The committee met at 8:03 a.m.

[P. Milobar in the chair.]

P. Milobar (Chair): Good morning, everyone.

Today we just have a light agenda, and it’s really around consideration of the Auditor General report.

With that, I will turn it over to Mr. Pickup.

I’ll maybe let you introduce who you have here with you today, and we’ll take it from there.

Office of the Auditor General

FINANCIAL STATEMENT AUDIT
COVERAGE PLAN

M. Pickup: Good morning, and thank you. Nice to see you all again. It seems like it’s been a very long time.

On my right is Molly Pearce, who is the audit principal in charge of our summary financial statement audit, preparation of the financial statement audit coverage plan and who will be walking through a presentation with you shortly. Over to my farther right is Stuart Newton, the assistant Auditor General responsible for the financial audit portfolio, who will be happy to answer your questions today as well.

A couple of comments before I turn it over to Molly to walk through a very brief presentation for you.

I’d like to start by acknowledging that with respect to the OAG B.C., we conduct our work on the Coast Salish territories. Primarily, this is on the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking peoples traditional lands, now known as Victoria, and the W̱SÁNEĆ peoples traditional lands, now known as Saanich. I’m grateful to be a visitor on this land and strive to be mindful to the connection it holds to the Indigenous peoples on these territories.

I appreciate all the work the team has put into this financial statement audit coverage plan, especially since this is a process that is continuously being refined. A special date for us this week is…. Of course, this week marks the end of the fiscal year, which is very exciting for accountants and auditors alike.

[8:05 a.m.]

I arrived in July of 2020 as the Auditor General here. This is the first full fiscal year that I have been a part of, so that’s exciting. Today, March 29, is also significant for us at the Office of the Auditor General of British Columbia. I’m very proud to say that today we will be tabling our 12th report of the fiscal year to the Legislature.

That brings us to levels of output that we haven’t seen in a very long time. That’s during the pandemic, while people have been, you know, dealing with the pandemic personally and professionally. It’s also the 20th report to the B.C. Legislature in the 20 months that I have been here.

I’m very proud of the work of the people in our office and the office itself. It’s been a big team effort to get all of this done, so I want to thank those who may be listening in today as well. That’s the audit teams. But it’s also the many other people who work very hard to support our audit teams, whether they’re in critical audit support services or administrative services or any of the other key functions. We wouldn’t be able to do this job without them. I did want to mention that, since we are here.

By way of introduction, before I turn it over to Molly, of course, we are seeking approval of our three-year financial statement audit coverage plan for fiscal years beginning March ’23, ’24 and ’25. As you know, under the Auditor General Act, I am required to table a three-year financial statement audit coverage plan for your consideration and approval.

The financial statement coverage plan essentially indicates, in fairly simple terms, what government entities will be audited by our office and which ones will be done by private accounting firms. This plan has been prepared in accordance with the requirement of the act.

One of the goals of the plan is to ensure that we have the right depth and breadth of knowledge about the business of government so that we can focus our efforts on the areas of greater risk. It is also designed to meet generally accepted auditing standards in order to allow me to form and sign my audit opinion on the government’s summary financial statements.

The coverage levels do not vary greatly from year to year, so the focus of the discussion, we thought, today, would likely be on the proposed changes to the financial statement audit coverage plan.

I will now turn it over to Molly for an overview of the plan.

M. Pearce: Thank you, Michael.

Good morning, Chair, Vice-Chair, members of the committee. We are here seeking three approvals, which are noted in the Plan at a Glance. These are approval of our financial statement audit coverage plan, approval to continue as appointed auditor for six government entities where the term is greater than five years and approval to continue to be the appointed auditor for the provincial employees community services fund, which is outside of the government reporting entity.

The annual audit of the summary financial statements is the largest audit performed in British Columbia and 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 our office and private sector auditors.

The Auditor General audits central government, which includes, among other things, all government ministries. This plan, for entities outside of central government, meets professional requirements for audit coverage under Canadian generally accepted auditing standards and will allow the Auditor General to sign the audit opinion on the government’s summary financial statements.

These standards require us to be involved in the audit of all significant entities included in the summary financial statements. We define our audit involvement with the 140 government entities and three trust funds as being direct, oversight or limited.

