Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are for the Minister of Finance. I want to start with a couple of questions. The Financial Administration Manual accounting control section notes that failure to comply with policies and directives of the Financial Administration Manual may result in actions under part 10 of the Financial Administration Act. I’d like to ask the Minister what is the process for determining whether policies and directives have been complied with or not. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Minister of Finance, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The act lays out processes for various departments. Ministers, deputies and all their staff have that information available. There are checks and balances through the system, approval processes required. As well, there are audits done on a regular basis. We table all the reports in the House. When there are concerns raised, they are backtracked to wherever they originated and we make efforts to remedy those situations. Thank you.
My second question is what are the steps needed to start such a process in action? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
This is a daily practice that managers deal with throughout their various mandates and authorities. If circumstances come to light, if they are considered to be illegal or criminal, there’s a process. If there are steps that haven’t been followed or steps that have been missed, there is a different process that comes into play. We table all the contract documents on a regular basis. If there is a concern in this House that they want to assert that there’s flagrant wrongdoing, that’s a whole different matter than the normal practice than we have here of making sure that we are accountable in a transparent way to the public through all the documents that we table and the processes that we have through the FAA. Thank you.
The Minister makes some kind of subtle distinction there and I guess I need to ask more what is meant by that. I asked what the process is for determining whether something has been complied with or not, whether a process has been complied with and what the steps are needed to initiate that process. Apparently there are two different processes that the Minister is talking about and I require more information on distinguishing between those two. Thank you.
When a contract is let, there is a process that is initiated from the time depending on what kind of a contract it is, if it’s an FRP, if it’s a tender, if it’s a different kind of contract, there’s a process. There are checks and balance all along the way within the various departments to make sure this is being done by the numbers. The Members stand up in the House and raise issues about specific contracts with veiled and not thinly veiled allegations that there is some type of wrongdoing. We’ve got all the documents here. We’ve laid it all out. Issues in the Legislature are different from the normal course of action that happens on a daily basis in government is the distinction that I was making. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My last point of confusion here is what documents have been laid out. I haven’t seen any documents on this other than what I’ve researched myself. I am very interested in the documents that the Minister is talking about. Thank you.
We bring to the House public accounts, we bring to the House contract documents over $5,000. This is one of the documents that’s tabled. It’s on the Internet. If the Member wishes specific information that he doesn’t have access to, I’d be happy to assist to make sure that he’s given all the information that he thinks or would like to have access to. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Tu Nedhe, Mr. Beaulieu.
