The committee met at 3:06 p.m.

Election of Chair and Deputy Chair

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Deputy Clerk and Clerk of Committees): Good afternoon, Members. As this is the first meeting of the Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts in the present session and there has not yet been a member elected to serve as your Chair, I would like to open the floor to nominations to that position.

J. Yap: I nominate Shirley Bond for Chair.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): Thank you. Any further nominations? Any further nominations? Any further nominations? Seeing none, I will first ask Ms. Bond if she accepts nomination.

S. Bond: I think so, yes.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): Okay. Then I will put the question to the committee.

Motion approved.

[S. Bond in the chair.]

S. Bond (Chair): Well, thank you very much. Not only am I very happy to accept the role of Chair, I should confess that in 16 years in government, it’s my first time on a committee, so I’ll be learning along with all of you. I’m very much looking forward to working with you.

This is a very critical standing committee that deals with very important and weighty matters. I’m looking forward to getting to know each of you better and having the opportunity to work through these important issues.

We’ll work our way through the agenda today, and then I know we’re going to be looking at some future meeting dates. We have some work. I know the Auditor General has provided us with a hefty number of reports that have been referred to committee. We’ll be working our way through those, I can assure the Auditor General.

The next thing we’d like to do is elect a Deputy Chair. I’d like to open the floor to nominations for Deputy Chair.

B. Ma: I nominate Mitzi Dean.

S. Bond (Chair): Are there any further nominations? Any further nominations? Any further nominations?

Congratulations, Mitzi, as vice-Chair. I guess I’m supposed to ask you if you’d accept the nomination to vice-Chair.

M. Dean (Deputy Chair): It’s a pleasure.

S. Bond (Chair): Fantastic. Well, we look forward to working together and working through the business that we have at hand.

Subcommittee on Agenda and Procedure

S. Bond (Chair): One of the things that Kate and I discussed, just in terms of past practice of the committee, was the opportunity to appoint a subcommittee on agenda and procedure. What that would allow us to do is work our way through agenda items, look at the prioritization of some of the reports that are required. It means that we would take a bit more time to work ahead of the actual committee meeting to prepare our agendas to look at other issues that might arise so that we’re well prepared when the meeting takes place.

I thought that was a good idea, and I hope that you would agree that we should probably put that committee in place. Typically, I believe, the composition is the Chair, the Deputy Chair and then additional members that would be recommended.

Is there a general consensus that we’d like to have that smaller working group meet in advance to make sure that we have our agendas prepared, procedure in place? Kate will help us work our way through those things. Is that something we could agree on? All right.

Perhaps we need to look at who might be prepared to do that. I have asked that John Yap be considered on behalf of representing our side.

I think, John, you’ve agreed to help us with that?

J. Yap: Yes.

S. Bond (Chair): Mitzi, did you have a name that you’d like to suggest?

[3:10 p.m.]

M. Dean (Deputy Chair): Yes, thank you. I’d like to ask Bowinn Ma.

S. Bond (Chair): Bowinn? Okay.

Could you move the motion, then, Mitzi?

M. Dean (Deputy Chair): I move that a subcommittee on agenda and procedure comprised of the Chair, Shirley Bond, MLA; the Deputy Chair, Mitzi Dean, MLA; John Yap, MLA; and Bowinn Ma, MLA, be appointed.

S. Bond (Chair): Any other comments?

A. Olsen: Does it need to be seconded, or does it just happen?

S. Bond (Chair): It’s a question before the committee, Adam. Are you comfortable with that?

A. Olsen: Very comfortable.

S. Bond (Chair): Good. That’s great. All right. Well, then, I think, by agreement….

Motion approved.

S. Bond (Chair): Fantastic. We have the people in place to ensure that the committee runs well. I know that we will also meet to have a bit of a chance to get to know one another, to better understand the process. We’ll do that later this week.

I wanted to give you….

Sorry, Mitzi. Go ahead.

M. Dean (Deputy Chair): I just wanted to say we’ve had an update from Rick Glumac. He’s running late. He’s in a briefing because question period went so long. So apologies. Hopefully, he will join us and not disrupt the meeting.

S. Bond (Chair): Okay. Thanks for that update.

One of the things that I know we’re going to appreciate about this committee is I understand it’s a little less formal than some of the other things that we have to do as we work together. I actually really appreciate that. So you should feel very free to participate as you need to.

Committee Terms of Reference

S. Bond (Chair): Kate suggested that we take a quick look at the committee’s terms of reference. I know that it’s been circulated to each of us. I don’t want to take time with the Auditor General waiting and a significant business item on our agenda. But I hope you’ve had a chance to review the terms of reference, and I wondered if you had any questions about the terms of reference. I am sure that Kate, who is fantastic, would be able to answer those. Or is everyone fairly comfortable, having reviewed the terms of reference?

I see lots of nodding, so I think we’ll leave it at that. If there are additional questions, we can certainly have that discussion when we meet to talk a little bit about our plans for the next number of months.

With that, I really appreciate each of you being here today, because I know that the Auditor General has an important item of business that we need to consider to allow her office to actually continue its work as it gets ready to appear before the Finance Committee, as I understand it. So we want to, obviously, welcome the Auditor General, Carol Bellringer, here today. I think each of you have, in advance, received a copy of the Auditor General’s Financial Statement Audit Coverage Plan for the fiscal years 2017-18 through to 2019-2020.

I’d like to suggest…. We also want to welcome Lisa here today. That is not Russ Jones. I’m sure you’ve figured that out by now. It’s Lisa Moore, who is the executive director of financial audit.

Lisa, we welcome you as well this afternoon.

L. Moore: Thank you.

S. Bond (Chair): I thought that the best way to start is by turning the meeting over to the Auditor General and having her and/or Lisa walk through their presentation, and then we will open it to questions.

With that, welcome, and thank you for joining us for our first official meeting as Public Accounts. This is an important item, so we look forward to your presentation.

C. Bellringer: Thank you very much. Before I start, we just noticed that the agenda is referencing the coverage plan. It’s got last year’s dates on there. I know there is an amendment to the agenda, so I don’t know if that got picked up somewhere.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): Yes, you’re quite correct. The current audit coverage plan, which has been distributed to members, is for the fiscal years 2018-19 through 2020-2021. That information was provided to members late last week.

C. Bellringer: And that reference on the agenda is that period. Okay. Very good.

S. Bond (Chair): It’s been corrected, I think, on the revised agenda. My apologies for looking at the original one that we sent out. I think the one today, to the Auditor General, has been sent with the correct year. So we are looking at the same report, and we are talking about the same time frame.

That’s a good start. We’re all on the same page.

C. Bellringer: Thank you very much. I didn’t want the whole thing to be held up by some minor thing.

S. Bond (Chair): Not at all.

Office of the Auditor General

FINANCIAL STATEMENT
AUDIT COVERAGE PLAN

C. Bellringer: Good afternoon, everybody. And congratulations on your new role. I came to the province three years ago. I had come here from Manitoba, so I’d had experience in front of the Manitoba Public Accounts Committee.

[3:15 p.m.]

One thing. I had the luxury of walking into a very mature, well-functioning committee that had the dynamics all sorted out. If there’s anything at all that our office can do to assist you in working into that new role, we’re very happy to come and discuss whatever you like with any of you individually.

I’d also point out that — well, it used to be called the CCAF, and they changed their name — the Canadian Audit and Accountability Foundation is also an organization across Canada that the legislative audit offices fund. They will come in and do an orientation for you, if you’d like them to, for free. That’s something that you may want to take advantage of.

I did want to just add that I was impressed from the moment I walked into that first Public Accounts Committee meeting at the openness of the dialogue. There’s always a certain element of partisanship that you can’t help but have creep into the room, but I certainly observed over the last three years a committee that functioned as best as one can in a spirit of constructive partisanship.

We are really pleased when all members around the table are asking both ourselves as well as the witnesses for further information. Our audits are done with the public interest in mind and looking to improve the public service. I look forward to working with all of you, with that.

Under the Auditor General Act, our office is required — and this is a requirement in the act — to table a three-year financial statement audit coverage plan, and it must come to this committee for consideration and approval. That’s a little over half of the time that the staff in my office work on audits. The other not quite half is on performance audits.

The performance audits. We actually do produce a coverage plan for that work as well, but that coverage plan is not required to come to you. We’ve chosen over the last few years to release it publicly. It will be circulated to the members first and then made public. As soon as we know that we have the go-ahead to issue this coverage plan, we’ll circulate the two at the same time. That other one doesn’t require your approval, but we do welcome the discussion, whether it’s formal or informal, around what’s in that plan as well.

This one is only around the financial statement work. To just put it simply, the numbers are being prepared completely and accurately for all of the organizations that we’re auditing. In the plan — Lisa will get into some more of the details around the plan in a minute — you’ll see that there are quite a few organizations that we audit directly and others that we have oversight, and others, still, are audited by the private sector firms.

We also design our work because of the requirement for our office, and me specifically, to form an opinion on government’s summary financial statements. That’s the incorporation of all of the organizations that are included in that coverage plan. We have to do enough work on all of the organizations to be able to rely on the external auditors, to have an overview of what’s going on and then, in the highest-risk areas, to do the work directly ourselves.

Those of you who’ve been at prior discussions…. This is usually a pretty quick meeting. It’s a fairly standard coverage each year. I have to apologize. Here you are as new members, and we’re about to drop something into the “need for a decision” which is quite significant.

