Thank you. The motion is in order. To the motion, Ms. Bisaro.
Thanks, Madam Chair. I’d like to just comment a bit on this and on the timing of the public accounts that this report references. The completed public accounts were tabled on the 23rd of October of 2013 and the deadline for tabling of the public accounts is the 31st of December of 2013. So this was only the second year, I think, in quite some time that the public accounts had been tabled in advance of their deadline. So we were really pleased that the government was able to do that. In addition, we were able to get an embargoed copy of the interim public accounts and that’s the government portion of the public accounts, it doesn’t include all the education authorities and the health authorities and so on, but we were able to get the interim public accounts as a committee on the 12th of September in 2013 and that was in advance to the business plans that we were about to discuss. It certainly made things a lot easier for us, gave us information ahead of time, it was very close to the mains and, in future, if it’s at all possible to get them earlier that would be a preference of committee. Getting the public accounts, even though it’s only part of it, but getting it within a couple of days of when we’re going to discuss business plans makes it pretty difficult to go through that whole document.
I do want to say that the government, in the last couple of years, has done an excellent job of advancing the timing and the completion of the public accounts. This motion asks for them to be completed by August 31st of each year. This is a repeat of a motion that we made last year as a committee, or a recommendation last year, and it’s not to suggest that the government is not doing a good job, they are, and we are gradually getting closer and closer to that August 31st deadline, but as a committee we felt it important to put this recommendation in to indicate that August 31st is our preference. If we can ever get there, that’s certainly a better time than receiving it any time after August 31st. That’s the background to the motion.
Thank you. To the motion.
Question.
Question is being called. The motion is carried.
---Carried
Ms. Bisaro.
