Meat inspections lacking
REGINA — The provincial auditor says Saskatchewan must beef up meat inspections.
Auditor Bonnie Lysyk says in her latest report released Tuesday that Sas- katchewan is one of only three provinces in Canada that allows the sale of meat to customers without it being inspected. Most provinces require mandatory inspections of meat and slaughter plants, she said.
Of the 90 slaughter plants in Saskatchewan, 76 are licensed by the Health Minis- try and receive only annual inspections to ensure the plant premises and equipment are clean and can keep carcasses sufficiently cold.
“The animal, the slaughter process and the carcass are not inspected at these plants,” Lysyk said.
REGINA — To reduce public confusion, Saskatchewan’s auditor is calling on the provincial government to quit using “two sets of books” to report its finances.
Most provinces present their finances to the public using one set of financial statements — summary financial statements — which are prepared according to generally accepted Canadian accounting principles.
However, the Saskatchewan government continues to use two different sets of financial statements “depending on the message it wants to send the public regarding the state of its finances,” said auditor Bonnie Lysyk.
When discussing debt or balancing the budget, the government frequently refers to general revenue fund (GRF) statements, but Lysyk said in a report released Tuesday that GRF financial statements contain “significant errors and are ma- terially wrong.”
“This is akin to an auditor in the private sector saying that the annual financial statements of a corporation are wrong,” Lysyk told reporters at the legislature. “The government calculates the bottom line on the GRF based on legislation that does not require proper Canadian public sector accounting to be used.”
For example, the GRF statements for March 31 excluded $6.12 billion in pension liabilities and $100 million of related pension expenses.
“If proper accounting was used, the GRF would not have been balanced last year,” Lysyk said.
She said “creative accounting rules” used by the government allowed it to report a surplus of $352.3 million in the GRF on March 31, when it should have reported a deficit of $46 million.
However, the correct bottom line for the year ending March 31 using the summary financial statements was a deficit of $104.9 million.
“Last week’s mid-year report showed the GRF with a forecasted surplus of $56.2 million,” Lysyk said. “Using proper accounting rules, this forecast would have been reported as a deficit as $528.3 million.
“I encourage the government to join the rest of Canada and communicate the state of this province’s finances to the people of Saskatchewan focusing on only one set of books — the summary financial statements — not the general revenue fund financial statements, and not a blended presentation of the two sets as this is very confusing to the public.”
However, Finance Minister Ken Krawetz said the province will continue following the same financial practices.
“Since 2004-2005, the Saskatchewan government produces a summary financial budgeting, which is the complete financial picture of the entire province and we also do a general revenue fund budgeting, which is the operating side,” Krawetz said. “People want to know how ministries are doing, they want to know what the revenues are that are coming into the province on a daily basis or on an annual basis and they also want to know the expenditures.”
He said the GRF is a subset of the full financial picture and a way of indicating to Saskatchewan residents that “on a cash basis, you’re either going to be in a deficit or you’re going to be balanced with a surplus and we’re pleased to say that we have a balanced budget with a surplus.”
Trent Wotherspoon, Opposition NDP finance critic, said the government isn’t providing an accurate picture of the province’s finances.
When asked about the previous NDP following the same reporting practices and the provincial auditor making the same arguments, Wotherspoon said: “This government has been in power for five years. It’s 2012 and they’ve dug their head in the sand instead of providing progress when every other province in Canada has moved in line with proper accounting rules.”