Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Historically, environmental remediation costs have been handled as a post-year and supplementary appropriation by this government. Given our new-found post-devolution powers as stewards of the land and environmental cleanup, this current practice of seeing an appropriation for the annual accrual for such liability is a direct violation of current public accounting standards of practice. According to the Office of the Auditor General of Canada, these new accounting standards require these remediation costs to be done up front.
Can the Minister of Finance confirm that the Office of the Auditor General of Canada assist the departments responsible for remediating sites under devolution, and did the OAG fully explain to these departments this is now the norm in accounting standards?
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The Minister of Finance, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We are taking all the steps necessary along with all the other departments post-devolution to make sure that we comply with all the appropriate statutes, requirements, regulations and guidelines.
We haven’t had confirmation if the OAG staff did confirm that they did meet with these departments, but can the Minister of Finance explain why his department is still currently in direct violation to these public accounting standards of practice today?
We just had a successful audit. We are going to be tabling the public accounts in the next little bit, and we fully expect to be compliant as required.
We still hear that the department here is compliant. We haven’t seen the final results yet, but I can tell you that the standards of practice are in violation, so to be fair I will ask this one more time and offer to the Minister of Finance to clearly articulate why his department refuses to deal with environmental remediation costs properly.
We fully engage ourselves in complying with all the necessary regulations and requirements that govern us, or if we have any other kind of involvement with the senior government like the federal government, we will, of course, work to comply in those areas as well. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s difficult to continue with these types of questions when we continue to hear a paid public announcement here by the Minister. Clearly, the Minister and department are keen in ignoring these standards of public accounting.
So in preparation for the upcoming public accounts, can the Minister maybe enlighten us as to how many other breaches of accounting standards the Department of Finance intends to violate this year? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
As we sit through the political bavardage of my colleague, we can clearly see he’s on a fishing expedition. We, of course, pride ourselves on complying and having good audits, Aa1 credit rating, budgets passed unanimously in this House, public accounts that meet the test, and we are going to continue to hit those standards. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.
