The committee met at 10:08 a.m.

[S. Bond in the chair.]

S. Bond (Chair): Thank you, everyone, for joining us this morning by Zoom. I know that some of you on this video call are experts. I am not, so I want to thank everyone for making the effort to do this. We’re certainly in unprecedented times. As I understand it, from Kate’s perspective, this is a first in legislative history. Thank you all for being part of the day today.

I want to begin by hoping that all of you and your families are well. We’ve been thinking about all of you and our colleagues. To be honest, it’s been hard to be apart. You know, we do our work so much together.

I’m really glad to literally see your faces this morning and to know, hopefully, that you’re all well as we’re at home, listening to the outline that has been given to us by Dr. Henry and Adrian Dix, who have been doing a fantastic job.

With that, maybe just a couple of reminders. If you’re not speaking, please mute your microphone.

[10:10 a.m.]

Kate and I are going to attempt to keep a speakers list. If, at any point, you would like to ask a question, we can either do it by sending a message, which is on the sidebar — you’ve all tested that, and Kate will keep an eye on that — or just put your hand up. We’ll try to keep that list.

Is everyone feeling comfortable, then? Everyone knows where they’re at?

Everyone, we are ready to go. We are going to begin, then. We’ll get used to this as we go along, because this probably won’t be the only time we use Zoom technology to meet. We have to keep the business of government working.

With that, we welcome today the Office of the Auditor General and our acting Auditor General, Russ Jones, who will make the presentation. He is supported by a number of staff members.

As usual, Russ, we are going to ask you to identify your staff as they speak so that they can be noted in the Hansard record.

With that, we are going to turn the presentation over to you, Russ.

Office of the Auditor General

FINANCIAL STATEMENT AUDIT
COVERAGE PLAN

PERFORMANCE AUDIT COVERAGE PLAN

R. Jones: Good morning, Chair, and thank you, Members, for having us come today to revisit the two coverage plans that you probably saw about four or five months ago now.

With me today I have got Stuart Newton, who is the assistant Auditor General in the financial audit portfolio; Malcolm Gaston, who is the assistant Auditor General in the performance audit portfolio; and Peter Bourne, who is the principal in the financial audit portfolio.

As you may recall, Carol Bellringer came to the Public Accounts last October for approval of our financial statement audit coverage plan and provided an update on our performance audit coverage plan. At the time, we hadn’t yet met with the Finance and Government Services Committee. Carol noted that we would be requesting a budget increase from the Finance and Government Services Committee and that the audit coverage plans presented were subject to the office receiving the budget increase.

The office didn’t get the requested budget increase. Therefore, we are here today to present an amended audit coverage plan for both the financial and the performance audit portfolios. We’ve reduced our audit coverage, as you would expect. When you don’t get the budget you need, you have to reduce. We’ve been able to carry out the plans with the budgeted resources we have been provided. We will take you through the changes, and be assured that what’s left, we can do.

As many of you are aware, the office is required, under the AG Act, to table a three-year financial statement audit coverage plan for your consideration and approval. And although not required by the act, we also have been presenting a performance audit coverage plan for you to take a look at and ask any questions you might have.

Rather than go through the reports in full, we are going to focus on the changes to the plan since last October, which should make it go a little quicker. The most obvious change is that the Auditor General’s message, of course, in the two is not from Carol now; it’s from me. But the changes don’t stop there.

We are also in the midst of a public health crisis, and while we don’t know exactly how this will play out, we expect that it will impact the timing and nature of our work. It already has in the health sector, in terms of one of our performance audits. We also have a new Auditor General starting at the end of July.

I want to stress that while the plans reflect our current priorities, these are very much subject to change as we move through the coming months.

Now what we want to do is take you through the changes to the coverage plans that we brought. I think there are some slides, Kate, are there?

[10:15 a.m.]

What I’ll probably do…. I’ll get Peter Bourne, if he’s on the line, to take you through the financial statement audit coverage plan changes.

P. Bourne: I’m going to assume everybody can hear me.

Which slide would you like me to start on, Russ? Is it after the approvals?

