International Journal of Government Auditing – October 2006
Canada
Audit of Environmental and Sustainable Development Issues
The Office of the Auditor General (OAG) of Canada recently developed and launched a practice guide on auditing environmental and sustainable development issues. The OAG has a strong mandate to conduct audits in this area. In 199 , amendments to the OAG legislation created the position of commissioner of the environment and sustainable development and added the " th E"--the environment--to the OAG's mandate for auditing economy, efficiency, and effectiveness. The OAG is now required to report significant instances of money spent for federal government operations without due regard to environmental effects and sustainable development. The guide is one of the OAG's initiatives to provide its auditors with the support and tools they need to address these important yet challenging issues.
"In the past few years, we have come to recognize that we needed some further steps to ensure that the environmental consequences of the federal government's activities are considered systematically as we plan and conduct our audits," said Assistant Auditor General Richard Smith. "In particular, we recognized the need to more actively engage and support audit teams across the office, above and beyond the commissioner's environmental team."
The new guide, entitled the th E Practice Guide, was launched in spring 00 . It is designed to help auditors who lack environmental expertise to identify and assess the risks of environmental consequences through the systematic use of screening tools, checklists, and other resources. The guide is used during long-range audit planning and also when teams are involved in the detailed scoping of issues as part of the planning phase of their performance audits.
In 2004, the OAG created a full-time position dedicated to helping auditors apply the new guidance, and more attention is being paid to increasing auditors' awareness of environmental and sustainable development issues and providing related training. Existing courses in this field were revamped in 2005, and a course to provide hands-on training in the new guide's methodology was piloted in September 2006.