Who Audits the Office of the Auditor General?

They're heroes in the struggle for good government, but are they enough?

Even if you had nothing to go on beyond the title of my publication, you could probably guess that I have warm feelings for the Office of the Auditor General of Canada (OAG). Their job, after all, is to oversee federal government spending to ensure that it's effective and not wasteful. Considering the size of the federal government and the scope of its operations, that's a daunting task.

Cynical as I am, I'm not convinced that government waste can be beaten: there are simply too many perverse incentives in place. A case in point can be found in the OAG’s own recent “Commentary on the 2022-2023 Financial Audits” document. Among other things, the the OAG reports the sad, sad fact that, more than a decade after introduction, the Phoenix employee payroll system is still not working. Incredibly:

• “30% of employees we sampled had an error in their basic or acting pay during the 2022–23 fiscal year, compared with 28% in the prior year

• “21% of employees we sampled still required corrections to their pay as of 31 March 2023, an increase from the 17% reported in the prior year”

But not to withhold credit where it’s due, even I'm encouraged by what appear to be serious efforts within the OAG to address serious problems. And their website does a good job representing their ongoing work, including findings, recommendations and, perhaps most important, follow-up tracking to show whether recommendations are being implemented:

But there's a lot more I'd like to know about the OAG. For instance, who watches the watchers?