Thank you, Madam Chair. The Standing Committee on Government Operations has presented its Report on the Review of the 2012-2013 Public Accounts.
The public review took place on January 24, 2014. The committee’s report includes 10 recommendations. The standing committee thanks Assistant Auditor General Terry DeJong and his staff at the office of the Auditor General of Canada for their generous assistance in this review.
The committee also thanks the NWT comptroller general, Warren St. Germaine, and his staff for their assistance in the appearance before the committee during the public review.
The committee feels strongly the timely completion of the public accounts contributes to accountability of government. For this reason, the first four of the 10 report recommendations include with improving the timeliness of the public accounts.
The report acknowledged a notable improvement of the timeliness of the public accounts over the previous years and makes recommendations for future improvements.
The report also recommends that a list of government agencies not meeting the deadline for completion of their audits be included each year with the public accounts.
The committee gave consideration to the Government of the Northwest Territories fiscal position and the challenges faced by government in paying for the services it provides to the public. The report encourages the GNWT to take steps to maximize its own-source revenues, paying particular attention to self-reporting taxes such as income tax, liquor, fuel and tobacco taxes.
Again, with respect to the GNWT’s fiscal position, the committee took note of the commitment made by the GNWT to be accountable for its own Fiscal Responsibility Policy by reporting on the debt management results of government through the public accounts.
The report recommends that future public accounts include a detailed explanation of how the government has performed for the year with respect to the Fiscal Responsibility Policy and makes suggestions as to how this can be accomplished.
The standing committee also paid particular attention on the notes on accounts receivable and on loans receivable. The committee again expressed its concern with the amount of money owing on accounts receivable from the Government of Nunavut and with the loss of revenue to the GNWT in maintaining such a large interest-free receivable.
The report recommends it reviews its accounts receivable from Nunavut to develop targets and measures for improving collections and to identify and write off those debts deemed to be uncollectable.
The committee, again, took notice of the significant mortgage receivable owning to the NWT Housing Corporation and Members reiterated their belief that the NWT Housing Corporation could be doing better in collecting on these debts.
The standing committee recommended again this year that the government monitors loans receivable and develops targets and measures to improve collections with a view in reducing the allowance for doubtful accounts to less than 30 percent of the total loans receivable.
Environmental liabilities have become a major issue in public sector accounting. The standing committee took great interest in learning more about the remediation of environmentally contaminated sites for which the government is accountable. The committee requested and received a list of all sites requiring remediation and has included this list in Appendix B of this report.
The committee recommends that the government continues to provide updated timetables and
schedules for the remediation for all known potentially contaminated sites for which the GNWT is responsible; further, that this list be included annually in the public accounts.
The Standing Committee on Government Operations concluded its report by recommending that the government provide a response to its recommendations within 120 days. The committee intends to continue to give priority to its mandate to review the public accounts so that the GNWT’s spending issues are publicly examined and all relevant information is placed before the public. Thank you, Madam Chair.