We usually are here saying that we’re able to do the plan within the current budget envelope. The budget is something that is covered by the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. We will be going to see them on Wednesday this week. In order to complete the financial statement coverage plan, as we’ve presented it to you, it will require a higher budget than that which we’ve been operating with for the last few years.

We’ve included an increase in our budget request for $1.1 million. That’s including the proposal in here to audit B.C. Hydro, which is, of course, an extremely large Crown corporation. It also includes some IT-related positions that have nothing to with this particular plan.

[3:20 p.m.]

The $1.1 million has about three-quarters of that related to Hydro and, therefore, this plan. That number does go up in the year following, in ’19-20, as we would phase the audit work in. In the first year, we would not replace the external auditors. We would just build our capacity to be able to do the audit. In the year following that, we would assume the direct costs of that audit. External assistance that Hydro are currently contracting for would no longer flow through them. It would flow through our office.

I’ll be pleased to answer any questions regarding the reasons for the planned involvement with even particular organizations. As we’ve pointed out in the past, some of this is including a risk assessment which you may decide should be brought in camera. But we can point that out, if we get into a spot that’s a little bit sensitive.

I’ll now ask Lisa…. Lisa’s an executive director in our financial audit group and an expert on many of the accounting issues that we deal with. She’s actually not the author of this particular plan, but we lost a few to vacation this week. So she’s standing in for that but very much a part of that team and well able to make the presentation.

L. Moore: Good afternoon, Members. I’m just going to walk through the slide deck that I believe was distributed as part of the material, starting on the background page.

The annual audit of the summary financial statements is the largest audit performed in British Columbia. It provides assurance on whether the financial statements present fairly the financial position and operating results of the province. The opinion on the summary financial statements is the Auditor General’s alone, but in British Columbia, the audit of the government reporting entity is accomplished through the combined work of the Office of the Auditor General and private sector auditors.

Turning the page. Today we are seeking your approval for three things: for the detailed plan, as presented in appendix A, which begins on page 19 of our report; for the Auditor General to continue as direct auditor of ten entities where the term exceeds five years, which is on pages 16 and 17 of the report; and for the Auditor General to continue as direct auditor for one entity outside of the government reporting entity, which is on page 18 of our report.

Turning the page. This plan meets professional requirements for audit coverage under generally accepted auditing standards and will allow the Auditor General to sign the audit opinion on government’s summary financial statements. These standards require us to be involved in the audit of all significant entities which are included in the summary financial statements.

Turning the page again. We define our audit involvement with the 146 government entities as being either limited, oversight or direct. In deciding our level of involvement, we look at the risk involved, at both the entity and the sector level, as well as the capacity of our office. We also look at new organizations for which we are entitled, under our act, to be the auditor for the first three years.

For the three organizations included in the government reporting entity for the first time this year — which are the Forest Enhancement Society, the Real Estate Council and the Real Estate Foundation — we do not intend to be the auditor.

Turning the page. The provision in our act to request approval for extending direct involvement beyond five years recognizes the need to manage inherent audit risks, where necessary. In the plan, we have to balance the benefits achieved through auditor rotation with professional standards that require us to maintain an appropriate knowledge and experience in order to fulfil our mandate.

For audits that exceed five years, including ministry audits, we employ senior staff rotation and other safeguards, as required by assurance standards, to ensure that objectivity is maintained.

In the preparation of this plan, we reviewed each appointment exceeding five years and considered if rotation to a private sector audit firm would be necessary. In two cases, the audit is already being done by another audit firm under a contract with us. Rotation of audits where we have been the auditor for more than five years is not required.

The rationale for appointments exceeding the five years is documented on pages 16 and 17 of the plan.

[3:25 p.m.]

Turning the page, now, to the detailed plan. On this slide, this is the table on page 13 of the report that summarizes our planned coverage for the next three years for the existing 146 entities, for the fiscal years 2019 through 2021.

This is a rollup of the detailed plan, as shown in appendix A of the report. The first column shows the type of entity. The second column shows the expected number of entities of each type for their fiscal year ending in 2018. The remainder of the table shows our planned coverage by entity, fiscal year and level of involvement.

For example, in 2018-2019, we plan to have limited involvement in 16 of the 25 universities, colleges and institutes, have an oversight involvement in seven and directly audit two. As you can see from the totals, our levels of involvement do not change significantly between years.

To give you an idea of how our plan results in our overall involvement with government’s expenses, this chart shows that the Auditor General had either an oversight or direct audit involvement with 84 percent of government entity expenses for the 2016-2017 fiscal year. Our plan provides for similar involvement in future years.

School districts. We usually audit five of the 60 school districts at any one time. We also plan to have an oversight role in three school districts each year of the plan. We continue to rotate our involvement through the school districts.

In the post-secondary sector, 2019 is the last year that we audit the University of Victoria. In 2020, we take on the audit of the University of British Columbia, and 2020 is the last year we audit Vancouver Community College. In 2021, we will audit Capilano University. We also plan to have an oversight role in seven universities, colleges or institutes each year of the plan.

Health authorities and hospital societies. We will continue to directly audit Vancouver Coastal Health Authority through 2021, and 2018 is the first year we will also take on the audit of the Interior Health Authority. We also audit the B.C. Clinical Services Society for the entirety of the plan. The B.C. Clinical Services Society also involves us providing a service auditor’s report, which is an opinion on controls around the calculation of shared health costs. We also plan to have an oversight role in four health authorities and one hospice society each year of the plan.

Crown corporations. Our plan is to stop auditing Destination B.C. after 2018 and take on the audit of the Royal B.C. Museum in 2019. A change to the plan from last year, as Carol has mentioned, is our decision to add B.C. Hydro as an entity that we plan to audit, beginning in fiscal 2020, when the current audit contract expires. We have performed oversight procedures on B.C. Hydro for many years but have never been their direct auditor.

We believe that we should be the auditor of significant government entities where we are able. Having said that, we will need additional resources to carry out the audit. We also plan to have an oversight role in seven to ten other Crown corporations across various sectors during the three-year plan.

Organizations outside the government reporting entity. We plan to continue with one engagement outside the government reporting entity — the provincial employees community services fund.

Each year we consult with organizations impacted by the plan where we will be changing or taking on oversight or direct audit coverage. At this time, we have met with or contacted by telephone all of the affected organizations. We will follow up with a formal communication once the committee has reached a decision on the plan.

I will now turn this back to Carol.

C. Bellringer: I can go into any of those areas in more detail, but I’m thinking I’ll maybe just hand it over to you for questions. Then as we get into it, I’m happy to expand on it.

S. Bond (Chair): I think Kate is going to keep the speaking order list. So if you have some questions, feel free to just put up your hand.

Thank you very much. I know we all appreciate the presentation. For some of us, it’s our first time going through the process. There may be questions that, Carol, you might find fairly routine. But it’s probably a helpful process for us so that we understand. There are some members that have been on Public Accounts a number of times.

[3:30 p.m.]

If it’s all right with the committee, I think we’ll just go into questions and answers. We’ll start the list, I think, with Mitzi. Would you like to go first?

M. Dean (Deputy Chair): Thank you so much for your presentation and just laying out the work so intelligibly for us. I’m interested in how the schools and the secondary institutions are selected. Is it just random? Is it they just rotate year on year, or would there be other factors that would influence how you would make that decision?

C. Bellringer: That’s one where…. I wouldn’t go as far as saying it’s random. We do work it out so that we’re moving out of certain geographical areas and in to cover others, different sizes. We’re taking into account all of the different, major aspects of all of the 60. We also take risk into account, so if we have some indication that there are things going on that should be looked at, then it’s an area where they’ll be moved up on the list, in terms of when we go in.

The other thing we have to consider, both with that as well as with any of the other audits, is when the auditors are being appointed directly from the organization, they enter into contracts. Those contracts are for a period of time, so we also take a look to see when those expire, as to which ones are coming free in the upcoming years. That also will change whether we pick something up in the current year or we advise the organization that it’s not this year, but it’ll be next.

On the post-secondary, it’s the same sort of process. It’s actually the same process we follow for everything that’s in the coverage plan. We’re looking at risk. We’re looking at significance. We’re looking, as Lisa has pointed out, at the capacity of the office and what we’ve done before. We really are going through the whole thing with a bit of a map to say, “Are we getting a good coverage?” and making sure that we continue the coverage in terms of that percentage of overall expenditures.

J. Yap: Thanks, Carol, for the presentation. On the decision to go with B.C. Hydro, I think I heard you say this is the first time ever in history that this will be a direct audit, so it’s a new experience. And I think you said three-quarters of the increase that you’re looking for will be because of the Hydro project, or the audit. What does that translate to, approximately, in human resources that you need to do that audit?

C. Bellringer: We’re anticipating that it would be about seven additional resources once we have everybody in the door. But we also recognize that it would take quite a bit of planning to really get that down to a precise level. The idea would be that in the first year hiring three max of additional resources, where…. We’d be moving people who are currently our strongest auditors onto that particular audit, so they would be backfilling, and there’s training and all kinds of other things involved.

The first thing to do is to work through, if given approval, exactly what that budget would look like and exactly what the work schedule would look like.

J. Yap: If I may, you also are going to take on, I’m thinking, a very big audit with UBC, right? That’s the biggest post-secondary institution, and it would be around the same time. Is UBC also a first time, or have you audited UBC in the past?

C. Bellringer: We’ve done UBC in the past. It’s also timing. At the same time as UBC comes on, University of Victoria, UVic, goes off. Staff-wise we could absorb UBC into our current resource makeup. It wouldn’t require additional resources.