Direct is where our office performs the audit with our own staff or a contracted firm. In 2023, this is ten organizations. Oversight is where there is a private sector auditor, and we conduct oversight procedures. For 2023, this is 27 organizations. Limited is where there is no fieldwork by our office. We do, however, communicate with the auditor, and may direct audit work as required. For 2023, this is 106 organizations.

[8:10 a.m.]

In deciding our level of involvement, we look at the risks involved both at the entity and the sector level, as well as the capacity of our office. We also look at new organizations when there are new entities, because we are entitled under our act to be the auditor of new entities for the first three years. There is one new entity in this plan. However, it does not warrant us as the direct auditor.

In the plan, we have to balance the benefits achieved through auditor rotation with professional standards that require us to maintain 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 auditing standards, to ensure our 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 this year’s plan, we are requesting approval to continue as the auditor of six entities, not including the Liquor Distribution Branch, as it is part of a ministry. Of the six entities, one is a shell corporation that takes less than ten hours to audit. We provide rationale for these appointments on page 18 of the plan.

Turning now to the detailed plan, on page 15 of the report is the summary table of our planned coverage by entity, fiscal year and level of involvement, for the next three years, for the existing 143 entities, for financial statement fiscal years ending in 2023 through 2025. This table is a rollup of the detailed plan, as shown in appendix A of the report.

The plan also includes changes to our coverage for certain entities since the last coverage plan was prepared. Some changes are discussed on page 12 of the plan, and all changes are outlined in appendix B.

Of note are…. In the 2020 fiscal year, we took on the audit of B.C. Hydro, which is the largest of our Crown audits. Originally, we had intended to be the auditor through fiscal year 2024. However, we have made a change where we will end our direct involvement in B.C. Hydro at the end of fiscal 2023 and move to an oversight role.

We will no longer directly audit Columbia Power Corp. and Columbia Basin Trust after this year and will instead move to an oversight role. We have added a couple of school districts for oversight and direct audits in the years going forward, we have added a college to our plan, and we have added a few other organizations in either a direct or oversight role to balance the plan.

Looking at trends by organization type, for school districts…. In the past, we have directly audited up to five of the 60 school districts at any one time for five years each. At the moment, our plan is to move to auditing three school districts directly and performing oversight procedures in another three school districts.

For the post-secondary sector, in the 2020 fiscal year, we took on the audit of the University of British Columbia, which is one of our larger audits. We will be the auditor of UBC for the duration of the plan. We also plan to have an oversight role in five to eight universities, colleges or institutes in each year of the plan.

For health authorities and hospital societies, we will begin to directly audit the Provincial Health Services Authority in 2023, as 2022 is our final year as the direct auditor of the Interior Health Authority. We plan to have an oversight role in five health authorities and one hospital society each year of the plan.

For Crown corporations, we plan to direct audit five to seven Crown corporations and have an oversight role in ten to 12 Crown corporations across various sectors during the three-year plan.

For organizations outside the reporting entity, as noted on page 19 of the report, we plan to continue with one engagement outside of the government reporting entity, the provincial employees community services fund.

Also of note is appendix C, starting on page 31, which shows that there are over 100 subsidiaries, partnerships and joint ventures that are consolidated into the government entities in the plan. We have noted where these additional entities may be audited by our office versus a private sector audit firm. In some cases, the subsidiaries are not audited.

That concludes an overview of the plan. I will now turn it back to Michael.

M. Pickup: Thank you so much for that, Molly.

Perhaps now we’ll pause at that, Chair. Happy to take questions and comments on the plan.

[8:15 a.m.]

A. Mercier: I just have two basic questions. My first is about the B.C. Transportation Financing Authority.

On page 18, one of the reasons you ask for the appointment exceeding five years is: “Our audit opinion on BCTFA’s financial statements has been qualified since 2011, which increases our assessment of risk.”

I guess my question is about the qualification. If you could walk us through that. Is that qualification borne out of the historical issue between the comptroller general and the Auditor General on how to account for transfers of money from other orders of government for infrastructure projects such as that? Or is it a different issue?