R. Jones: Yes, go ahead, Peter.

P. Bourne: If we go to the slide that says “Planned coverage, October,” there’s a table on there. Perfect. On the screen is the table from our October draft report. This and the next slide are roll-ups of the detailed plans that would have been shown in appendix A of the reports. These tables summarize our planned audit coverage for the next three years, for the financial statement fiscal years ending in 2021 through 2023.

On to the next slide. This is a revised summarized table, and it’s from page 15 of the latest report. You may recall we describe our audit involvement as being either limited, oversight or direct, and these terms are defined on page 22 of the latest report. At the end of the day, this revised plan will continue to meet professional requirements for audit coverage under generally accepted auditing standards and will allow the Auditor General to sign the audit opinion on government summary financial statements.

I’ll go through the most significant changes to our plan by entity type, on the next few slides. The next slide has “School districts” at the top. That’s right; that’s perfect.

Rather than stop auditing school districts entirely after 2021, we’ll continue to audit one school district. In 2022, we will audit school district 63, which is Saanich, using our own resources. So we’re auditing it directly rather than perform oversight procedures, which is what we were planning under the previous plan.

For the post-secondary sector for 2021, we have removed the audit of Capilano University. We will perform oversight procedures in that year instead. This results in us directly auditing only one post-secondary institution rather than two. The other one that we’re auditing is UBC.

As noted on the screen, we are also removing our two-year oversight stints at three different colleges, being the College of New Caledonia, Northern Lights College and Selkirk College. However, we are adding a fourth year of oversight at the University of Northern B.C. based on our assessment of risk at that entity.

The next slide. If you’ll notice, for health authorities and hospital societies, there are no changes to the audit plan for health authorities. We continue to audit one health authority. Currently that’s Interior Health Authority. Since the October draft plan, we noted that the operations of one hospital society, St. Joseph’s General Hospital [audio interrupted] another organization. Therefore, it has effectively been removed from the list of entities. This is why the total number of entities has changed from 144 to 143.

For Crown corps, we will no longer audit B.C. Infrastructure Benefits Inc. as of 2021. Instead, we will perform oversight procedures. There are no changes to the trust funds category.

I think that is it for me, Russ.

R. Jones: Thanks, Peter.

Chair, would you like us to then go into the performance audit coverage plan and then take questions, or would you like questions on the financial one, at the moment?

S. Bond (Chair): I think it would be good if we finished the slide presentation so that we can get those off the screen. Then if have to go back to them…. Why don’t you finish your presentation, and then we’ll do a series of questions.

[10:20 a.m.]

R. Jones: I’ll now ask Malcolm to take you through the performance audit coverage plan slides.

M. Gaston: Thank you, Russ.

A brief recap to start. The plan that we shared with you in October had 13 audits listed as in progress. We now have 12 audits underway. This includes one new progress audit that we started on the JUSTIN system. That report was originally published in 2013, but it excludes the forest revenue and Legislative Assembly audits that we had previously listed as underway. You can find the complete list of in-progress audits on pages 9 and 10.

Our plan now includes 33 new audits that we expect to start sometime in the next three fiscal years. This figure is five less than we had in October, a reflection of one progress audit that we’d started as well as four audits that have come off the plan. Two of these were dropped for budget reasons, which I’ll discuss just in a moment. The other two were audits on the Legislative Assembly.

The plan that we provided in October had four separate audits of the Legislative Assembly, so that was purchasing cars, physical assets, compensation and benefits, and governance. We still anticipate carrying out audit work at the Legislative Assembly, but we want to work with the Legislative Assembly to determine where we can best add value.

You’ll now see that we identify future audit work at the Legislative Assembly, but we’ve not defined the size or scope of that work. A full list of our future audits can be found on pages 11 and 12.

We have 18 audits coming off the plan, an increase from 15 in October. Most of these have been the subject of considerable change or have recently been reviewed or audited, changing the risks that the team had originally identified. For example, our internal audit and advisory services has recently looked at the same area that we had on the plan, so business continuity planning was one, and PharmaCare is another. We don’t want to duplicate the work that they are carrying out.

There are two audits that we have to remove because our budget request was not approved, as Russ mentioned. We have finite resources, so that dictates how many audits we can conduct in a given year. That’s reflected in our list of future audits.

