A notebook documenting accounts referred to the Council, 1807-1811, is found in the Executive Council fonds (MG8-A17), vol. 2.
Records of the Receiver General and of the Inspector General, related to the auditing of Provincial public accounts, are found among the records of the Department of Finance fonds (R200, formerly RG 19).
Prior to the commencement in 1826 of the "Public Account Books", the texts of minutes or reports and certain other records compiled by the committees responsible for the audit of public accounts were entered into the State Minute Books among the minutes of other aspects of state business (see the State Minute Books of the Executive Council series found elsewhere within this fonds). Relevant pages for Lower Canada can be identified by consulting the analytical index which forms part of that series.
The records in vols. 73-76 of the present series relate to the accounts of the Commissioners of Roads and Bridges. The relationship between these records and those in the Records of the Executive Council relating to Highways, Roads and Bridges series, found elsewhere within this fonds, is under investigation.
Volume 105 includes accounts related to Charles Oakes Ermatinger. The relationship of these records with those found in the Ermatinger Estate fonds (MG19-A2) is under investigation.
Volumes 29 and 45 include records relating to the Commissioners of Freight. For related records see the Submissions to and Reports of the Councils relating to the Audit of Provincial Public Accounts series in the Records of the Councils of the Province of Quebec fonds.
Records which, by virtue of their provenance and date, would normally be included in this series are found in other fonds of the holdings of Library and Archives Canada. For practical reasons relating to the arrangement of such records by the custodians who inherited them after 1791, they cannot now be included within the present fonds and series. A number of records currently described in RG 4 (Records of the Civil and Provincial Secretaries, Quebec, Lower Canada and Canada East), series A1, vols. 53-622, date from the Province of Lower Canada period and are documents which the Councils would have created and/or accumulated. These records include many reports, returns and accounts relating to the expenditure of public funds and the collection of money on the government's behalf. As explained in the 1953 published inventory (Public Archives of Canada,
Manuscript Division: Preliminary Inventory, Record Group 1, Executive Council, Canada, 1764-1867 ), the Council records included in those volumes were already inter-mingled at the time of acquisition by the National Archives with records of the Civil and Provincial Secretaries for Lower Canada. This inter-mingling is attributed in the 1953 inventory to the fact that for many years the offices of Clerk of Council and Civil Secretary were held in plurality by one individual who, apparently, did not keep the records separate, although there is reason to believe that the inter-mingling is attributable to interference with the records by a later custodian (the Keeper of the Records after 1867 in the Office of the Secretary of State of Canada). Regardless of the explanation, it was recognized in 1953, and is no less true today, that it is not feasible to separate out the records belonging to each office and to attach them to their respective fonds. Therefore, these records have been left described as part of RG 4 and users should consult that fonds.
Other series within RG 4 (Records of the Civil and Provincial Secretaries, Quebec, Lower Canada and Canada East), in particular series B18, B30, and B35, are known to contain records which relate to public accounts, although not necessarily to the role of the Executive Council in dealing with those accounts. The precise relationship of such records to those found in the present series remains to be investigated.
Similarly, records now found in the Miscellaneous Correspondence and Subject Files series of the Office of the Governor General of Canada fonds (R178, formerly RG7) may contain records which relate to accounts and the auditing of accounts, although the relationship of such records with those found in the present series has yet to be determined.
A variety of reports on the public accounts and related schedules of expenditures were printed in the Journals of the Legislative Assembly and the Journals of the Legislative Council.