Quickly, a second question. I would imagine that for an office like the Auditor General, it probably ties up a whole bunch of staff and resources to do direct audits of very large Crown corporations like B.C. Hydro. So would one of the benefits of going to an oversight role with Hydro, with Columbia Power be that it frees you up to do a broader breadth of work?

M. Pickup: I’m going to take the easier question first, which is your second question. I’ll look to my colleagues, Stuart and Molly, if they have more detailed knowledge of BCTFA, always with the provision to get back to you if we need to gather more information.

Maybe I will take the second question. It is the easier of the two, which is really bad of me. Yes, when we get in and we — what I would call — cycle in to be in an organization as a direct auditor for three or four years, it gives us an opportunity to get to know that organization, get some in-depth knowledge, if there’s a significant component, for example, of the summary financial statements.

Then it probably makes sense to take those resources and go see something else — get into school districts, get into a health authority so that we’re all around the province in the government reporting entity, since we can’t be everywhere. So yes, that’s absolutely the answer.

I did say I was taking the easier question, Stuart.

S. Newton: On the TFA is the traditional qualification, the ongoing qualification. For that reason, it may occur again as well. There are additional transactions, as well, that we need to monitor. It’s also significant, as described in the note as well.

N. Sharma: I have one question.

Thanks for the presentation.

I’m really curious about when we use our third parties for auditing purposes. Do we have a process to make sure that the auditors that are auditing that are independent or stay independent of the organization, in the sense of…? They’re making sure…. After a few years, they recheck if they need a new one.

Those processes, I’m sure, are being checked. I just want confirmation.

S. Newton: As we do our plan, we look at what we’re rotating in and what we’re rotating out. We’re also very aware of auditor terms in a number of these entities. We usually don’t pick up an entity until their auditor term ends. If we do have something that is significant, we typically adjust by a bit, because the terms are anywhere from three to five years. So we are assessing that.

There’s also a requirement…. We do provide direction through the letters of instruction at the beginning of the audit cycle to all the auditors, for the government entities, making some very specific requirements. They also do respond back. There is a response back as far as completing the summary financial statements, where we get packages back from all of the auditors, as well, providing the additional information we want as well as confirming their independence.

M. Pickup: Perhaps I would add to that as well. I would say — and this is a good thing — that we have a very good relationship with the auditing firms here in British Columbia, as we did in Nova Scotia. They are key to us being able to get this done.

We do things like meet with them on a regular basis, where we all come together. The partners from the firms come in. People leave who they’re from at the door, and we all sit down and have a good discussion to say: “Okay. What are some issues we might want to talk about? What do we want to share here?”

It’s a very solid relationship but one…. Ultimately, we’re responsible for the summary financial statements, so we have to be comfortable with the work that they’re doing. It is a very good relationship and one that is working well.

[8:20 a.m.]

D. Coulter: I have what I think are easy questions. If I’m correct… I’m looking at the school districts here. So you’re auding actual, specific things within school districts, not the entire school district?

M. Pearce: The financial statements.

D. Coulter: Of the school districts. Okay. It’s just that you had some lists here beside the school districts.

That said, I was a school trustee. We get audited financial statements every single year. Are you going over those audited statements? Are you looking for different things, or are you just doing a whole separate audit?

M. Pearce: For the school districts, if we’re the direct auditor, we’re doing the complete audit of the financial statements. If we’re doing the oversight role, we review the financial statements. We review the auditor’s file.

Also, as part of our consolidation work, we have what’s called school district 99, which is a rollup of all the school districts. We would have touch points on different school districts building up to that consolidation of the 60 school districts, but we don’t go in, in detail of all 60.

Does that answer your question?

D. Coulter: Yeah, I guess so. I’m just a little confused as to why…. They’re being audited already, so I’m just….

M. Pearce: They’re audited by private sector auditors, but we would rotate in and replace the private sector auditor for that year. Usually for a five-year term. Sorry I wasn’t clear.

D. Coulter: So it’s not separate audits. Okay, I get it. Thank you very much.

M. Pickup: I would add one thing to that. I think it is important. Part of why we cycle through…. It’s not that we don’t trust auditing firms. We’re quite comfortable with the opinions audit firms give. Part of why we want to see these organizations is that unlike an audit firm…. They are there to do a financial statement audit. We always keep our eyes open and our hats on to recognize that as the Office of the Auditor General of British Columbia, we could come and do a performance audit.