The biggest issue for us to sort out is that the work will primarily be out of Vancouver as opposed to Victoria, and our staff are located in Victoria. We have to work through…. That’s the same situation with Hydro.

J. Yap: I have one more question. You talk about risk, which, of course, is what audit traditionally addresses, right? Do you have a risk assessment model or a way of assessing risk? If you do have such a model, is that something that would be useful to share with this committee to show us how you, as professional auditors, go about assessing risk?

[3:35 p.m.]

C. Bellringer: I can explain it to you. I can talk through the details. I don’t know that I’d call it a model that can be shared. It’s a consistent process with the way other legislative audit officers would go about doing the same. Everybody is having to do the same sort of analysis, and it’s consistent with the professional standards that we’re required to follow in order to do any audit.

What we’re looking at is the financial impact. As I’m reading these, I’m thinking through specifically to the Hydro question. You can see in each point that there’s a high risk assessment — the financial impact of the entity on the summary financial statements. Many of them, for the board of directors themselves…. Their entity is important to them for many different reasons. We’re looking at it in the context of when it rolls up into Public Accounts. How big is it in the bigger picture?

The second consideration. We’re looking at the public interest in the programs or services being delivered. There may be, outside of the financial implication, something broader than that. We’re wanting to be a little bit closer to it to see directly whether the entity is delivering a core service or has a significant public policy role.

Another of the risks is the complexity of the entity and its operations. That complexity in the accounting assessment is…. We’re looking at whether it has some kind of a specialized transaction or a significant estimate. We also have to look at how complex its systems and accounts are and whether there are going to be some limitations around that. The more complex, the more we want to see what’s going on.

Other risks to the government, inherent in the program, from things such as governing authorities, the way it has been structured, the form of the organization. It could be specific circumstances identified during the past year or during a current audit.

We also look at the history with the entity in terms of the relationships. If we’re looking at something where it has been an external audit, for example, and they’ve issued lengthy management letters to the organization, then it may be something that we choose to get closer to. We look at whether or not there have been issues raised in the past.

We also do, through that oversight process that both Lisa and I have been speaking of, where we’re not doing the direct audit…. We are, for example, attending audit committee meetings, and we’re reviewing the packages that are delivered to the organization from their external auditors. We can tell through that and monitor whether or not risks are popping up through that process.

R. Sultan: Carol, the three entities that strike me as being unusually large, complex and critical are Vancouver Coastal, UBC and Hydro. I see that you are moving into direct audit authority, shall we say, over all three eventually or quite soon, actually, as you have all along with Vancouver Coastal. Can you tell us why you’re moving to a more direct role?

C. Bellringer: The overall answer is the risk assessment.

R. Sultan: Well, particularly at UBC and Hydro.

C. Bellringer: UBC we had decided some time ago. That was pretty much just a…. We want to make sure that we’re getting coverage and moving around to cover all of the post-secondary institutions. It wasn’t too much of an assessment over and above that. As I say, UVic was the end of that five-year term, and UBC was next on the list to be picked up. We decided that that was a good thing to be doing.

[3:40 p.m.]

Hydro was more complicated. Hydro really had us having to think through why we have never done it before. The risk hasn’t increased. It has always been complex. It has always brought a number of issues to the summary financial statements and to putting it together. The oversight has been extensive.

We did have a qualification in the audit opinion this year on the public accounts as it related to the government’s involvement with rate-regulated accounting at Hydro. We have an extensive project going on right now, which we haven’t issued the report on yet, on rate-regulated accounting.

The regulations that are issued and the way that Hydro does its accounting is not on the same basis as the government’s financial statements are prepared. The government’s statements are prepared in accordance with public sector accounting standards. Regulations permit Hydro to report in accordance with the regulation, which takes you into U.S. accounting standards, which also removes the requirement for an independent regulator.

We started to better understand what all of that means. For us, that did, to a degree, increase the risk. We would like to be closer to what’s going on at Hydro. There’s no question. We could not do it with the existing resources. We just don’t have enough of them.

We have one large risk, from our own perspective, that we’ll be talking to the Finance and Government Services Committee about, and that’s that we’ve had some difficulty hiring senior financial auditors, mostly because of the market and because what we pay is much lower than what’s paid in the private sector. The aspect of it that we still have not yet determined is whether we’re going to be able to hire all of the staff ourselves to do this audit directly by our own people or whether we would be conducting the audit directly but using external contractors. That aspect of it we would still need to sort through.

R. Sultan: Carol, if we asked the existing auditors what they thought of your plan to take over part of their turf, as it were, what sort of an opinion would we get from them?

C. Bellringer: Their contract ends at the end of next year, the year coming up. They’ve had that contract for some time. We would expect a large Crown corporation like that to be seeking not necessarily another auditor, but they would be opening it up to some kind of a proposal to determine who their auditor would be. It doesn’t change that aspect of it for them.

R. Sultan: In terms of cost to the taxpayer, do you think having your office do the Hydro audit may save money in the long run for the taxpayers of British Columbia? How do your fees and costs overall compare to whoever is doing the job now?

C. Bellringer: Our fees. If you work out our cost per hour compared to the firms’, it’s lower. We’ve tried to do a comparison to determine whether or not we take longer or if it’s shorter or if it’s the same amount of time as an external firm. It’s not that easy to do that comparison. We think we probably take a little bit longer, and we think some of the reasons for that are that the firms have one goal in mind. They have to express an opinion on the financial statements, and that’s what they’ve been contracted to do.

For example, in the case of Hydro, they’re contracted to express an opinion in accordance with the regulation, not in accordance with public sector accounting standards, and that’s what they do. We do tend to get into other areas. We’ll start to look at compliance with legislation, for example, and we can choose to just do more work because we think it’s in the public interest to do so.

The other part of it, though — and it is a matter of discussion with Hydro, and we want to understand, from their perspective, how this would work — is that large organizations, and Hydro would be one of them, would often go to their auditor for not really advice, because auditors aren’t allowed to do that, but certainly there would be an ongoing relationship and dialogue with them. So it’s hard to separate the extent to which they may still need to acquire that kind of external advice from somebody with an expertise.

[3:45 p.m.]

If we’re doing Hydro, we’re doing it with the assistance of…. There’s a national professional practices group that is in the Auditor General of Canada’s office, and we have a memorandum of understanding with them where when we need additional accounting advice, we’re able to use that resource.

We would likely also line up with one of the external firms. It could potentially be something out of the States, as opposed to Canada, if they continue to apply U.S. standards, to give us precise advice on some of the matters that are very unique to the industry that we don’t have…. We do the audit of Columbia Power Corporation, but that’s a much smaller organization, and they’re following a different set of accounting standards. So we would still look for external advice.

Quick answer to the question asked: is it going to cost more or less? Is it going to be a savings? I would suggest it’s likely going to be cost-neutral.

R. Sultan: Do you think you will be able to apply the same level of experience and expertise as the existing audit organization?

C. Bellringer: The existing one’s been auditing for about ten years, so right away the answer is no. They’ve got quite a bit more direct experience, but their term will shortly be up.

R. Sultan: Could you perhaps subcontract them to do some of the work?

C. Bellringer: We could. There are also some subsidiaries that we also have determined we’re likely not going to audit ourselves. We would contract for those. The pension plans is one. In B.C., we’re not auditing any of the pension plans through our office, so something like that we would be contracting for a firm.

J. Thornthwaite: Thank you very much for your presentation.

My question is about school districts. I notice, as I’m going along — and this is in the conversation of risk that you had already answered — some of them, like school district 39, Vancouver, have quite a bit of direct audits that your office is doing. With what had happened with that particular school district in the past, I understand that. But the other one that seems to have a lot of direct auditing going on is the Okanagan-Similkameen and also Comox Valley.

I’m just wondering if you could give us some enlightenment as to the difference in risk, because some of them have got just oversight. Some of them have very little direct, but then some of them, a handful, have a lot of direct over a period of years.

L. Moore: With respect to the school districts, we actually look at it as a fairly homogenous population. There are 60 of them. They have two different accounting systems. There are some smaller ones, some medium ones, some bigger ones. In general, as a whole, school districts are lower risk, but as far as getting knowledge, because there are so many of them, we tend to stick to directly auditing five of them — again, to do with resources. We can get enough….

We tend to do oversight on three. It isn’t necessarily that the ones we’re in are a risk. We’ve been rotating through the school districts. I think we’ve been doing this about ten years now. We’re just slowly making our way through all 60 school districts. We’ve done many over the last several years, and we’ll continue to change. Again, as Carol mentioned, some of it is to do with geographic dispersion and trying to keep ourselves in different reaches of the province. It isn’t necessarily risk-based.

Vancouver. Yes, we did take that one on specifically. But for the most part, for the school districts, it’s really trying to keep geographical — where we are going to move to next — and, with the existing contracts, where they’re expiring and where we continue to move versus where we’ve been.

C. Bellringer: I will just add something on the school districts. When we’re doing our performance audit coverage plan, we’re also looking for ways that we can get a little bit broader coverage into all of the school districts. Last year we issued a report on the budgeting process. We’re communicating then with each of the audit committees to provide it to them and allow for the conversation around how to improve their budgeting. There’s a different reach to all of them through the other work that we’re doing as well.

J. Thornthwaite: So the fact that, say, Okanagan-Similkameen has got a direct audit throughout that entire line of 2017 to ’21 doesn’t stand out to anybody?

[3:50 p.m.]

L. Moore: Generally, we take on an audit for five years. Our plan is always a three-year plan that you see rotating here, but it’s pretty standard practice for many firms to have a five-year term in the audit and then go out to tender.

C. Bellringer: I was just going to say that where you’re seeing less than five years, it’s because it started the year previously or two years previously, and so on. If it’s starting within that five-year period, it’s going to continue on for the extension of the five.

J. Thornthwaite: Okay. Thank you. That was my question.

B. Ma: My question is…. Well, actually, a lot of my questions have been answered through the previous questions.

ICBC has been under a lot of public scrutiny for a while, and I’m wondering…. They’ve never triggered any of those high-risk factors that you consider when you’re looking into increasing levels?

C. Bellringer: It’s in the same category as Hydro in the sense of…. Is it high risk in terms of the level of expenditures and the impact on the financial statements? Absolutely. There has been…. We were never set up to just absorb it. It would be a large change to the operation of the office.

With Hydro…. This year we did consider all of the various Crowns. If we were to absorb one, that would be a large increase to the resources for the office. We feel we need to do one. We chose Hydro. The idea would be to rotate through the others after we’re finished the Hydro audit.

If the Legislature voted enough of a budget to say, “We want you to now go out and audit all of them,” that would be impossible for us to do, just in terms of absorbing that level of activity. I’m comfortable we can do one. I’m not comfortable with two.

B. Ma: My second question is: in the request to extend your five-year term on these ten entities, what happens if — and this is just a hypothetical question — an entity no longer exists two years into the term and so forth? What happens to that money?

C. Bellringer: We update this plan every year for the Public Accounts Committee. So you would see it in next year’s plan, anyway. There’s usually going to be a final audit. Even if the organization ceases to exist, we would still go in and be auditing that final financial statement. I don’t think anything would actually disappear throughout the first year.

We also have, in the past…. I’m not so sure we have in the last three years, but we do consider from time to time making a change from where we thought we were going to go. We might say we’re going to audit whatever organization for five years and then come back to you next year and say we’ve decided to stop now. Within that list of ten, we’re always….

Oh, yes. We did have a few this year. There’s a precise reason for each one. On the last page of the report, in appendix B, you’ll see examples of those that we had in last year’s plan, and we’ve removed them from the current year plan — or added them, in the case of the first one.

R. Glumac: I have a couple of questions in regards to B.C. Hydro, just to clarify. It may have been answered already, but I was reading a few things. You’re going to be auditing the current financial year for five years.

C. Bellringer: It would start not in ’18-19 but in ’19-20.

R. Glumac: Okay. In regards to what happened in previous years, that has already been done.

C. Bellringer: So ’17-18 is still underway, and ’18-19 will still continue to be done by external auditors. We have done oversight in the past, and we would still do oversight. We look at the work that they are doing. We’re not doing it directly. The proposal is for us to take that on in the second year of this plan.

[3:55 p.m.]

R. Glumac: Being new to this, I may have some questions that are obvious. A Crown corporation like B.C. Hydro has a measure of risk. Are you looking at if the Crown corporation is profitable and there’s money that’s being made there, that money would go into general revenue, I assume, for the government. Am I correct so far?

C. Bellringer: Yes and no. In terms of what the audit opinion will state, it will tell you whether or not that set of financial statements is accurate and complete. You can take the results of the financial operations for the year, and you can say: “I can rely in the information in that report.” We don’t go as far as saying, “And that’s a good thing,” or: “Here’s how you should use it.” If they have a surplus and they retain it, or if they have a surplus and they bring it into general revenue, those are all government decisions. We can’t get into that. We’re prohibited from commenting on the merit of policy.

We would be looking for…. In the case of all of the audits that we do, there is a set of accounting standards that is accepted for public sector organizations around Canada, and everybody is following them. I’m generalizing a little bit. But we’ll be forming an opinion as to whether or not those statements were prepared the way they should have been.

When we have a qualification or a modification in our audit opinion, we’re pointing out an area where we don’t believe that it’s been applied appropriately. Those organizations will now flow into the overall deficit or surplus that the province reports as its bottom line, because they all get added up to come to that.

That’s the nature of that work. I’m not sure if I’m going anywhere close to what you’re asking.

R. Glumac: I’m just trying to get an understanding of it. I mean, there have been concerns raised about money being drawn from certain Crown corporations into general revenue, with that affecting the long-term viability of a Crown corporation. That’s not something you’re going into.

C. Bellringer: A financial statement audit won’t go that far. If it were to impact the organization sufficiently that the long-term viability is now completely eroded, then the financial statements are required to say that, and we would be required to ensure that it does. Unless that were the case, we wouldn’t be assessing how good it’s been managed or how viable it is.

R. Glumac: All right. Thank you.

J. Yap: You have one independent officer that you audit, which is the Representative for Children and Youth, and you have a note saying that it’s because of the legislation, right? With regard to the others, do you do oversight or any work at all with the other independent officers?

C. Bellringer: No. Well, technically, yes, in that they form part of the government’s financial statement. Their accounts will be audited to the same extent that anything else is within ministries. It’s the legislation for the Representative for Children and Youth that specifies that they have to produce a separate statement. They’re not a separate entity. They don’t exist as a corporate entity, for example. They’re just like a government ministry in the structure.

J. Yap: So you have to be their auditor.

C. Bellringer: Yes.

J. Yap: The other independent officers, some of whom have substantial budgets, presumably hire outside firms to be their auditors? If that’s the case, would you not want, at some point, to also be their auditor?

C. Bellringer: We are their auditor because we’re the auditor of the public accounts. We would sample them the way we would sample any other ministry. I believe that our office…. We do have an external auditor. We produce a set of financial statements. We have an external auditor. That’s mostly because we can’t audit ourselves. In bringing it into the big mix, ours is separated out. Again, we’re not a separate corporate entity, so the legislation requires us to do that.

Normally a ministry in British Columbia doesn’t produce a separate ministerial set of financial statements. That model is considered in other jurisdictions. It’s not one in B.C. We wouldn’t expect one of the independent offices to report separately on their results, any more than we would….

[4:00 p.m.]

J. Yap: The Ministry of Transportation — or any ministry, any line ministry.

C. Bellringer: Yes, but even within that, narrow it down to a branch within that same ministry. I mean, as much as there are quite a few funds…. What each of the independent offices is required to do is provide information to the Finance and Government Services Committee. It’s just not specifically verified. They don’t have an external auditor on their….

J. Yap: But you are the Auditor for the province, right?

C. Bellringer: Right, but we won’t take their accounts out and….

Let me try to explain it a different way. When we’re doing an audit of each of the individual organizations — so the 20 that we’re saying we’re doing directly — we’re auditing it to a precision so that we can say for that organization, standing on its own, you can rely on the information that’s included in their financial statements.

When it’s absorbed into the whole, it might not be significant enough to say that if you were auditing only the whole and not pulling out these pieces, you would audit to a different precision. You would audit so that you could say that the government as a whole, the information, is being fairly presented.

If you pull out a branch of any ministry, I can’t give you that same guarantee for that entire pocket of data. That’s the same case with the independent offices. Are they impacting the summary financial statements in a significant way? No, so we’re not choosing to audit them.

The Legislature has made the decision that they want that information for the Representative for Children and Youth. I think part of it becomes a matter of timing as to when the legislation was put in place. That was a time when it was designed around saying: “We want assurance on it as well as their reporting on it.” That’s not the case for the other independent offices.

J. Thornthwaite: I just want to confirm that this is what you’re saying. If it was decided that B.C. Hydro and Power Authority, beginning in fiscal 2019-20, was not going to be audited by you, would you still need an increase in staff and budget to complete what you’re doing now?

C. Bellringer: It’s something we can split up for the Finance and Government Services Committee. It’s about $1.1 million in total. We hadn’t broken it down for the committee as to what’s related to what. But about three-quarters of that is Hydro, and that three-quarters would not be required if we were not doing the Hydro audit.

The remainder has to do with information technology needs, which is in the performance audit side. There’s some crossover to financial audit, but only in supporting the work through our…. We have an IT for our own internal operations. We need an IT person there as well. That’s something that committee would deal with.

About $750,000 to $800,000 of that would not be required if we were not doing Hydro.

J. Thornthwaite: So the $750,000 to $800,000 would be for the information technology.

C. Bellringer: No, the other way around: $750,000 to $800,000 for Hydro and about $300,000 to $350,000 for the IT.

S. Bond (Chair): Bowinn?

B. Ma: These are probably more questions for Kate than yourself, just because I’m new to committees as well.

S. Bond (Chair): It’s probably Kate, then, because I’m new with you.

B. Ma: Oh, fantastic. Good thing we always have Kate in these meetings.

I guess my first question is: are these sessions recorded and released on Hansard like they are in the House and so forth? They’re considered public and all that, right?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): Yes, the proceedings of this committee are transcribed by Hansard Services. We have Michael Baer here from Hansard Services today recording all of the discussions and deliberations that take place.

In addition, our office maintains a website on behalf of the committee, and on that website following the conclusion of this meeting, you’ll find meeting documents that have been circulated, considered during public session.

[4:05 p.m.]

As the Auditor General mentioned earlier in the discussion, the committee also has the capacity to move a motion to meet in camera, if required. If, for example, discussing a sensitive matter such as a risk assessment of a particular entity, a motion to that effect would bring the committee’s proceedings into confidential status, and it would only be the members and direct staff required to support that meeting present in the room.

B. Ma: I do have questions on the terms of reference now, even though I know I previously had an opportunity. I’ve read the terms of reference….

S. Bond (Chair): Bowinn, could I just suggest that we’ll go back to the terms of reference when we finish with the Auditor General? I know that she has, I’m sure, lots to do, so I want to try to bring conclusion, as much as possible, to this section.

Does anyone have any further questions? I hope you’ll indulge the Chair. I have a couple.

John, would you like to go ahead?

J. Yap: I’ve had the privilege of being on this committee in the past and also on the Finance Committee, so I’ve seen sort of both sides of the work — of this committee with the Auditor General on the service plan and then going over to the Finance Committee.

Has it ever happened…? I don’t recall. But theoretically, if we approve your plan and you go over to the Finance Committee and they have some reservations and say that they’re concerned about an increase, does that force you to redo the plan and then come back and see us to get a new plan approved? I’m just wondering if that’s something that could happen.

C. Bellringer: I, too, have not had that experience. This is probably a first, if that’s going to happen. What we have had is the Finance and Government Services Committee not approving the budget as submitted, in which case we then went away and said: “Well, how are we going to do it?” We redid our own internal budget, but it didn’t impact the coverage plan.

I’d have to first listen to what direction is given, if that is the case. At the same time, if it was just “well, it was approved here, and no, the budget wasn’t approved there,” then the first thing we would have to do is step back and say: “Is there anything in either of the plans that we could choose not to do in order to” — well, even there — “get it all done?”

If there was no direction given and there were no other conditions around it, the quick answer is because the performance audit coverage plan is entirely at our discretion, we would have to fulfil what this committee approved, and we would have to take it away from the performance audit coverage plan.

J. Yap: To make the budget work.

C. Bellringer: Well, we certainly would indicate that at the Finance and Government Services Committee, so if that was what they were intending, they would know that that was the implication of it.

S. Bond (Chair): Thank you all for the questions. I thought they were great, and they will help us as we also move forward in terms of the context of these decisions.

I guess my question around the B.C. Hydro issue is sort of…. A great segue by John. I have shaped the question this way. If we approve the plan that you have prepared and brought to committee, how is that approval characterized when you take it to the Finance Committee?

In my experience, we actually don’t have the ability to compel government or the committee to automatically grant you a $1.1 million increase. So I think John’s question is incredibly relevant, and it’s important for us to say that. While we might notionally approve of the plan, Finance has the ability to say: “We’re not prepared to increase your budget to that degree.” Can you just think about that?

The answer you gave was: basically, we’d have to adjust. So in the event that the increase isn’t provided in the magnitude of $1.1 million, almost $800,000 of which would be for the Hydro review, what would it require for you…? If Hydro is a significant priority for you, there would be a fair degree of adjustment necessary to remove other things.

Can you just talk to us a little bit about — because today our approval does not carry weight in the sense that, “Okay, Finance is going to give you $1.1 million because we think this is a good plan” — the complexity of that?

[4:10 p.m.]

C. Bellringer: It is a complex question, a very good one. We’ve managed to get by, to date, without directly auditing Hydro. My best advice to the committee is that I think the public interest would be better served, in the context of the full audit of the government’s financial statements, for us to do that audit. It doesn’t mean we can’t put safeguards in place and compensate for it in the event that that’s not the case.

It would be most helpful to me if you were to say…. I’m not trying to presume where the committee is going. But if you say, “Here’s what we’re approving. But in the event that…. Then we would like you to….” Technically, we would either have to come back to you with a revision to the plan…. If you were to approve it, and then we don’t get the money, and we think that’s going to significantly hurt the other work of the office, we would probably want to come back and say: “Could you reconsider your decision to make us do all of this, because there are some serious implications to that.”

S. Bond (Chair): That’s a very helpful clarification. We’re obviously going to hear from all of our members, but I actually think that’s an important consideration. We don’t have the ability to require Finance to provide the $1.1 million. I do think that in the event they do not do that, a trip back here is going to be necessary to talk about the adjustments to the plan based on the budget you will be provided with. I’m happy to hear the input of others, but from my perspective, that’s what I would assume might happen.

I also want to pursue the B.C. Hydro audit just a bit more from a technical perspective. As I understand it, the auditor of record, the private auditor…. Their contract is ending, and it provides an opportunity, then, for the Auditor General’s office to do that audit.

Having said that, in order to do it, it requires additional taxpayer money, training of staff. I guess I just want to better understand that if you felt there were gaps in the current audit process, what was the compelling reason that you feel…? I understand the risk assessment, in terms of the overall approach to your audits. Was there a compelling reason…? When you start to add it up, we’re looking at having to train more people to do it. We’re looking at additional taxpayer dollars. We’ve had questions today about the rigour, the ability to deliver it. We’re hearing that it may take longer. Weighing all of those things, what was the compelling reason that the Auditor General’s office decided that it needed to take on a direct audit?

C. Bellringer: We have not done the full cost impact. That would be the first thing that we would do before we even hired anybody. Part of that is because we would need to involve Hydro significantly in that exercise, and it’s very difficult to do unless there’s an indication that we’re going to be moving in that direction.

The portion that would be an increase over the current cost…. I’m not even sure if I want to say for sure, because until you do the full costing over the full five years, it’s hard to compare. But it would be in the first year where we would be hiring people and getting them trained, and they’re continuing to pay their external auditors to get the audit done. So there’s a doubling up in that period, and that’s about half of what the full cost of the audit will eventually be.

If we were appointed auditors, they would no longer be paying an external firm for the audit. So as I say, it’s difficult to compare whether or not that ultimate cost would be higher, lower or the same as what they’re paying the external auditor right now.

There were a number of factors we considered. One of them was as you look at that list of all of the large Crown corporations and see that we’re not auditing any of them. I had to step back and look at, for the office as a whole: would that increase in capacity, if you will, take us to another level within the office itself and how we’re operating for all of the financial statement audits that we do? I do believe that would be the case. It would assist us in having an attractive portfolio to hire people, so our recruitment would improve, and our retention would improve. We’re already auditing the largest audit in the province, but we’re using public sector accounting standards.

[4:15 p.m.]

This would involve allowing our staff and additional staff to have an even greater knowledge of international financial reporting standards, IFRS, which is something that is marketable. It certainly would up the game a bit for the whole office. I couldn’t put a price tag to that, but that was a consideration.

When we’re doing a performance audit…. I’m almost afraid to say this one. I’m hoping that it’s acknowledged, but at the same time, I’m putting it out there that transparency is sometimes difficult to absorb. Those audits are costing $500,000, $600,000, $700,000 sometimes. So in terms of the nature of the work that we’re doing, audits are expensive. Some of that is…. Our overall budget is about $17 million. So in that context, is it an additional cost to the taxpayer? Over the long run, I would suggest not — that we would be able to do more work.

We’ve already increased our efficiency significantly. We had quite a few hours of what we call white space, where people aren’t assigned, and we found smaller audits for them to work on.

The amount of work we can do as an audit office is infinite. I mean, there’s no limit to which ones we can choose to do. We are seeing…. On individual audits, we’re trying to do an evaluation to determine the extent to which we’ve been able to influence change, and we believe that that is happening.

It’s all of those things combined. Long answer, I’m sorry; and it’s probably not as precise as one would expect an auditor to come out with. But it was all of those considerations.

S. Bond (Chair): Maybe let me just try it from a different angle, then. I appreciate the information that you’ve provided. Obviously, part of the consideration was the evolution of the office, looking at how it manages its portfolio and pro-D and adding new staff and attracting new staff.

If I go back to the matrix that you reflected on in terms of risk assessment, because these audits are determined based on risk…. I have a separate question about the matrix in a moment.

If you were to look down the list of risks that you mentioned previously — core service, a high level of public interest, complex — was there a particular risk or series of them, other than the office not ever having done one and, “We need to look at other entities,” and all of those things….? Was there something that provided the compelling reason that tipped the scales to say, “It’s time for us to do this,” when you look at the risk assessment matrix?

C. Bellringer: I was finding it impossible to explain how the largest, riskiest, most significant organizations…. We could continue not auditing them directly yet say that was our model. I think it’s the case for all of the others, but when you get to the large Crowns, we’re immediately scoping them out. We were scoping them out on the basis of: “Well, we don’t have the capacity to do those.” Well, true. But in order to scope them in, you have to develop the capacity. So if we believe that that is the rationale across the board, then why are we automatically scoping these out?

It was a little bit of looking at it from a different angle as opposed to…. We were never looking at it and saying: “Well, these are low risk.” We were just going: “Oh, we can’t do those. They’re too big.” I’m oversimplifying it slightly to be able to get the answer out.

Why we chose Hydro over the others would…. It does have a lot to do with the qualification that we had in the audit opinion last year on the rate-regulated accounting, the directions that are given to the Utilities Commission that do impact the financial results of Hydro, and it’s almost like a re-audit to determine whether or not that’s going to be okay flowing into the public accounts.

[4:20 p.m.]

We spent a significant amount of time this year getting a better handle on and understanding that. I think if we had been the ongoing direct auditor of Hydro, we would have already had that knowledge. And that would be in the neighbourhood of what we’re talking about around the increases as far as how much extra time we’re going to have spent before we’re done.

S. Bond (Chair): I think the fiscal argument is certainly one that you’ll be making, I’m sure very passionately, with the Finance Committee. From my perspective, it’s in many ways less about that, although taxpayer dollars always matter. It’s more about the rationale to move into that magnitude of an audit. I think you would probably agree with me that it’s fair to say you didn’t identify raging gaps or anything in terms of the work that the private auditor has already done.

C. Bellringer: Correct.

S. Bond (Chair): It’s really a transition to the Auditor General’s office. But I think it’s important to understand, from my perspective, that it wasn’t because you saw glaring gaps in the work that had been done. It’s just, in your view, time to move into looking at a Crown of this size.

C. Bellringer: Yes.

S. Bond (Chair): Last question for me, and then I think Mitzi has a question.

I wondered about the risk matrix. Is it weighted? Is it, in your mind, or the way that you assess the next plan for audits…? Are there some things that come with a higher ranking, if I can use that description, which would push a particular audit ahead, depending upon where it fell on the matrix?

C. Bellringer: To a certain extent, yes. I think it was two years ago at the Public Accounts Committee meeting that there was quite a discussion around the coverage in the health sector. The committee did ask us whether we thought we were getting enough coverage in that area, given the level of expenditures and so on.

We do additional work through our oversights. We attend more meetings. So there’s some element of…. The intensity to which we apply our procedures does increase with increased risk. The B.C. Clinical and Support Services Society came in at that point, and I believe we added a health authority that year. We were only doing one, and now we’re doing two. It was a way to just recognize that that was a good point and that we had been going a little bit too much along the tradition and the history.

We did an intense risk assessment — that was before my time, but I’ve heard a lot about it — when we first started to put the coverage plan together. Then it tends to get rolled forward and updated, as opposed to starting again with a blank page.

I would characterize the decision around the Crown corporation, around Hydro, this year as being a “step back and do the blank page” look, as opposed to just a continuation of the historical practice. That’s kind of where….

Would we make a change, given a change in an organization? Maybe, but what we might…. We still have access to any of these organizations, so in the event that something comes to our attention around something that’s not even contemplated for the future, that’s even too small to be considered as oversight, we do a number of things. We may contact the ministry and say, “There have been concerns around this. It’s in your ministry. Would you take a look at it?” or we might decide to go in ourselves and take a look.

There are other ways that we would do it. We wouldn’t just add the financial statement audit to the list.

S. Bond (Chair): Thank you very much. I appreciate that.

M. Dean (Deputy Chair): Thanks, Carol. Just going back to the question of the extra money. B.C. Hydro already pays for an external audit, and the cost of that external audit annually is within the same kind of ballpark figure, the cost, as this $800,000, approximately.

C. Bellringer: Before we were coming here, I was trying to figure out whether or not that information is public. I don’t believe it is. I can’t find it anywhere. We do know what it is. There is some difficulty. I would have to analyze it further to determine how much of it is the audit and how much of it is other work that might be done by the firm. We will certainly be looking at that. It would be one of the first steps in the plan. But I don’t have the number for you.

[4:25 p.m.]

M. Dean (Deputy Chair): My point is, though, that that money is already being spent anyway. So the ask for the money to come to the Auditor General’s department is to say, “Can B.C. Hydro please be asked to divert that money to the Auditor General to do the audit, rather than spending that on a private company?” — with maybe an ask for some contingency, because you don’t know exactly what the difference might be between what the private company delivers in terms of the audit.

C. Bellringer: Generally, yes, that’s the case. Once we are in doing the audit and they’re not…. It would be moving it to us, as opposed to an additional cost.

A. Olsen: Thank you for your report and answering our questions and for your patience with us, as we hopefully become as robust a committee as you once had, as we all learn our new roles.

I guess I just wanted to put a frame around the decision that we are making about your plan and that another committee is going to make on behalf of the taxpayer. We are also looking after the ratepayer, and in the end, they are all our citizens. I get a little bit squeamish when we focus only on one of the roles that British Columbians play in this. Something that you mentioned early on — and why I think that there is value, in fact, in doing audits of the larger Crowns, especially ones that haven’t been done before — is the public interest aspect of it, which is that the service that the Auditor General of British Columbia provides is different than the service that a private corporation or private company provides.

To me, I think it is important for us to protect the taxpayer in the decisions that we make, but we’re also protecting the ratepayer and the citizen as well. That public interest component of it — for you to go through the larger Crowns as part of your regular rotation, and being able to step up your office to be able to do that and take on that as you roll through your regular plan — I think is a good idea. I’ll just leave it at that for now.

C. Bellringer: One thing I would say, in terms of whether our office is doing a financial statement audit or whether it’s being done by a firm, is we’re both doing it with the same objective in mind. They’re both to put an opinion on the financial statements, and we wouldn’t be doing a large audit like that without having the right backup plan, with who we would be accessing to provide us with advice where we need it in a specialty area.

I mean, you don’t have to go back too many years, because of crises in the financial system and so on. Audit firms are prohibited from doing an awful lot of the work that used to be done by audit firms that is now considered consulting advice. As the auditor, you’re actually not permitted to do a great deal of that. There’s a lot of disclosure around it that’s required.

It doesn’t stop Hydro from accessing anybody they need for the kind of advice that we would expect that they would continue to obtain from any firm out there and, in fact, might free up their former auditors to provide additional advice because they’re no longer prohibited by the auditing standards.

We actually do quite a few audits within the office that require a lot of technical expertise. The university audits we do now, the health authority audits, are not small organizations. Naming a few…. Well, Columbia Power Corporation, but it’s not as big as some of the others. There are a lot of smaller ones, but they’re not all small.

Public accounts, of course, is the largest one just from a logistical perspective, in terms of pulling together quite a lot of work. The staff have the technical competence around the audit. The Transportation Investment Corp. has been a large audit for us.

[4:30 p.m.]

I think one of the areas of expertise that would be the one we have to…. There’s an immediate thinking around regulated accounting and what goes into the utility, and for the ratepayer…. I think some of their transactions are large, certainly in terms of procurement. We do quite a few procurement audits within the office, and that is something we have the transferable skills for. Again, in an industry that’s quite specialized….

If you go back…. I don’t know how many years we have to go back, but we did do WorkSafe at one time and a few of the others. Again, it was in a time where we were doing those large audits, and it has faded away.

S. Bond (Chair): I do think it’s important to remind British Columbians that B.C. Hydro is being audited and that it’s not because of significant gaps that this transition might occur. There is a variety of other reasons, but it’s not based on…. It hasn’t been audited and that there are problems with the existing auditor. I think that’s a very important piece of information for taxpayers.

C. Bellringer: If I may, I will confirm that. If we had had difficulties with anything because of the oversight that we’ve been doing, and it has been extensive, it would have been brought out long ago. Again, I have to clarify in terms of the qualification within the summary financial statements. It was a qualification with respect to the summary financial statements as it related to rate-regulated accounting. We make no comment on the opinion that was issued on the public accounts. It was done under a different methodology. It was done with a different regulation.

That would be a major complication for us if the regulation stays in place and we have to audit against it. I don’t know if you want me to get into that, but it is another factor that we have to consider.

S. Bond (Chair): I appreciate that clarification on the qualification. That also sort of sets the stage that this is an evolutionary process more than it is a reactionary process to issues that exist at B.C. Hydro.

R. Sultan: You have indicated that the increment in expense that the office will incur is about $1.1 million if you take on this assignment. Is that the total cost that you will incur in this B.C. Hydro work? Or will there be some other reallocations of expense internally, within your office?

C. Bellringer: So $1.1 million is the budget request for this year, and about $750,000 of that is to do with Hydro, but there’s an additional…. That’s not the full additional cost for Hydro, because in the first year, we’re not expecting to be hiring all of the people. It goes up by about double that before we’re done. So it would be about $1.5 million. We’re anticipating it’s about $1.5 million. We would only hire what we needed.

If we were to find out that, no, it’s not going to cost that much and it would be significantly lower, then we would be going back with the next budget to indicate that…. We’re not going to take the leftovers and use them for something else. We would say that we don’t need it.

R. Sultan: I guess we might think that, order of magnitude, whether this is done privately or through your office, it’s going to cost somebody about the same amount of money at the end of the day. Is that a reasonable…?

Then the question in my mind becomes…. It relates, I think, to a question Adam was getting at. If we do it through your office, I guess the expense shows up as an expense of the OAG, as a separate line item in the government budget. If the audit is going to continue as a privately commissioned audit by B.C. Hydro, I suppose that expense is buried in the great maw of B.C. Hydro. Is that true?

C. Bellringer: When we do the audits, we actually charge them. We send the bill…

R. Sultan: So you’re going to charge it.

C. Bellringer: …so it does show up in the organization that we’re auditing.

R. Sultan: Okay. So that’s a wash.

C. Bellringer: We don’t get to use the revenues from that. It goes into general revenue, but we do bill.

R. Sultan: So then you get into the Byzantine world of B.C. Hydro’s accounts itself. We won’t go there right now.

S. Bond (Chair): I think that was the point that Mitzi made very well as well.

Are there any further questions?

I’m going to bring the questions to the floor in just a moment, but I want to thank the Auditor General for spending time with us and walking through what were largely financial questions. It’s good practice. I know that by Wednesday, she’ll be repeating those to the Standing Committee on Finance. But we have a job to do.

[4:35 p.m.]

First of all, if you look at page 5 in your “Approvals requested,” there are three requests that the Auditor General’s office has made, in terms of approvals. Then I’m going to subsequently suggest one other potential motion that we could make. If everyone has page 5, you can see the financial statement audit coverage plan through to 2020; the Auditor General continuing in ten government entities — we walked through those; then, of course, the Auditor General being appointed for one entity outside the government reporting entity, and that organization is named.

Would someone be prepared to make the motion — Mitzi, thank you very much — that we’ll take them as a package of three? Is there a seconder? We don’t need a seconder.

Motion approved.

S. Bond (Chair): Fantastic.

Based on the comments of the Auditor General, I’m wondering if we would consider a motion that looked at: should the financial request not be approved and amendments would be required to the plan, that the Auditor General come back and bring that amended plan back to the Public Accounts Committee. Would you be comfortable with that?

A. Olsen: I’m just wondering if, in fact, that’s necessary. If the Auditor General’s office requires us to approve the plan, and the money’s not approved, then isn’t there going to have to be an amended plan anyway?

S. Bond (Chair): Kate could let us know, but I’m not sure that there would be a requirement, necessarily, for the Auditor General to return to the committee. But considering the magnitude of the change that’s being recommended, which is the inclusion of B.C. Hydro, should the money not be recommended, I think it would be helpful for us to at least see that amended plan — what might be impacted if the Auditor General decides to continue with B.C. Hydro.

I just don’t think it would necessarily be routine that the Auditor General’s office would return to committee with an amended plan. So it may just be worth consideration.

A. Olsen: In that case, I would…. I don’t know. Are you able to move a motion?

S. Bond (Chair): No, I’d rather that…. Would you be prepared?

A. Olsen: I’ll move that motion, and we can debate and discuss it.

S. Bond (Chair): Kate has provided some wording. Maybe I’ll just read it so that you’re comfortable with it. It would be: “I move that should the 2018-19 budgeting estimates proposed by the Office of the Auditor General fail to be approved by the Select Standing Committee on Finance, that the Office of the Auditor General return to the committee with any amendments to the financial statement audit coverage plan, 2018-2021, which may be required.” Are you comfortable with that?

A. Olsen: I’ll move that, yeah.

S. Bond (Chair): Okay. Oh sorry, Rick. Did you want to ask a question about that?

R. Glumac: Can I speak to the motion?

S. Bond (Chair): Yes, please do.

R. Glumac: How often is it in situations like this that we presuppose potential outcomes and then try to guess sort of what would happen and then make motions for that? I mean, would it not be acceptable to wait until we see what happens in the Finance Committee, and then when we convene the committee here, we could certainly make a motion to ask the Auditor General to come back here at that time.

I think presupposing…. I mean, it’s sort of carrying a bit of a commentary in there that: “Oh, we think this is going to fail at the Finance Committee.” I feel a bit uncomfortable with making that kind of a motion.

S. Bond (Chair): I think the other side of that argument, if I might, is that I don’t think that today…. I think it’s important that the Finance Committee not think that we’re endorsing a $1.1 million increase to the budget. That’s not our job. Our job is to look at the plan, to notionally approve the plan, and if there are fiscal implications, that’s not ours to decide.

For me, it’s just a matter of saying…. I don’t think it’s saying: “Don’t approve it.” I think it’s saying that if it is not approved, the Auditor General would simply come back and provide the amended plan.

I think the other side of the argument is a significant concern for me. That if we, by approving the plan…. If it were to be characterized that we support a $1.1 million increase to the budget, I would suggest that probably the members on this side of the table would be concerned about that, perhaps more than members on this side of the table. That is a very significant decision, but it’ll be up to the will of the table.

S. Bond (Chair): Adam, did you want to speak to the motion?

A. Olsen: Yeah, I would just suggest that, actually, because we have to look at the plan, and there are a lot of components to that plan and different moving parts — and, as well, that we weren’t provided with alternatives, a series of other scenarios in which, if the increase is not provided — for us to then say: “Okay, what are we going to do…?”

[4:40 p.m.]

I don’t think this is a bad step to take, to be honest with you. I think it allows for us to continue to do our job without presupposing what they are going to do. In fact, point 4 could be part of the original package going forward — that at any point in time, if the Finance Committee doesn’t approve a budget increase, it comes back to here so that we can then have a further discussion about what the plan looks like.

S. Bond (Chair): It would become more routine, as part of the package.

A. Olsen: Perhaps.

S. Bond (Chair): Rick, back to the motion?

R. Glumac: A follow-up question on that: what is the historical precedent on that? Approving anything, in a committee like this, that has any kind of financial implications…. Is that common? I mean, maybe it’s a question for the Clerk.

S. Bond (Chair): I don’t believe it’s within our mandate to approve a budget increase. Is it, Kate?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): No, the responsibility to consider the budgetary estimates of the Office of the Auditor General has been referred, by the Legislature, to the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. As you might know, within the committee’s terms of reference, under section 10, the Auditor General is required to present, to this committee, the financial statement audit coverage plan for either approval or amendment by this committee.

There is some discretion, on behalf of members of this committee, to make any amendments to the plan before giving its approval. But given the close working relationship with the Office of the Auditor General, it seems like a good practice to clarify, as much as members might be comfortable, what your expectations are, to support the work of the office and to refine, if at all, any elements of the plan that you might feel are in the public interest.

The motion that has been proposed is not out of order in any way, but it does defer, I think, to the responsibilities that have been delegated to the other committee — in essence, to deliberate upon the budgetary estimates, the detailed estimates that will be presented by the Auditor General later this week.

S. Bond (Chair): The critical differentiation, as well, is that I don’t think anyone’s proposing to amend the plan at this stage. That is an option for this committee. They could simply say: “Well, we’re not comfortable with the plan in its entirety.” I think this is just a preventative measure to say that should it not be approved, it would come back for a review.

R. Glumac: I just want to understand this, being new on all these committees. When we make a motion on any kind of a plan, we’re basically making a motion that we accept the contents of the plan. The decision to finance it is not in the purview of this committee whatsoever.

My question is…. That is a common occurrence, isn’t it? I’m asking if, in other committees when any kind of a plan is endorsed, it’s not with any kind of an intent to endorse the financial aspect of it, but it’s just the content of it. Does it happen regularly that committees endorse plans, and then they have financial implications? Do we have to consider financial implications, in every decision that we make in every committee?

S. Bond (Chair): Well, I’m not sure about the mandate of the committee, but I certainly consider financial implications with every decision. We don’t have the mandate or authority to automatically assume that government will approve an increase in a budget to the Auditor General. That will be up to recommendations from the Finance Committee. I think it’s actually prudent for us, as a group, to say and to signal that while the Auditor General has presented the report and that notionally, we approve of the content, it does not imply that the fiscal responsibility belongs to us.

Ultimately, Finance will look at the same plan, will decide whether or not there is a legitimate budget increase. If so, the Auditor General can proceed with the plan. If not, then it does impact us, because as Public Accounts, we have to actually approve the report and the plan. I think it’s just a simple step of touching base after the relevant committee makes a decision.

[4:45 p.m.]

M. Dean (Deputy Chair): I think there are two matters here. One is: what’s the general routine? If we approve a plan here and then it gets changed, does it come back? Given that we don’t know exactly what that mechanism is, then the safest thing to do is to say: “Well, we would like to see it come back.” We make that transparent and obvious by making a motion on it.

The second thing is that this is really significant. You know, this is taking on a significant new piece of work that will transform the office and has a…. I mean, hopefully, the money will just be given to you instead of…. So it’s a wash. But your decisions, then, that you would then make, depending on what was approved, will have an impact on the plan, and we’ve sat here and approved the plan. So it might mean that two school districts or two health authorities would be delayed in order to take on Hydro, or that you wouldn’t do Hydro.

I think this committee would want to have an opportunity for having that dialogue to assist in the decision-making around reprioritization or whatever.

J. Yap: Just to add that ultimately, this goes into the vote of the Legislature, Vote 1. Is that correct? No, it’s a separate vote.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): It’s a separate vote, John. Vote 2, I believe.

J. Yap: It’s a separate vote. Okay. But the overall approval — doesn’t that, at some point, go to the Minister of Finance?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): Yes. Thank you, John. The recommendations of the Finance Committee will be compiled into a report presented to the Legislature, which is typically adopted by the Legislature. The conclusions of that report, including specific recommendations for each independent statutory officer, are transmitted to the Minister of Finance.

There have not been, in my recollection, any amendments to advice from the Finance Committee with respect to individual statutory offices — although, from time to time, there may be some adjustments and amendments to the original proposals put forward by each office.

J. Yap: I think I heard you say you’ve never seen it, but in theory, could the Minister of Finance change the budget?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): Yes, it would be possible for the minister to do that. But given the creation of this very detailed process to support the independence of the statutory offices…. Because that system has now been in place for, probably, about 16 or 17 years, it would not be recommended for the executive, necessarily, to take that role. But it certainly would be theoretically within their realm to do so.

J. Yap: Okay. Thanks.

S. Bond (Chair): John and then Adam. Sorry. John just finished. You can tell where I am right now. I’m thinking through what Kate just said.

A. Olsen: Yeah, I’m thinking through what Kate just said as well. How you remember all that….

I think I’m actually pretty good. I think that it is prudent for it to come back. There would be, rather than leaving…. I think that if we left it where it is right now, then it would be up to the Auditor General to make the decision about what the workplan should be. Ultimately, I think that falls in our lap, if I understand what our role is. Perhaps we can provide some advice as to how it would go, should the decision be made elsewhere.

I think I’m happy and ready to vote on it.

S. Bond (Chair): Anyone else?

B. Ma: Just picking up on some of Rick’s concerns…. This actually goes into my questions on the terms of reference, so this is great.

I agree completely that it would be prudent for this committee to review a plan if it is revised after our approval. My question is: if this committee does not have jurisdiction over the financial component of this plan, though, does it not simply go without saying that this isn’t an approval of that financial plan? We don’t have the authority to do so anyway, so it just strikes me a little bit curious to move a motion to reaffirm something that’s already true. And if we were doing that, if that was the intent, is it something that we will continue to do for every motion that we move forward on in future?