I would like to stress, going back to talking about ones that have come off, that just because an audit is coming off the plan, this does not mean that we won’t continue to monitor that area. We have ongoing communications with ministries and with Crowns and keep up to date on major initiatives and programs. As part of our ongoing planning process throughout the year, we will keep in touch with what’s happening in all areas, including those that we have been taken off the plan here.

Several that have been flagged for our internal long-term plan, which covers a five-year period…. You can see the full list of audits coming off our plan as well as the rationale for why on pages 13 to 15.

In closing, the plan looks pretty similar to the one that we shared in October. Just a few modifications to accommodate new priorities as well as our budget.

R. Jones: That concludes our presentation of the changes to the financial statement and performance audit coverage plans. As you know, we’re seeking three approvals related to the financial statement audit coverage plan from the committee. They might come up on the screen, or they might not. I think you have them in front of you, so that’s good.

As well, we’re happy to take any questions at this point in time.

S. Bond (Chair): Thank you very much, Russ, and those who participated — Stuart and Malcolm. I think that went very well.

Kate, thank you for getting the slides up on the screen. I know you were learning how to do that just on the weekend, so it worked very well. Thank you for that.

A reminder that there are three items that need to be approved. One is the proposed plan, which is noted in appendix A, so you may have that up on another device.

[10:25 a.m.]

Two, though it wasn’t spoken about specifically at length, the Auditor General is asking permission to continue as the direct auditor of seven entities. That is because the term is going to exceed five years. They would like to continue on with work as the direct auditor in seven entities, and they’re listed.

The last item, of course, is the Auditor General continuing as a direct auditor for one entity outside of the GRE.

There are the three recommendations that we need to approve today.

Let me just see here if we have any questions. Does anyone…?

Rick, Ralph and Mitzi, in that order.

R. Glumac: I just had a quick question. Looking through the list of audits removed, I just had some questions about No. 9, the forest revenue audit. It looks like it’s saying that there was some work done, and it’s out of date. “We will continue to monitor activities in this sector and use that information to determine whether a full audit of this area would be valuable.”

I read through this, and I don’t know…. I mean, there was some work done. A letter was provided. I don’t know that anything was done or anything came out of that. When I read through all these, this is one that kind of jumps out at me a little bit in terms of maybe….

I’d like to understand better why this audit was fully dropped, given the context of work that started, never really was completed, and no results really came out of it.

S. Bond (Chair): Russ, would you like to take that and respond, or do you have someone who’d like to answer that for Rick, please?

R. Jones: All right. Malcom and I will try and answer it.

It’s a good question, Rick. It started a number of years ago. We went in to look at the controls around forest revenues. Because it was being done by a number of people on the financial side…. We’d get so far, and then we’d have to go on to our financial audits. Then when we came back, we had to update.

All along the way, as we were looking at controls and found some places where we thought they could do better, we mentioned it and gave the lack of controls and what we found to the ministry to work on. They’ve been working on it in combination with us trying to finish this audit.

We finally thought this year…. It’s probably four years now. They’re still continuing to work on putting in place a number of the recommendations that we had come up with, which were fairly similar to what we would come up with when we do a financial audit around controls.

If we had gone back in now, we would have probably had to spend another, I’d say, half a year trying to finish off the audit, from an audit standpoint. We felt our resources could be better used in other places at this point in time, as the ministry continues to implement some of the recommendations we came up with in the management letter.

S. Bond (Chair): Malcolm, did you have anything to add to that?

M. Gaston: No, I think Russ has really covered most of it there.

Probably just one thing is that our work becomes older. As Russ said, for us to be able to put out an audit report, we would have to update everything, which is quite a lot of work. Those conversations have been taking place with the ministry.

I would just go back and repeat what I said earlier, which is that the fact that something is coming off the coverage plan does not mean that we’re not still monitoring this area. It doesn’t mean that it couldn’t come back on to the coverage plan if we think there is value in us going back in and looking at this area again and potentially producing a public report.

[10:30 a.m.]