If we get in and we’re doing school districts, for example, and we are there to do a financial statement audit, if we see some issues — governance, capital asset issues — we could decide to come and do a performance audit. That’s part of why we cycle through. It’s to sort of keep a sense of what is happening, through the government, to potentially watch for performance audit issues as well.

That’s a unique lens that we would bring to it. That’s not a criticism, obviously. It’s just that firms aren’t there to do that.

N. Letnick: Thank you for the report.

Just a few questions. One is the issue of performance audits. The report we have here is about financial audits. Do you have a list of past performance audits you’ve done currently, like in the last couple of years, and the ones that you plan to do? Can you share that with us? I’m new to the board, so I’m not sure whether that’s something you’d bring forward here for review, as well, just like the financial audits.

That’s the first question. I’ll ask a few more after that.

M. Pickup: Sure. I will try to make a shorter, more focused answer to that.

Part of why the financial statement audit coverage plan comes here for approval is it’s required in the Auditor General Act for that. For the performance audits and the planning that we do in the performance audits and the audits that we’re actually going to do…. That’s not required to be presented anywhere, in terms of approval. We pick the performance audits that we’re going to do. That’s sort of the technical authority type of answer.

What we will be doing is…. In the past, we’ve always done what we’ve called a performance audit coverage plan, completely available on the web. We can send it to you, in terms of the last ones that have been released. The performance audit coverage plan identifies the performance audits that we’re going to do.

Starting this year, we’re going to build our planned performance audits into our service plan. We’re going to eliminate the production of one of the separate reports. We’re trying to be a little bit more efficient here and get some of this stuff into a shorter format, into one report where we can.

When we come out with the service plan, it will have identified the performance audits in there. Those that are currently underway are also on our website, in terms of audits underway. I can get you the link for those as well.

N. Letnick: That would be great. Thank you.

Specifically on the performance audits, the one that I’m interested in right now is Site C. Having been at the cabinet table when the project was approved many, many years ago, I’d like to see how it’s actually doing financially, performing, and whether or not it continues to be according to budget.

[8:25 a.m.]

That’s the kind of thing I’m looking for. Is that the right place, in a performance audit? Or is that somewhere else — that the Office of the Auditor General would actually look at Site C and report back to the people of B.C. on how we’re doing there?

M. Pickup: It depends what you’re asking for, and I’ll tell you why I say it depends. I’m always watching the things that you might be asking that are more of a management role.

If it’s an update on how things are going, budget to actual, if there are questions on how something is being managed month to month, quarter to quarter, year to year, it’s always worth, I think, pausing to say: “Is that something, perhaps, we want an update?” The “we” being you. Is that something you want an update directly from the organization on, and how would you go about trying to get that update? What is the process to get that update?

We always kind of watch what is the management type of question you are asking. If it’s an audit type of question, then we always go to: “What is the audit objective? What is the audit question? What are we trying to audit?”

On Site C, we will have a report coming out in April on fraud risk management of the Site C project. So that one will be coming out in late April, end of April. That’s scheduled. That’s just about at the completion.

In terms of any other work that we might be doing, it’ll come through this performance audit coverage plan, if we are doing it.

I would say, Chair, we are always happy to come have a discussion when we table our service plan that will include identification of performance audits. Again, that’s an explanation/discussion. That’s not part of the approval process. That’s not how the Auditor General Act works, unlike the financial statement audit coverage plan.

I’ve lost track, now, of your question. Am I keeping up on your questions?

N. Letnick: You’re doing very well. Here come the other two, I think, simpler questions. Do we audit government boards? For instance, the RTB, residential tenancy branch. My office gets quite a few complaints, on both sides, landlords as well as tenants, on adjudications. Do we, as an entity, go back and review the boards and see whether we’re getting value for money or performance, or is that something that no one does? We just leave the boards on their own.

M. Pickup: My colleagues can adjust/supplement anything I say here, if they wish.

If something is in the government reporting entity and is part of the 140 organizations, we can do a performance audit if we want to do a performance audit, if something bubbles up as a risk. Recognizing in a wonderful year like we’ve just had, we can do about 12 performance audits a year. That’s about the max.

When we look at a government the size of British Columbia, we have to figure out where we are going with these performance audits. But if it’s in the government reporting entity, if it’s a performance audit–type issue, if there’s an audit question there, it’s something that we can consider. We’re always watching for what we may be hearing about organizations. That can factor in for our consideration when we do performance audits.

That’s the performance audit side. On the financial audit side, if they’re part of the government reporting entity, then they would come through here either being direct or oversight. The particular organization that you’re talking about is the residential tenancy branch, RTB.

Are they part of the government reporting entity? Yes.

C. Fischer: They’re part of the consolidated revenue fund, so they would be audited as part of government’s overall financial audit and be subject to all the guidance, regulations and policies of government as well.

N. Letnick: Right. Again, it’s just me. I’m not speaking for the board. I’m inquiring as to whether it’s something more than just the financial qualifications or results of the board. I’m looking for the fairness of the process, the acceptance of the results. A performance or a value-for-money kind of thing.

In other words, if we have a board — it could be this one or any other board — operating under the government entity that we’re getting a lot of complaints on…. Other than the Ombudsperson’s office, can we direct it to the Office of the Auditor General to have a look at?

Maybe not for today, but at some point, someone can educate me as to where the line is on that, because I don’t want to take up the board’s time.

The last question I have is a simple one, I think. It’s Okanagan College, which happens to have one campus in my riding. You’re moving to a direct audit. Why? Why did you pick Okanagan College?

[8:30 a.m.]

M. Pearce: When we look at choosing organizations, we try to get a mix of locations as well as size of an entity. We don’t want to be auditing everything that’s in the Lower Mainland, because it’s a very large province.

Okanagan College. Their auditor term was coming to an end, so it fit. It wasn’t in the Lower Mainland, and we don’t have a college right now.

N. Letnick: So it wasn’t anything that stood out or any financial misdeeds that got your attention or any of that stuff.

M. Pearce: No.

N. Letnick: It was just a luck-of-the-draw kind of thing.

M. Pickup: I would suggest more than luck of the draw, not because of the former things you said but because, I think, by design, as Molly indicated. We want, strategically, to be across sectors. We want to be doing direct engagements across various parts of government. But likewise, we want to be geographically across the province as well.

I think there’s a benefit to the somewhat unpredictability and some element of surprise, if you will, that we are coming to do audits. It reminds organizations, as well, not to forget about us, that we can come and do the financial audit, for example. It reminds them we can do a performance audit as well. So it’s good to be in different places, strategically.

P. Milobar (Chair): Here I was really hoping the answer was going to be because it’s in Norm’s riding. [Laughter.]

R. Glumac (Deputy Chair): I have a question. There are some Crown corporations and other entities that don’t have any audits over the five-year period from 2021 to 2025. I guess it would be helpful to know, for these entities, when they were last audited. Are there any here that have gone a long period of time without being audited?

M. Pickup: I’ll look to my colleagues.

If it’s something you want to get back to the committee on….

M. Pearce: I think, yeah, because….

Interjection.

M. Pickup: Are we clear exactly what the ask is?

M. Pearce: Under the Crown corporations, ones that don’t have any direct or oversight in the last five years — wondering if they’ve been audited in the past or the last time they were audited.

R. Glumac (Deputy Chair): To clarify, I guess, all of the entities in appendix A — when they were last audited. Just curious.

M. Pearce: Okay. There will be some that we haven’t audited direct or had oversight, that we’ve just had limited involvement over time, especially with the 60 school districts. It’s going to take a number of years to rotate through all of them.

S. Newton: Just an additional piece too. Some of the entities, based on their size and looking at the size of the summary financial statements, wouldn’t be material or significant to affect the summary financial statement audit in total. Those are less likely to be picked up, so there are, theoretically, possible entities that would float along and not get audited due to their size.

They’re still audited by an external auditor that we can rely on, which is a pretty good sense of reliance. But our need to go in and understand it and its impact on something as large as the summary financial statements is quite diminished.

