the review of annual and longer term
expenditure plans and programs of the various
departments of Government, and the determination
of priorities with respect thereto;
Various financial controls are described
in other parts of the FAA, such as Part II,
Public Money, Part III, Public Disbursements,
and Part VI, Public Accounts.
A subject that often puzzled many
observers of government management was
why expenditure management would be
separate from financial management. What
self-respecting controller in the private sector
would agree to have nothing to do with
the corporation’s financial plans? This was
addressed by the Secretary of the Treasury
Board and Comptroller General of Canada
in an August 3, 1994 memo to Deputy
Ministers and Heads of Agencies on ‘A
Vision of Comptrollership’ In this memo,
the Secretary/CG stated that with the integration
of the Office of the Comptroller
General (OCG) into the Secretariat, the
comptrollership function had been
strengthened by blending financial and
expenditure management, and that his
vision of comptrollership was ‘an essential
and effective tool to facilitate the best decisions
within the bounds of acceptable risk’.
Comptrollership, as described in the
1997 Independent Review Panel Report on
the Modernization of Comptrollership,
does not, in my view, help clarify the purpose
of FM & C. Rather than making it the
same, it appears to suggest that FM & C is
one of a number of disciplines. For example,
on page 47 of the report, it illustrates
required competencies of Senior Financial
Officers (SFOs) as follows: