Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a second motion. I move that, as part of the standard reporting process, the comptroller general include a list of agencies in the consolidated public accounts that did not meet the deadline for completion of their audits.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The motion is in order. To the motion. Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to just speak to this motion as well. The public accounts include all of our arm’s-length entities. It includes our Crown corporations. It includes our health authorities. It includes our education authorities. There are many, many authorities which complete the consolidated public accounts. We have all the government departments and then we have all the other authorities. Some of those authorities have a fiscal year end which is June 30th, and that makes it rather difficult for the government to get the consolidated public accounts done by August 31st, which was what I was referencing earlier; however, they’ve done a very good job of doing that.
In each of the two years that we’ve gone through the public accounts, there have been entities which have not met their statutory deadline for reporting or for having their audit done, so we wanted to make sure that that was noted. In this past year there was one entity, and it was the NWT Housing Corporation, who did not meet their deadline for the completion of their audit. That certainly was an improvement over the previous year when we had rather more than that. I can’t remember exactly how many. But we feel, as a committee, that any entity that does not meet their deadline for their audit should be reflected in the public account so that if somebody in the public wishes to go to the public accounts and see how various entities are doing they can see that, oh, yeah, last year the Housing Corporation didn’t meet their deadline for their audit. Sorry, Minister, but there it is.
---Interjection
They were building houses. Sure. You still have to account for the houses. That’s the background on this motion.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. To the motion. Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I think Ms. Bisaro summed it up quite well. Again, there is a fiduciary obligation on behalf of all of our stakeholders to report their financial statements to public accounts and to this government, and as Ms. Bisaro mentioned, the Housing Corporation… Actually, there were four that did not meet the criteria, and I wanted to make sure that that was clear. We had Aurora College that required an extension. We also had NWT Business Development Investment Corporation that also needed an extension date, and we had Northwest Territories Hydro Corporation who also required an extension date.
The purpose of this motion is clearly to put on notice all associated public agencies that they have an obligation and that they have to make sure that they get their affairs in order to make the public accounts deadline. That being said, I can tell you that should these public agencies fail to meet this obligation criteria, I can only assume that in future public account audits the committee might request these agencies appear before committee or their designate to explain why. We’re basically giving all these agencies a heads-up. This is a requirement that will be from the Government Ops committee to make sure that, again, affairs are in order, these are solid dates, they are given fair warning, and these are the rules of the game, and we’re hoping that all public agencies will adhere to them.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. To the motion.
Question.
Question is being called. The motion is carried.
---Carried
Mr. Yakeleya.