M. Pickup: Maybe when we get back to you — we’re kind of having a team meeting out loud here — it’s answering that question but put an additional column in, limiting to two bullets with two lines to say exactly what Stuart said — just two bullets for each of them so it’s not too much to read.

R. Glumac (Deputy Chair): That’d be great. Thank you.

P. Milobar (Chair): Just maybe to clarify and follow up on that, though. If it is one of those smaller, not material to the overall scheme of things, but an independent auditor that is out there — KPMG or BDO or whoever of the world…. Even if they’re in the run of their five-year, they have the ability to alert you and say you might want to start taking a harder look at this. There’s that open conversation back and forth in terms of those independent companies that are doing these audits as well. Correct?

[8:35 a.m.]

S. Newton: Yes, there is. We meet with the audit firms monthly and, typically, are discussing upcoming or new issues. Certainly, as there are changes in accounting or changes in audit methodology, we are well aware of their challenges or issues that they’re finding as well.

We also, as Michael described, have a very good working relationship with the audit firms. So we would be made aware if there were issues as well.

P. Milobar (Chair): Do they have to alternate audit firms as well? If they do use one firm for five years or so, do they have to switch out and go to a different firm again? Or is it that they can have a 15-year relationship with the same audit firm?

S. Newton: A lot of what the audit firms would be doing would be required by the profession itself as professional accountants. As far as how long they could take, an audit client…. Also, some firms are doing internal partner rotations, so there is a different individual on them. But from our experience, we’re seeing five-, seven-year turnovers.

M. Pearce: Yeah. They’ll go for an RFP. There seems to be the turnover happening in the organizations.

M. Pickup: The thing that I would add to that, too, is that many of these firms have quality control procedures in place to require partner rotation, second partner review, this kind of thing as well. Ultimately, it is our responsibility as what we call the group auditor, the one signing off on the summary financial statements, to make sure we’re comfortable with the work that is being done.

R. Glumac (Deputy Chair): Given that there’s information coming back, does that mean we delay our motions until we get that information?

P. Milobar (Chair): We could. I guess it’s up to the committee, whether they feel it’s a material update or not.

R. Glumac (Deputy Chair): With that information, we might want to suggest an audit on a particular organization or something.

P. Milobar (Chair): Okay. Just, I guess, a question to the auditors, then. The information that’s been requested…. If we hold off approval waiting for that information, (a) does it create other problems with your service plan in terms of timelines, and (b), how quickly could that other information come forward?

M. Pickup: I think the first part of that answer is, obviously, we have to respect and want to respect the committee’s wishes and what the committee wants. The approval process exists for a reason, and this process exists for a reason, so we have to follow that.

Then the practical aspects of that. I’ll look to the team to say how long to get back to the committee with a summary like that.

M. Pearce: Not long. It’s in the file.

M. Pickup: A couple of days?

M. Pearce: Yeah.

M. Pickup: Okay. So we would look to get back to the committee by the end of the week.

Some practical issues, obviously, recognizing everything I just said and respecting that back-and-forth. Probably many of the answers are going to be related to significance and materiality, I assume, and the things not being overly material. Anything is possible — right? — in terms of a discussion around a new organization. Recognizing that this is ’23, ’24, ’25, ’23 could be more problematic than ’24-25.

S. Newton: Practically speaking, for the ’23-24 year-end, most entities that are no longer being audited by us are probably out for RFP to be able to get auditors in place, because they would want their auditor in place by April 1.

The other piece is…. Depending on the entity that’s selected, they may already have an existing contract with an auditor for, let’s say, another two or three years. So while it may be something that the committee decides we need to do, we have not in the past that I’m aware of been able to break the contract that they already have with their auditors. It shows up, but then we work on when the next turnover piece would be. If it’s a significant entity, pragmatically, it could be another year or two before we’re able to pick it up, because they’re already having an existing auditor.

If there is a concern that the committee feels is important, we can, from an oversight perspective, go in under oversight right away to be able to review the firm’s planning, engage in the audit and finance committee meetings of that entity as well as look at the final file review of the auditor to be able to get a better sense of the auditor’s audit opinion.

[8:40 a.m.]

