My office is an independent agent of Parliament, which means I report to all of Parliament and not to any branch of the public service. I was appointed into this position for a 10-year mandate after an extensive search, which then required all-party consent and votes in the House and the Senate.

I am meant to be truly independent and here to support parliamentarians in holding the government to account for the spending of public funds. We do that in several ways. First is with financial audits of several Crown corporations, other agents of Parliament and also the Government of Canada. We also carry out performance audits in both departments and agencies, as well as special examinations, which are similar to a performance audit but in Crown corporations.

At times we will respond to requests from Parliament, as we are doing with the ArriveCAN app, but what we believe really enhances our independence is that, most of the time, we have the freedom to select who we audit, when we audit and what we audit. We raise all matters of importance to Parliament in a very public and transparent way, as you'll see next week. We'll be releasing five reports. It is part of our responsibility to provide that work to Parliament.

All my work gets referred to this committee, whether it be reports that I personally table in the House or those that the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development tables. It can all be studied by this committee.

That being said, any committee in the House or the Senate is welcome to study our work. We are always very happy to talk about what we've found. We do believe that Parliament plays a crucial role in ensuring that departments and agencies act on our recommendations in order to improve services to Canadians.

Thank you for that opportunity to talk about our work.