and to accounting standards, to try to assess the time that may be required on some of this, but our performance is improving. I hope it will continue to improve over the next year.
:
The recruitment and retention is focusing on the environment.
So you've got the retention. We're dealing with a large number of younger audit professionals who are very attractive to government. We are fighting against the same benefits that exist outside of government. We've focused on the flexibility in the work we do. That is the retention side. And we do surveys every two years. We've just gotten the results, and satisfaction still seems to be strong.
The recruitment is a combination of issues, the biggest one being the students coming in. We are still hiring. And in Ottawa we are still doing a significant hiring of the accounting graduates. So it's absorbing them in and establishing them, and integrating them to develop that employee engagement. And it has been successful. Our turnover rates at the young level, which is the crucial one.... In public firms, it could be close to 18% to 20%. We have a turnover rate of between 10% and 13%, and they are going to government. Actually, when you think about it, it's for the greater good. We are recruiting, training, and contributing, as opposed to losing. So the success has been there, and we've got to keep an eye on it.
Welcome to our guests again.
I would certainly hope I would speak on behalf of all of the committee, but I know I would speak certainly on behalf of a large portion of it when I say just how much of an honour and a privilege it is to sit on this committee. For the most part, many of us have a non-partisan bone in our body, in contrast to some of the antics that take place on this Hill.
One of the reasons we're so privileged to have you before us is that basically the essence of our committee is your evaluations. You do not deal with things in a partisan way. You do not deal with the court of public opinion. You deal with fact.
We, as parliamentarians, are subject to the ultimate decision-makers when the voters decide whether or not we do a job. But we of course cannot do our job effectively unless we have information we can depend on and that we know will help provide guidance and will certainly give us an indication if we're going down the wrong path—because nobody's perfect. And at that particular point, we need that hand on the rudder to say “I suggest you try this”.
When I take a look at the honesty with which you approach your own evaluations, to me that's crucial. If we can't have faith in your own effective evaluations of your own department, how can we have faith in what you are doing with Parliament itself? That's why, of course, the peer reviews are so important. The fact that your reviews parallel the peer reviews in most cases is highly encouraging.
The one thing I am very comfortable with as a member of the government party, but regardless of who's in government, is the fact that Parliament does respond to your concerns. When I take a look at the percentage of reservations that are addressed from one financial audit to the other, you have a goal of 100%. Let's not accept anything less. And Parliament's been able to run along those measures. I take a look at the percentage of significant deficiencies that are addressed from one special examination to another. We're rolling along.
I was particularly pleased when you identified the one area—the lack of information due to, I suppose, the assessment by judicial officials--as to what would be deemed to be pertinent. You took your concerns directly to both administrative and legislative ends, and you appear to have a satisfactory response, at least in activities. We're pleased to see that from the government. As that moves down the road, this committee will certainly be looking to follow up on that and ensure you've been assured, both tangibly as well as verbally, that you have the results you're looking for.
In spite of all these glowing accolades that you and your office deserve, I would certainly hope you would never be satisfied. I still think there's always room for improvement anywhere. I see you're looking at a renewal of your audit methodology, and an updating of all the manuals. I'm hoping that is maybe one of the areas that you're suggesting you're looking at for improvement. But if you had to pick three areas of improvement you want to move on, distinctly and effectively, right now, that would help you do a better job to advise us, what would your thoughts be?
:
For our financial audit, we have a strategic alliance with one of the major accounting firms, and we are taking over all of their methodology. We will obviously have to adapt some of it, because legislative audit is a little different from the private sector. But for the financial statements, most of it is the same. Where we are quite different is in the performance audit and the special examinations. Those are unique to legislative audit, and I would say special examinations are actually unique to the federal government. No other government, to our knowledge, has anything like a special examination. So we have to develop that ourselves. There obviously is methodology that has existed, so we will be building on that. But it's also changing all of our.... We have banks of electronic tools, electronic working papers, all of that, so this is a significant challenge to us. That is clearly our priority going forward for the next year.
I think the other challenge we have to continue to manage—and we've been successful so far—is the staffing of the office to make sure that our people are happy working with us, that they get challenging, interesting work, and I will be pleased when we get the final staff survey that we are just in the process of finalizing to share the results with the committee. We've had excellent results in the past, and I hope that we can continue to do that. Ms. Sachs mentioned recruitment. Our best recruitment is our own staff, who bring in their colleagues from the private sector. We have to make sure that our people stay with us and are pleased with what they're doing and have challenging, interesting work to do. I think the training goes with that, to make sure that our people continue to keep abreast of new developments, of standards.
Then I would add that the last thing that we have to manage during the coming year is the transition to a new Auditor General. I am pleased we have had some indications that the search process will be beginning soon, and I am hopeful that there will be someone who will be identified so that we can do a transition over a few months, and I think that will help, as well, to reassure staff that things will continue on.
Just before we go to Mr. Christopherson, I'm going to ask you to elaborate on that last statement a little bit, Ms. Fraser, because it is important. Your term is up on May 31 next year. Under our legislation there's no mechanism for you to be renewed or extended, so there will be a transition. I echo everything Mr. Kramp said about you and your office.
The pool of qualified candidates would not be large. I would have thought that this process would have been well under way by now, and you're saying it's just going to start soon. There's a role for Parliament; there's a role for the opposition parties, the opposition leaders. And I know when you were appointed, there was a very seamless transition from Monsieur Desautels to you. Can you elaborate any further on that? You did say that you expect the process will start soon, but are there any more details to that? I think it would be problematic if there was nothing done when your term was up and they appointed an interim auditor, and I don't think that would be good for Canada and it wouldn't be good for your office. Are there any other details you can elaborate on?
:
If I can, Chair, I'll just leave you with the notion that it might be worthwhile for us to identify just what role the committee is going to play in this, so that we're not playing catch-up down the road, and that whatever part that is, we're satisfied it is the appropriate one and that it's thought out ahead of time.
One of the charts on your appendix 1, just for my reference point, the “percentage of performance audits reviewed by parliamentary committees”.... I was disappointed, if my information is correct, that the environment commissioner's audits are not dealt with the same way that we do it. We're not perfect, but they are laid out the same way, they're done the same way. I would have expected that the environment committee would receive the reports and do what we do, which is to hold some hearings on them in as much time as is available and given the importance. They don't do that. They do what we do, which is the one meeting where you present the whole thing, I believe, and they participate in ours and do one of their own, but that's it. They don't do an in-depth follow-up.
So I'd be interested to know the policy for what you do with chapters that affect certain ministries. Do you send those directly to those committees? Do you send them to the departments, and there is an expectation? How do they move around? In particular, given that the environment commissioner is under your shop, I'd like to know your thoughts specifically on what we can do about that to try to change and get the proper attention to those reports.
So this has been a bit of a concern to us.
The commissioner and I recently met with the chair of the environment committee, who seemed quite agreeable to holding these kinds of hearings. I think for most committees this procedure is quite unknown. They tend to deal with legislation or policy issues, so the accountability hearing is not something they typically do.
I know the environment committee is planning to have a hearing that would follow this model. I am hopeful, but if I could, I would certainly encourage the public accounts committee to continue having hearings on the commissioner's work, because I think the environment committee, just by the nature of the committee, is going to be more interested in the environmental issue, whereas here in many of these cases we really have to get into the management issues and how these things are being managed by departments.
You have mentioned other reports, and I would also mention that we advise all of the chairs of standing committees, both in the House and the Senate, when we have audits that are related to their areas of responsibility. We will often have hearings before other committees.
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Madam Fraser and your colleagues, for being here today.
I know that when you spoke about your recruitment and your retention strategy, there has to be more than only money, since you are recognized as one of Canada's top 100 employers and one of Canada's top 20 family-friendly employers. Again, I think a lot of that has to do with your leadership. Certainly that's been well documented.
I'd like to expand on some of the comments you made before when you discussed measures of organizational performance. In exhibit 9 on page 15 and 16 there's a table that includes objective indicators and targets for delivering your work on time and on budget. I note that your target for on budget has been set at 80% for financial audits in various corporations and organizations. What was the rationale used for determining your 80% goal?
My second question relates to the second footnote that defines what “on budget” means to your department. Simply to quote, it says, “On budget means that the actual hours to complete an audit did not exceed the budgeted hours by more than 15%.” On that point, why did you use the cost overrun figure of 15%? And when you're looking at renewal of methodology, would that be something you might want to consider changing? If other departments that you audited had a built-in cost overrun provision, would you consider that adequate? And again, if “on budget” meant what I consider to be on budget, what number would you use instead of that 80%?
We actually have what we call a fellowship program with CIDA, which has been going on now for 30 years. Under the program, CIDA funds, through the CCAF, fellows who come in from developing countries. The countries are the target countries for CIDA, and the fellows come into Canada for nine months for training, largely in performance audit. In fact, over the years several of them have become auditors general in their own countries. CIDA is in the process of doing an evaluation.
I think the committee has met the Auditor General of Mali on a couple of occasions. That is part of a larger program that CIDA is funding in Mali to improve governance and accountability. The establishment of that office was a CIDA project. Again, there's an executing agency, which is the Canada School of Public Service, which manages the project. We also provide methodology training, and some of our people, as well, attend. We actually have someone in the Office of the Auditor General in Mali who's there on secondment for 18 months.
So we do selective projects. Obviously we can't do a lot, given the size of the office, but we try to work with CIDA goals and support them to the extent that we can in some of these areas.
As we've mentioned here, we're part of a broader organization of auditors general or equivalent of all the member countries of the United Nations, which is INTOSAI. My office has been very active for a very long time in INTOSAI. We've chaired various committees, and we participate on others in knowledge sharing. For example, in one now there's quite a large international project going on of audits on climate change, and we're members of that. There's another as well that's looking at the economic crisis, trying to identify what went wrong. I encouraged my colleagues to look at Canada to say what went right.
So there are a number of projects like that in which we are participating. I think it is always very beneficial to have those relationships and the sharing of knowledge, and we can learn a lot from our colleagues.
:
In Canada, the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants establishes the accounting standards for the private and public sectors and also establishes auditing standards.
Up to now, and even now, there are what we call boards that do this standard-setting. About two to three years ago the Accounting Standards Board decided, for a number of reasons, that it would be appropriate to adopt international standards with some modification for Canadian reality, and the accounting standards were set by the International Accounting Standards Board, which has representatives from various countries around the world. It is a move to recognize the globalization and in capital markets the need, and to set uniform standards internationally. Canada obviously had to be part of that.
Also, I think realistically that it is very difficult and quite onerous to continue to set standards in Canada. So the international accounting standards are being adopted. Those will be adopted generally by all corporations in the private sector, though there will be some distinction made for the smaller owner-operated ones. But anything listed on the stock exchange, for example, will be adopting this IFRS, and all of the larger crown corporations are adopting IFRS.
As for auditing, it's the same thing. In Canada, the Canadian Auditing and Assurance Standards Board is adopting international auditing standards. So all auditors in Canada will be using, from the end of December 2010, international auditing standards. There's a movement across the country to go to these international standards.
:
Yes, we have an ongoing student program, as I explained. That's an annual student plan that we'll hire twenty students, pretty much no matter what, every year, and we make sure there's work for them. That's one plan.
The other thing is, we have ongoing advertisements on our website for openings. This goes on and off, but when we have needs—and currently we do have needs for auditors—we have ongoing spots on our website offering career opportunities.
Thirdly, when we are not getting enough CVs floating around, we also do some advertisement in the various journals across Canada.
Fourthly, we post on the Public Service Commission site.
And there's also a fifth program that we have, which is the issue of referrals from inside our staff. Again, this is just to have people talk, to see if people are interested. Those CVs would go through the normal process of selection inside our office. So there'd still be a competition to meet the criteria.
So we give constant attention. We look at the results on a monthly basis. We're looking at our head counts; we're looking at our needs. It's an ongoing process.
:
Thank you very much, Ms. Fraser.
Going back to the motion, I'm going to read the composite motion, and we'll ask for a mover.
Shall vote 15 in the amount of $75,103,833, less the amount of $18,775,958.25 granted in interim supply, carry? The second part of that motion: Shall I report the main estimates to the House?
It is so moved by Mr. Saxton. Is there any discussion on that motion?
FINANCE
Auditor General
Vote 15--Program expenditures..............$75,103,833
(Vote 15 agreed to)
:
The next item on the agenda is the minutes of the steering committee held Wednesday, May 5. That was circulated to everyone.
Before we get into the actual minutes, I just want to point out to members that the copy of the draft agenda has been circulated. You pretty well know that this Thursday we're dealing with the selected departmental performance reports. I do want to highlight to the committee that it's an important issue, but it's an issue the analyst has done a lot of work on, and there are a lot of materials in preparation for that particular hearing.
We go into break week and then we have a four-week session. We are going back to the CIDA issue we had before us for one hour, and at that time we do have some visiting auditors general from both Africa and the Caribbean.
On May 27 we will have draft reports, although that meeting may have to be abbreviated because of the visit of the President of the country of Mexico. On the week of June 1 we have two hearings: aging information technology systems and electronic health records. Then the week following we have draft reports at both meetings, and then on June 15 we have rehabilitating the Parliament buildings.
If there is agreement, I want this as part of the minutes. Because of the scheduling with the Auditor General, the working lunch with the members of Parliament—you see it there on June 2—we'd like to move that to June 1, if that's okay. I know full well that all members of Parliament will not be able to make that because of other commitments, but we do have a visiting delegation and we will have a lunch. Whoever can make it, we will host these parliamentarians. So that's the schedule.
On the minutes, I want to speak to item 1; item 2 is just routine. On item 1, this was discussed at the steering committee. It arises as a result of certain questions posed by Madame Faille at the hearing on chapter 5. I went over the transcript, and there was considerable confusion at the end. She wanted some internal memos on the acquisition of these vehicles, and Major-General Leslie indicated that it was fine and they would be forthcoming, but then the deputy minister got involved and he made a statement that he guessed what we were looking for is the process, and that's what they filed with us, just an organizational flowchart as to how an acquisition would come to be.
This was discussed at the steering committee. Madame Faille, on second reflection, didn't really want the memo; she just wanted the dates as to when these steps happened, so we worded the motion to reflect that. Perhaps before any debate I will ask Madame Faille for her comments and anything that she wants to add.