Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I move that this committee again recommends that the Department of Finance continue to work with the Auditor General of Canada and GNWT departments, boards and agencies to complete the interim and final public accounts at the earliest possible date each year and in time for their respective statutory reporting deadlines.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Motion is in order. To the motion. Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a couple of brief comments again. There are or there have been, over the years, quite a number of agencies and boards that have not met the filing deadline for their public accounts and it has meant that the final public accounts were delayed. In this past year I think there were two who didn’t meet their deadline. Some of them asked for a deadline and I think there was only one that didn’t meet the deadline after they asked for an extension. So, committee feels very strongly that it is a requirement by law that people meet their statutory deadline for filing their audits and we wanted to, through this motion, note that and make sure that Finance continues to work hard with the agencies to get it done and it is working with the Auditor General, as well, which helps boards and agencies get their audits done at the right time.
So I just wanted to explain the motion. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. To the motion. Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’d like to, again, just add a little bit more context to what we heard from Ms. Bisaro and talk about, with respect to this public accounts review, that there was a number of public agencies that did not meet reporting deadlines and, according to the Auditor General, they were the South Slave Divisional Education Council, the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation, Aurora College and the NWT Business Development and Investment Corporation, otherwise known as BDIC.
Now, we went through the review of each one of them as to why and the Auditor General was indicating to us that the NWT Housing Corporation and Aurora College were working towards improvement, but the Auditor General did note that the Aurora College was a bit of an anomaly this year and they have to apply what he referred to as more of a big picture approach. So what they call a “no qualification” was warranted. That’s a terminology used in accounting. However, I should note that the Auditor General made very specific claim that if the Aurora College was to find themselves in this anomaly again, that a qualification would be warranted as they moved forward.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. To the motion.
Question.
Question is being called.
---Carried
Mr. Moses.