There are ways that we can get in a little early, but it wouldn’t be direct audit, like within a year, depending on when the contract with their auditors ends — if that helps.

M. Pickup: Chair, if I might, that might pose an interesting solution to this — if you consider it appropriate to move forward with this plan — if we get back to you with the answers to those questions and if you have concerns, we pick them up through our oversight and ask those. We can always ask unique questions if you say: “I have a concern with this one that you’re not auditing. Could you pay special attention to that? Can you ask about this? Can you look at that?”

Then we could take it away and do that. Then that would avoid some of the problems. Then we could also look at, in the future: do we want to pick that organization up as well? If I’m allowed to make that suggestion to you, Chair, it may be a practical way to meet all of the objectives.

P. Milobar (Chair): If I interpreted the answer correctly, it sounds like regardless of what we may want to do in ’23, that gets very problematic, obviously. People are in their fiscal year end, and a new fiscal starts on Friday for most reporting agencies. So that’s understandable.

Obviously, this is a rolling, three-year plan. I’m now new as Chair, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that we don’t lock this in and we don’t see you again until 2025 when we review the next three years’ worth of plans. There must be the ability to amend or update this three-year plan based on future conversations or things of that nature.

M. Pickup: Yes. We come back every year.

P. Milobar (Chair): Right. So what I’m getting at is, I guess, we could…. In theory, it sounds like we could still approve the plan today, potentially, with the understanding that that information is coming back, which may lead to conversations around either, in the short term, oversight or, in the ’24-25 year, the potential to add in an actual audit of some of those agencies. It’s ’23 that we’re not going to be able to materially affect anyways with your audit plan.

M. Pickup: I think that’s an even better suggestion than the one I made, yeah. That would work.

P. Milobar (Chair): I’m just worried…. I appreciate the information you’re asking. I think it would be actually nice to take a look at. But then we’re not feeling that we have the pressure to only half look at it and say, “Thanks for the report, but then we didn’t really look at it,” and hold you up on your ’23 audits, but at the same time, give it the proper review that it probably needs and have the right level of conversation with you about it, moving forward.

M. Pickup: I think that would work wonderfully.

P. Milobar (Chair): Is the committee comfortable with that as a way forward — with the commitment that we’ll pick it up and discuss it? Okay.

Any other questions? No?

We do have a motion on page 21 with the three recommendations. As we just heard, obviously those are subject to potential review, moving forward.

J. Arril (Clerk of Committees): Thank you, Chair. I’ll just provide a quick overview.

As Michael noted at the outset of the presentation and as all members are aware, the committee is required by statute to approve the financial statement audit coverage plan. In terms of approvals, on page 21 of the plan, there are three approvals that have been requested. Generally, this is rolled into one motion for the committee to consider. Members have a copy of that there.

Then by practice, there’s also a second motion which the committee may wish to consider. It just simply clarifies that should any changes to the plan be required, the Office of the Auditor General would return to the committee with those updates.

P. Milobar (Chair): I’m not sure if anyone has questions or wants to make the motion.

[8:45 a.m.]

D. Coulter: 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 21 of the Financial Statement Audit Coverage Plan – For financial statement fiscal years ending in 2023, 2024 and 2025, as presented on March 29, 2022.]

Motion approved.

P. Milobar (Chair): We should probably move the second motion as well.

D. Coulter: I move:

[That should amendments to the Financial Statement Audit Coverage Plan – For financial statement fiscal years ending in 2023, 2024 and 2025 be required, the Office of the Auditor General will return to the Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts with any such amendments.]

Motion approved.

P. Milobar (Chair): I believe that’s around it, unless there’s any other business. If the members could just hang around for a minute or two afterwards, I’ve just got to give you an update on the future-meeting piece. Other than that, I think….

M. Pickup: Can I make one quick comment? I think it’ll take care of some of this. Our plan for the next financial statement audit coverage plan will be to come back in the fall. Rather than coming back in March, a day before the next fiscal year starts, we’ll advance it by five months.

P. Milobar (Chair): Okay, great. That will probably help, too, then, with the questions that were asked and stuff, as well, right? It’ll give us that opportunity.

A motion to adjourn.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 8:46 a.m.