Thank you, Mr. Moses. Motion is in order. To the motion. Mr. Moses.

Thank you. I just want to make some comments in terms of the audits that weren’t meeting the deadlines. Before we began this process, a lot of agencies and government departments weren’t. This was almost a common practice. I just wanted to make the comment that since then, and since the practice of public accounts that Government Operations has been doing, there have been some huge improvements. But still, again, we want to ensure that agencies do meet their legislative requirements moving forward and we also do understand that there are challenges throughout the Northwest Territories in terms of chartered accountants and the services that they provide. Even though there are challenges, you want to really make sure that we get those audits, because they do help moving forward in terms of our business plans and the way we run business as well. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Moses. To the motion.

Question has been called. The motion is carried.

---Carried

Mr. Nadli.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that this committee recommends that the Government of the Northwest Territories continue to provide updated timetables for schedules for the environmental assessment of potentially contaminated sites for which the GNWT is responsible to be included annually in the public accounts. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Nadli. To the motion. Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. To put this motion into context, environmental liabilities have a new accounting standard referred to as PS 3260 and that is referred to as liability for contaminated sites. Committee reviewed things like the Giant Mine environmental liability and another 129 potentially contaminated sites. Dialogue between the government and the OAG staff did put some degree of uncertainty about how the GNWT was calculating its cost to remediate and record them in the public accounts. In theory, the process and the practice should be doing so at the beginning of the year. We are led to believe that this practice is being done near the end of the calendar year. This is something that would have to change. We did ask the Auditor General his thoughts on that. Some of the feedback we were getting back from the government was they did not have the time to get out to some of the sites. The Auditor General was quite clear that there cannot be any excuse. It is the role of the GNWT to get out there on time, and it is recording and it’s our legal responsibility and obligation to do so.

Since then, Mr. Chair, we’ve been given some degree of certainty that the GNWT will comply with these new provisions, new accounting standards, but it will be up to the future Assemblies and standing committees to definitely modernize, not to modernize but to monitor this performance moving forward. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. To the motion.

Question has been called. The motion is carried.

---Carried

Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that this committee recommends that to enhance transparency, the Government of the Northwest Territories improve the quality of reporting in the public accounts, including providing a detailed explanation of how the government met the requirement of its Fiscal Responsibility Policy for the year in question. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The motion is in order. To the motion.

Question has been called. The motion is carried.

---Carried

Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that this committee recommends that in the interest of transparency and accountability, the Department of Finance share the findings and recommendations of the Internal Audit Bureau with the committee in confidence, particularly where the Government of the Northwest Territories relies on those findings and recommendations as substantiation for its action taken. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The motion is in order. To the motion. Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just let me confirm my notes here. We know that at a very high level, programs and services are reviewed and evaluated and audited. We know that the comptroller general sits on what we call the Audit Committee and reviews a number of these programs and services for the improved corporate risk management. So, in essence, this is some very high-level internal audit work that has been done for the department so it can run smoother and be more efficient for public accounting.

We all know through questions in the House earlier this year that for the year 2013-2014, this committee approved 12 such projects. The committee, as being the Audit Committee, approved 12 such projects and addressed roughly two-thirds of them. Of those two-thirds of the projects that were evaluated, there were 47 recommendations to which the Department of Finance, according to information received by committee, only implemented about 67 percent of them. So, the bottom line is that there was some degree of reluctance from Cabinet to share the findings of the Audit Committee information, basically its findings and recommendations and implementation.

So, again, what this motion does is we stress that the standing committee in the 18th Assembly needs to hopefully work with the Cabinet to unveil, if I can use this term loosely, to unveil a bit of this degree of secrecy on corporate risk management and make this information available to standing committee, as it does have a bearing on audit opinions and the overall fiscal health of the GNWT. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. To the motion.

Question has been called. Motion is carried.

---Carried

Mr. Nadli.

Thank you, Mr. Nadli. The motion is in order. To the motion.