Everyone Wants to be an Auditor

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Everyone Wants to be an Auditor

I spent about 15 years as an auditor both in public practise and in industry and in case you haven’t noticed it there has been an explosion in the field of auditing. Unfortunately, most of these new practitioners have absolutely no expertise and are merely part of empire building exercises.

Let’s start in Ottawa. There we have the Auditor General of Canada. You may remember when Sheila Fraser had that role and did a fine job. The AG’s office is full of professional auditors who can perform financial, forensic and value for money audits.

Now we have this yahoo who was given the title and 5 year role as the Parliamentary Budget Chief. His job is to monitor performance and report variances to the members of parliament in a way that they can understand ( he has to dumb it down). All of a sudden he has decided to expand his empire by trying to become a value for money auditor. He is now criticizing Stevie and the boys on the value for money spent at the federal level. That is not his job! If he doesn’t like something he sees in his variance analysis he should pick up the phone and call the AG’s office to initiate a proper audit based on the highest audit standards. No wonder his term will not be extended.

Moving down to Queens Park we have the Auditor General of Ontario. He also operates a very professional shop and in recent years has contracted out many of the financial audits to local public accounting firms so that his staff can concentrate on forensic and value for money audits. His office has recently been going over the Ornge situation and was also delving into the E-Health fiasco. I’m sure he is looking into the moving of those gas powered hydro plants too.

Now we have both the Ombudsman and the Environmental Commissioner creating teams of auditors to expand their empires. The Ombudsman is offering to audit the correctness of Municipal ‘closed’ sessions. They’d have to open up an office in Muskoka. Once again I see this as empire building. If something fails the smell test, call the AG’s office.

There is a way out of this provincial scrutiny of the appropriateness of closed sessions for the Municipality however. They can advertise for their own ‘Fair Judge’ and that is what our Town has done in the Wednesday Off-shore Press.



Pierce casts doubting eye on closed sessions

I won’t be applying because I’m sure I would lose the hiring vote 5-4. This could be a new career for either Messers House or Greaves who have municipal experience and have the added benefit of knowing the conflict of interest rules first hand.