R. Glumac: There was a letter sent that summarizes areas of improvement. Is there, in other areas where there are recommendations…? We were trying to put into place this system of follow-up. With these suggestions for improvement are we doing that, and can we get the appropriate ministry to respond to that in some formal way?

R. Jones: Yeah, the letter that we are…. We haven’t actually sent it yet. It’s almost finalized. As I say, along the way, when we were trying to clear up findings with them, they would look at them, and they’d put some controls in place to start addressing those control deficiencies. I think we’ve got two or three fairly broad recommendations, if I’m not mistaken. I haven’t seen the final letter yet. I suppose we could bring it to the committee, but it’s not a formal report.

We are going to continue to monitor it, because it’s…. I mean, part of the problem, when we were looking at it to start with, was that the whole softwood lumber agreement was being revamped, and all that sort of stuff. So we were very cautious on what we were going to release and what we couldn’t.

One of the things that we’re taking a look at is…. The more important area right now to look at — we were looking at the scaling and revenue side of things — is actually looking at the pricing mechanism that’s in place as well. We’re putting it into the plan to see where we could best add value going forward. To be quite honest, a lot of the stuff that we came up with 15 years ago, I think it was…. They’re still in progress of trying to put controls in place.

So yeah, we don’t have a formal report. I don’t know what the mechanism is in terms of having to give it to the Public Accounts Committee for something like this.

R. Glumac: Sorry, if I could just follow up again. When I hear that something was done 15 years ago and it’s still in progress, that sort of makes me worry a bit. If there is any way that we can, I don’t know, look at this, whether it’s looking at the letter or just following up on it in some way…. That’s a long period of time to not really have a whole lot of progress.

That’s my thought on that. If the letter can come to the committee, if that’s appropriate, maybe that would be a good way to carry this conversation forward and make sure that all of the work is followed through with.

S. Bond (Chair): Thanks a lot, Rick.

Kate, can you just clarify for us if that would be…? I just want to check and try to honour Rick’s concerns there. Would it be appropriate, then, for us to bring the letter to committee when it’s finished? Can we do that? Can we make that request?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Yes, I’d be happy to facilitate that as a follow-up item from today’s meeting.

S. Bond (Chair): Okay, thank you, Rick. Hopefully that will help, and we can have some further discussion. Thank you for raising that.

Russ, we’ll take it, then, as a direction that you can bring that letter to continue that conversation.

With that, the next person on my question list is Ralph.

I’m going to disappear for about 15 seconds. I’ll be right back; I promise.

R. Sultan: First of all, Russ, I think it’s very, very, very unfortunate that you did not get the full funding for the audit plans that you submitted to the Finance Committee.

[10:35 a.m.]

Without going into the tos-and-fros of what happened at that meeting, let me just say, in terms of cost-benefit, that I think this activity by the Auditor General is one of the high-value, benefit-relative-to-costs activities within government. I think it is deeply, deeply unfortunate that your budget was trimmed. I’ll let it go at that.

The other reason to view that with some regret is to stand back and look at the times we’re in. As Kate and Shirley and others have alluded to, we have this health crisis which is rapidly transforming itself into an economic and financial crisis. We see, in the United States, Mr. Trump sends to Congress a $2 trillion spending program, and it takes them all of about 48 hours to say: “Okay, we’ll vote for that.”

Not to be outdone in Ottawa, the latest number from Prime Minister Trudeau is something like $200 billion. Namely, if they’re going to spend 10 percent of their economy on economic support and recovery in the United States, well, we’re going to match that and do roughly the same in Canada.

Of course, here in British Columbia, we are under a lot of pressure to look to the government — to look to Mr. Horgan, to look to Carole James — to somehow find money, in Glenn Clark’s vernacular, to shovel off the back of a truck. That’s almost the degree of sophistication, I fear, at least some of this money will be subject to.

There will be years in which to offer our second-guessing and recrimination about how prudent and careful we were with taxpayer money during a health crisis which threatens to wipe out a significant percentage of the human race — compared, in many commentaries, to World War II. I don’t think I’m here to quibble about that but to suggest to you, Russ, and the Auditor General’s department that they have a very deep responsibility now to try and figure out what’s going on. Is there some way we can assess what has been happening so that, for example, the wise guys don’t move in and steal a big chunk of it for themselves in the general helter-skelter of the moment?

I think these are very unusual times, very unusual on the government-spending side. It’s under huge pressure. I am, like everybody else is, applying that pressure to spend money quickly, get it out the door. I would assume that auditors say, “Uh-oh, wait a minute now. I see lots of warning flags going up. Who’s getting it? Who’s authorizing it? What’s the audit trail?” etc.

Given this crisis, both health and economic and now, for the government, financial — again, I regret that you’ve had your budget trimmed — is there any sense that you can get on top of this situation?

S. Bond (Chair): I’m just going to interrupt for a minute.

Mitzi, can I ask you to continue to chair?

M. Dean (Deputy Chair): Absolutely.

[M. Dean in the chair.]

M. Dean (Deputy Chair): Ralph, had you finished your question?

R. Sultan: The question is: given this surge of government spending in very fluid circumstances, undefined new programs — we’ve never done it before, in our history, and certainly not of this magnitude — can we, as we look back on this very unfortunate crisis five years from now, look at the numbers and say: “Well, you know, it was difficult times. We did the best we could, and what we spent was spent wisely, under the circumstances”? Will we be able to say that, Russ?

R. Jones: Thank you, Member. I’m not sure we’ll be able to say it quite the way you mentioned it. But I don’t think you have to worry too much about…. In terms of from a financial statement standpoint, we’ll be working with the comptroller general. Our staff are well aware of what’s going on in terms of the new programs that are being put in place and which year they’re falling into — a normal type of auditing for financial statement purposes.

[10:40 a.m.]

It could provide a whole new field for performance audits; that’s for sure. One of the things that the new Auditor General and the executive in the office have already talked about is possibly doing, across the country, a joint audit with the rest of the provinces just to see how a pandemic like this has impacted the economy and just everything that’s going on.

As we talked about, with the cut in our budget, we reprioritized the resources that we’re using and where we’re putting them. But at the same time, we can still carry out all of the important stuff that we need to carry out.

You’re right. This could — two, three, four years down the road — impact the different types of performance audits we do. Hopefully, on a financial audit point of view, it’s going to be every year that we look at this and make sure it’s in the right financial statements. We’ll be working with the comptroller general to ensure that that happens.

R. Sultan: That’s a good answer, Russ. I hope history will vindicate your confidence.

I have a second question, Chair, if I may.

M. Dean (Deputy Chair): Go ahead, Ralph.

R. Sultan: Looking at the financial audit plan, of course, we see further confirmation of this very ambitious undertaking to do a direct audit of B.C. Hydro. I guess it’s almost not that easy for me to look back 12, 24 months and the days when we got so excited about regulated accounts and what the heck is going on out there and some questions about the projects being undertaken and how in the hell did the IPPs get treated so well, etc.

Frankly, I think the whole B.C. Hydro file has kind of cooled off in the meantime. I’m partly biased, if you will, by a trip that Jordan Sturdy and I took up to Bridge River, to Lajoie dam and the Seton project, some of the stuff I worked on when I was a student many eons ago. I’ve got to say that it was impressive. The staff are well-informed, alert. They know what the issues are.

I came away, at the grassroots level, feeling B.C. Hydro is an organization that we, as taxpayers, can be very, very proud of. It certainly calmed down my fears that rate-regulated accounting…. Is that the biggest issue of the day? Well, maybe it isn’t.

I, from my own perspective, don’t feel the anxiety to say: “Well, let’s go in there and just really look at every nook and cranny in B.C. Hydro ourselves to satisfy ourselves with a direct audit.”

So I just pass that on. If there is a need to free up resources to delay or scale back or something of the B.C. Hydro audit, that would not cause me to lose any sleep, Russ.

On the other hand, let me throw another hand grenade into the discussion. An organization that I think all of us have certainly gotten to know quite well, certainly in the Legislative Assembly proceedings, that I think is getting deeper and deeper and deeper into the mire, with all sorts of financial ambiguities…. I did refer to this the other day when you came and visited our caucus. I’m referring to ICBC. The financial reporting of ICBC has become very politicized — to be very frank in a non-partisan group here. It does not, in that environment, lend itself to calm, rational discussion.

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to understand how ICBC is running its affairs over the last several months, with some, I should say, expert outside help. And I think this organization…. Think of it. It is reporting liabilities — claims to unsettled claims — which are approaching the order of magnitude of one quarter of our entire provincial debt. I mean, this is big stuff. This isn’t some tiny little insurance company; it’s a big business. I’m afraid that we’ve sort of lost our grip over it. I castigate governments of all complexions for allowing that to happen.

[10:45 a.m.]

If ever there was a Crown corporation exposing the taxpayer to huge liabilities — and certainly controversial from a service point of view and politically red-hot stuff — it’s ICBC. If this committee is going to do its job, I think, at some point, it should reflect on whether there is not a role for the Auditor General in trying to figure out what is going on, if only to have a benchmark of where we’ve been, as it now transitions into a brand-new sort of company.

The thing is in constant motion, and that’s when I get very uncomfortable. So I just throw that out. I know it’s kind of a big idea in a short meeting, but that’s my view.

M. Dean (Deputy Chair): Thanks, Ralph. I’ll ask Russ if he wants to respond. It’s also something we might want to put on a future agenda, to have a full discussion about it.

R. Sultan: I appreciate that, Chair.

R. Jones: Thank you, Member.

First of all, just to address B.C. Hydro. B.C. Hydro — we took it on this past year. This is our first year doing it. It has taken a fair amount of resources. It is also something that our staff are learning from. I mean, it’s a very big audit. It’s a very complicated audit.

Just to pass on one of the comments from the chair of the audit committee, he’s been very pleased — even though he was skeptical to start with about whether we could do this audit — in terms of a number of better practices we’ve brought into the financial reporting and what not that’s going on at B.C. Hydro. He says that it has proven to him that a new set of eyes looking at it made sense. So kudos to our financial audit team for doing that.

Unfortunately, because we don’t have the depth of experience that some of the private firms do, we’ve had to use a number of experts from those firms in order to do some of the more complicated accounting issues. In international financial reporting, there are some very complicated areas that Hydro seems to dabble in — all of them. So it certainly has required us to spend some of our resources on those resources from the firms.

ICBC. Peter Bourne and myself do provide oversight in terms of going to all the audit committee meetings with the current auditor, which is PwC. It is an audit that, in the past, we thought about taking on. But again, we lack, probably, the resources, from an actuarial standpoint, to be able to carry that audit out as well as we should be able to, whereas the firms can.

It would probably be a good discussion to have. When Mr. Pickup joins us in July, I shall make sure he’s aware of what the Public Accounts Committee has been talking about. We should probably address it, maybe, in the fall at our next coverage….

M. Dean (Deputy Chair): Thank you, everybody.

I wonder, Russ, whether you could just do some kind of a presentation from the oversight perspective.

Kate, we could make it a full agenda item at some point in the future.

R. Jones: Thank you, Chair. Yes, we’d be pleased to maybe go through in a little more detail what an oversight looks like, what we actually do, why we do it and how we interact with the firms. I think you’ll find it interesting.

M. Dean (Deputy Chair): Can I just ask committee members: can you do a thumbs-up if you’re in agreement with that? Nods, thumbs up. Yeah, okay. Thanks, everyone. We’ll take that forward. Thanks, everybody.

I was on the list as well. We just have a few minutes left. There was nobody else — thank you, Kate, for asking — wanting to ask anything, so I’ll just wrap up, if that’s okay.

I just wanted to respond to what Ralph had been saying about the budget.

R. Glumac: I just want to say that I did have a question after.

M. Dean (Deputy Chair): Okay. If we have time, Rick.

The budget wasn’t trimmed; it was that the increase that was requested wasn’t approved.

[10:50 a.m.]

The Office of the Auditor General hasn’t had a reduction in the funds that it receives. Russ is agreeing with me. So thank you for that.