S. Bond (Chair): I think it’s just good practice for the Auditor General, should the finances not be provided, to come back, and that is not necessarily pro forma. I think it simply creates the precedent that if a plan that’s been approved is, for some reason, amended, there is a requirement to come back and explain exactly how the plan would change. To Mitzi’s point, it could be one school district or two of this or whatever. And our responsibility is actually to approve the plan once it’s in its final stage.

[4:50 p.m.]

I think it’s just a cautionary approach that sets some expectations that we are not responsible for the financial end of this. Should there be a change in the Auditor General’s budget, or not, the report comes back with any changes. It’s actually a fairly standard approach.

I don’t think the Auditor General would be concerned about coming back.

C. Bellringer: May I say something, or are you in the middle of a motion discussion where I can’t speak?

S. Bond (Chair): Oh, sure. Why not?

C. Bellringer: Sorry. I just wasn’t sure on formalities, because you’re in the middle of discussing a motion.

S. Bond (Chair): You just can’t vote on it. We won’t let you do that, but we’d be happy to hear from you.

C. Bellringer: That I’m quite happy with. Thank you.

If it were to be that the budget was not approved, I would feel I’d have to come back anyway, whether you’re wanting to vote that way or not. I can’t make the choice to not do what’s in the plan because you’ve just approved the plan. I would have to come back and explain to you what we’d like to do about it.

A. Olsen: That raises another question. Would we be given another opportunity to vote on a revised plan? I don’t know if we’re really getting down into the marshy weeds here. But if the plan is not approved and it comes back here…?

S. Bond (Chair): Yes, you would. Ultimately, if there were items within a revised plan that we felt were not…. In fact, you can amend this one, should you choose to. That is the responsibility of this committee. While the Auditor General may feel compelled to return, there is no technical requirement for her to do that.

I simply think that this is good practice — to say that if this does not move forward, that in…. And I think it sets a precedent for future transactions, so to speak, by this committee.

A. Olsen: I would leave it at this, then. I understand that this is a unique situation in that the Auditor General is asking for a substantial budget increase from one year to the next, because they’re simply looking to expand their portfolio of audits. So we may not have a precedent on this.

I think, to the Chairperson’s point, that it would be appropriate to have that fourth point added into the list: if there’s a budget increase that’s required, just simply to ensure that that discussion comes back to this table.

J. Yap: This is just a comment to Adam’s point. This is unique. With other independent officers, they go before the Finance Committee to approve the plan and the budget, whereas with the Auditor General, it’s split. The plan is approved here, but the budget is approved by the Finance Committee.

Am I right, Kate, that that is the unique situation here?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): One comparison would be the appearance of the Representative for Children and Youth before the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth on a regular basis.

I believe that incorporated within that appearance on an annual basis is the presentation of her annual report and service plan. In recent years, I don’t think the committee has, necessarily, formally moved a motion to approve the report. The former Chair can correct me if her memory is sharper on that point than my own. Nonetheless, Bernard Richard, the current representative, will be appearing before the Finance Committee in the coming week or so with his budgetary estimate. That could be analogous, perhaps, to Rick’s question earlier this afternoon.

J. Yap: So, Kate, there are two independent officers that have committees to report to on the plan and the budget is approved by Finance?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): Yes. Then, on occasion, we’ll have a special committee to examine work that falls under the Police Complaint Commissioner, for example, or the Information and Privacy Commissioner, to look at areas of mandate and the application of their statutes.

It could well be that committees that examine those existing statutes and make recommendations to the Legislature do so given that some of their recommendations may have financial expenditures. However, in my experience, the Finance Committee has not been held to limit their scope of authority in terms of consideration of budgetary estimates based on the work of other parliamentary committees.

[4:55 p.m.]

J. Thornthwaite: Certainly, yes, with regards to the Select Standing Committee for Children and Youth, the representative did come to the committee, but we were not in any authoritative capacity to approve any increase in our budget. That absolutely had to come through Finance.

S. Bond (Chair): Kate, did we approve the first three as a block? Mitzi moved that?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): Yes, that’s right.

Mitzi, would you like, just for clarification, to read that into the record the motion that’s been adopted?

M. Dean (Deputy Chair): I move that the Public Accounts Committee endorse the three recommendations listed on page 5 of the Financial Statement Audit Coverage Plan for Fiscal Years 2018-19 through 2020-21, as required by sections 10 and 14 of the Auditor General Act.

Motion approved.

S. Bond (Chair): Adam, did you want to use the wording that Kate had provided to read the same into the…? Kate will run it over there.

A. Olsen: I move that should the fiscal year 2018-19 budgetary estimates proposed by the Office of the Auditor General fail to be approved by the Select Standing Committee on Finance, that the Office of the Auditor General return to this committee with any amendments to the Financial Statement Audit Coverage Plan 2018-19 through 2020-21 which may be required.

Motion approved.

S. Bond (Chair): Everybody’s good? Fantastic.

Well, I want, on behalf of the committee, to thank the Auditor General for presenting to us today — and Lisa as well. We very much appreciate it. We wish you good luck when you face the Finance presentation on Wednesday. We thank you for the work that you and your team do on behalf of British Columbians. Very much appreciated.

Committee Terms of Reference

S. Bond (Chair): Is there any other order of business? I’m sure that if the Auditor General wants to…. She doesn’t have to listen to our discussion about the terms of reference.

Bowinn, did you want to ask a specific question about the terms of reference?

B. Ma: Yeah. I guess I was hoping for more clarification simply on, maybe in layman’s terms, what it is that this committee does. I read the terms of reference. It makes sense. Some of the questions I had were answered through the discussions. But what can we expect to actually come here?

My second question. We get the legislative documents on our iPad, and in some other committees, those documents show up, and then they disappear. I’m wondering: are they going to disappear on my iPad? Do I need to keep a paper copy if I want to keep that? Or is that just…?

S. Bond (Chair): I’m going to let Kate, hopefully, answer those questions in terms of what the fundamental role of the committee is. I don’t know about the iPad answer.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): I’m happy to. Thank you so much. I should mention that the committee is scheduled to have an informal orientation session this coming Thursday between 12 and 1 p.m. in the Douglas Fir Committee Room. Lunch will be served, and all members are welcome to join us at that information session.

In essence, the role of the committee is focused primarily on considering the reports of the Office of the Auditor General that are presented to the Legislature. Those are a mix of financial and performance audits as well as their financial report on the summary financial statements of the province. That provides a regular opportunity for members of the committee to hear from the Auditor General and her audit team as well as government officials of the audited entities — the ministries and other organizations that have been the focus of that audit work — and also provide a forum for questions by all members of this committee, including some oversight of government’s commitments through follow-up action plans as to the next steps in the audit process.

The terms of reference that were circulated today are, in essence, the motion that was adopted by the Legislature about a week ago, and they focus on section 1 on the referral of these audit reports, which are before the committee. We currently have, I think, 16 reports that we’re looking forward to receiving some direction on from the committee. Particularly, the subcommittee you were appointed to today, along with the Chair, the Deputy Chair and Mr. Yap, will determine how to best move forward.

In section 2 of your terms of reference, there are some other specific sections of the Auditor General Act that provide you with other additional responsibilities, including the appointment of an acting Auditor General or some discussion if there were some questions of the Auditor General’s term, as well as the consideration of the financial statement audit coverage plan considered and approved today. But in essence, it focuses on the audit work and reports that flow from the office.

[5:00 p.m.]

With respect to the iPad question, Bowinn is quite correct that our office does support the work of parliamentary committees and will provide you with advanced copies of meeting materials directly on your iPads in a special category for parliamentary committee documents.

We’ve invited a colleague from the Information Technology department to join us at the briefing on Thursday. So if you’re able to attend and you would like to receive committee documents on your iPad, please bring it to that meeting. We’ll ensure that Ian is available to help everybody with that process.

Interjections.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): My understanding is that we can set it up either way because of the high volume of print materials that will be sent and saved onto the iPad. I think that the meeting materials, by default, will continue until new meeting material is sent out. But if there are carryover items, that they would remain on your iPad. We can certainly adjust that as you may wish to direct.

S. Bond (Chair): In trying to honour our time — I know that everyone probably has commitments to run off to — I want to thank everyone for the really great questions today. The collaborative spirit around the table…. I think that’s going to bode very well for us. You’ve heard that we have a significant workload ahead of us.

Committee Meeting Schedule

S. Bond (Chair): There are 16 reports that have been referred to the committee. Each one of them is fairly substantive, and that means we all have to do our homework to be prepared. We do have, under the terms of reference, the ability to sit outside of time when the House is actually sitting. And I’m hopeful. Perhaps we’ll discuss it at the subcommittee, but I’m hoping that we would have agreement that it will likely be necessary for us to meet, potentially for a day or two, at some point in the next period of time to actually start to work on these reports and move them forward, so we can discuss things like the location.

I know the last committee often met in Vancouver for a day because an MLA who was the vice-Chair needed to be…. It was easier in Vancouver for access. So those are things we can work out. I just hope that there would be a willingness on the committee member’s parts to begin to address some of those reports by having, perhaps, a day or two in a location where we would work our way through three or four of them at a time.

I’m feeling quite compelled about the fact that there’s a large number of these reports sitting and waiting for us to deal with us. But perhaps, Mitzi and I can deal with some of that with our colleagues at the committee.

With that, we will adjourn today’s meeting and look forward to our orientation session on Thursday, hoping that you can join us. Thank you for your work today.

A motion to adjourn? Jane. Thank you.

The committee adjourned at 5:03 p.m.