The Office of the Auditor General of Canada : Government in Exile? (Working Paper 31)

How can a "servant of Parliament" be held in check if it disregards the constitutional conventions of responsible government and takes a place in its own right in the representative institutions? the paper presents a history of the modernization of the legislative audit in the federal Parliament. It considers the evolution of the powers and practices of the Office of the Auditor General, how its role has become intertwined with that of Treasury Board Secretariat, and the eclipse of the House of Commons' Standing Committee on Public Accounts. The paper is an abridged version of a paper prepared for a conference in Saskatoon in November, 2001. It is to be published in a UBC Press volume edited by David Smith, John Courtney and Duff Spafford of the Department of Political Science at the University of Saskatchewan. The Press will hold copyright. See also "Biggest Scandal in Canadian History," School of Policy Studies Working Paper Number 23.

The Debate on First Nations Education Funding: Mind the Gap (Working Paper 49)

It is at long last becoming part of the public discourse that improving living conditions and opportunities for First Nations communities in Canada is a national imperative. It is also widely recognized that the education is critical to fostering a better future for First Nations people. Yet, for many First Nations youth, particularly those on reserve, completing even high school is well beyond reach. The graduation rate of First Nations people living on reserve was 35.3 per cent as recently as 2011 compared with 78 per cent for the population as a whole. At the same time, the First Nations population is young and growing fast - in First Nations communities 49 per cent of the population is under 24 years of age compared to 30 per cent of the general population. Despite some incremental improvements in education success rates for First Nations students in recent years, the education gap between First Nations and the rest of the country is increasing. The concerns expressed in the 2011 Auditor General report continue to hold weight: "In 2004, we noted that at existing rates, it would take 28 years for First Nations communities to reach the national average. More recent trends suggest that the time needed may still be longer.

"Biggest Scandal in Canadian History": HRDC Audit Starts Probity War (Working Paper 23)

The article describes the nearly year-long political and media uproar that followed on the release in January, 2000 of a qualitative or soft “audit” of management control in the federal government department, Human Resources Development Canada, and analyses the contributing factors. The article argues that the auditors’ examination of project files for programs delivered by grants and contributions was so abstract and poorly executed that nothing whatever can be concluded from the work. Factors that favoured the “scandal” interpretation include across-government New Public Management reforms where accountability has not been re-theorized for Canada’s Westminster system of government; Canada’s electoral volatility that starves the country of experienced politicians and spurs the tradition of political compensation for electoral support; and the political role of the Office of the Auditor General. This paper has been accepted for publication by the journal Critical Perspectives on Accounting, which holds copyright.