I wanted, as well, just to say to everybody that Shirley and Kate and I had talked about the conference in the summer, and we want to commit to the committee that we will make a decision by April 15 about what we’re going to recommend about the conference in the summer — whether we’re going to try and do something virtual in a smaller amount of time or whether we’re going to try to postpone it or whatever. Obviously, it’s on our radar. It is a priority, and we will come back to committee members about that.

I was just interested, Russ, in terms of COVID and how everybody is coping, how your staff is doing. We’ve heard in the past that it’s been difficult for the office to retain staff, and I’m hoping that this isn’t making things more difficult for the office. It would obviously impact the work and proceeding with the priorities and the plan.

R. Jones: Yeah, we have everybody pretty…. I’d say 99 percent of the staff are working remotely from home right at the current time. It is difficult times, not only with our staff trying to audit but with our auditees, because most of their staff aren’t on site either. So we’re doing the best we can.

I think what could end up happening, and I’m not saying it will at this point in time…. The comptroller general and I are going to have to have a chat to see whether or not this crisis is actually going to push out the date for the financial statement release. It’s normally around mid-July or whatever, or early July. That may not be possible, but Carl and I are going to be chatting this week around that, and we’ll see what happens. If need be, we may have to go talk with the Minister of Finance and recommend that it may take a bit longer.

Also, the subsequent events, things that are happening that may occur after the end of April, always cause auditors a problem, especially financial auditors, because there’s going to be a lot of money flowing and programs and promises and everything else. So we’re really going to have to take a look at that.

As far as our staffing, we’ve got enough people to get it done, if we can get the information to audit. There’s a whole number of moving parts at this point in time.

As far as my staff go, everybody seems to be healthy, which is good news. We’re just trying to figure out, now that it’s moving along — into three weeks now and maybe even in another month or a month and a half — how we can best support staff in working from home so that they can get the job done.

The performance audits — we’re doing as much as we can, given the access to data as well. It’s a new area for us. I mean, auditors are wanting to have things in order, and this is not the order that you always like to see. We’re doing, I think, as well as you guys are. I mean, it’s a tough time.

M. Dean (Deputy Chair): Thank you, I appreciate that. Please pass on our appreciation to everyone in your team. It’s difficult times, and as Shirley said to begin with, I’m really happy to see everybody and see that everybody is healthy.

Thank you, everyone. I know Bowinn and Rick did have questions, but we do have a motion, because we actually have to approve the plan to be able to move forward. I’d like to suggest that what we do now, unless the questions are critical to approving this motion, is we approve the motion and adjourn and that we convene another meeting in the near future so that we can actually then address the questions that Rick and Bowinn had.

Can I see if people are in agreement with that, please, committee members?

Bowinn, Rick, is that okay with you? All right, thank you.

This is the motion that I’m happy to move. I move that the Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts, pursuant to sections 10 and 14 of the Auditor General Act, endorse the three recommendations listed on page 5 of the Financial Statement Audit Coverage Plan for Financial Statement Fiscal Years Ending in 2021, 2022 and 2023, as presented on March 30, 2020.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Mitzi, if I might interrupt. I’m sorry. As you’re chairing this portion of the meeting, I would suggest it would be best for another member to move that motion.

[10:55 a.m.]

M. Dean (Deputy Chair): Okay. Who would like to move the motion?

J. Thornthwaite: So moved.

[That the Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts, pursuant to sections 10 and 14 of the Auditor General Act, endorse the three recommendations listed on page 5 of the Financial Statement Audit Coverage Plan – For financial statement fiscal years ending in 2021, 2022 and 2023, as presented on March 30, 2020.]

Motion approved.

M. Dean (Deputy Chair): Thank you, everybody. I appreciate your patience. Thank you for participating in the first virtual committee meeting. Kate and Shirley and I will reach out to you all and try and set up another date, and we’ll pick up.

Also, I think it’s timely to actually look at an update from the Office of the Auditor General in terms of the timing of the public accounts. We’re in unprecedented times, so I think we will need to keep in touch more to be able to monitor that.

Does that sound reasonable to everyone? I’m seeing nods. All right.

Thank you, everybody. Look after yourselves, wash your hands, and see you again soon.

R. Sultan: Well done, Mitzi. Thank you.

The committee adjourned at 10:56 a.m.